David de Groottol, widely known by the pseudonym David Cage, is a wonderful person for our time. His life path is unusual in that he is a professional musician who, about thirty years old, decided to patch up a game designer and literally revolutionized the world of computer games.
If a person is talented, then he is talented in everything. David Cage's games, the list of which is not so long, are very popular all over the world. What is the reason for such a success? We’ll talk about this today.
David Cage: biography. The beginning of the way
David was born in 1969 in the city of Mulhouse, in the north-east of France. From the age of five he played the piano, then studied at the Philharmonic and from the age of 14 worked as a musician. At eighteen, he moved to Paris and began working in a record company, and in 1993 founded his own project - Totem Interactive studio. In it, David was engaged, of course, in music, but of a special kind: he created soundtracks for television, advertising, cinema and computer games. He especially fell in love with the last genre, as a result of which his name appeared in the credits of well-known applications in the 90s: Super Dany, Cheese Cat-Astrophe starring, Timecop, Hardline.
The games of those years were very different from modern ones, they had a graphics that were primitive by today's standards, usually two-dimensional, and simple gameplay, but confidently moved forward. In particular, the sound design was created by professional musicians, one of whom was David de Groottol.
Quantic dream
David himself loved to play games, including those to the creation of which he had his musical hand. He studied the game development process, monitored the development of projects, and at some point decided to try creating the application on his own. In 1997, when the musician was 28 years old, he created his own gaming studio, called Quantic Dream. This is the age at which many young people think that it is time to finish "playing toys" (in all senses of the word) and you need to take up the mind. But our hero at this age, we can say, has just begun to “play” for real. By the way, at the same time he took the pseudonym David Cage - just to make it more convenient for English-speaking partners to contact him.
First development
The first project, called Omikron: The Nomad Soul, David Cage implemented as a real newbie. He wanted to immediately create the game of his dreams. The ambitions were huge: several genres were combined in the project at once - fighting game, quest, role-playing game, action movie and so on, there was a big city living its own life, an exciting plot, the ability to drive a car, fights … With all these ambitions, Cage had almost no experience creating games, and his studio was not yet so famous that investors were interested in cooperation. Therefore, David and his team (six developers) were not able to fully implement the project.
However, a complete failure did not happen: an interesting plot and the mentioned combination of genres - all this looked very innovative, so Cage managed to find a publisher (Eidos Interactive) who allocated money for the project and implemented the game (it was released in 1999). The author’s innovative approach to the project was the reason that he was accepted favorably by critics. Omicron, of course, also found weaknesses, but not particularly large ones. So David Cage (David Cage) received his first fame as a game designer.
What is needed for a good game?
Inspired by the success, but also sorted out with the shortcomings of the first project, the French screenwriter David Cage began to create a new game. At that time he already clearly understood his “mission”. He said that over the 25 years of the gaming industry, little has changed in it; technology has moved forward, but the concepts have remained the same. As a result, Cage said, the world was filled with monotonous game crafts, and the capabilities of new technologies were not fully utilized. Something new needs to be done, Cage decided.
Among the shortcomings of the games of that time, he also called the abundance of violence and the lack of "cinematography." At least a little art should be invested in the games, he said, and bring them closer to the cinema.
Great gaming prophet
Even at the dawn of his passion for game design, David Cage expressed a peculiar prophecy. In the mid-90s, his studio created a prototype of the game for the PlayStation. The project was brought to the publisher, but there Cage was advised to create this game for the PC, because the Playstation, in their opinion, was dying. Cage obeyed, apparently reluctantly. Subsequently, it turned out that this publisher went bankrupt, and the PlayStation not only did not die, but also gained enormous popularity.
Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is the second David Cage game to be released in 2005. This is the first “interactive drama” in the world in which cinematography has become the predominant element. The game has a detailed plot-film in which an everyday, albeit a strange case (the hero in the eatery's toilet kills an accidental visitor while in an incomprehensible trance) develops into a fantastic story about the struggle of supernatural forces.
Character management has become completely non-standard, which further enhanced the realism. “The film-game” turned out to be a picture for adults - this was expressed both in the plot and in the game world, and in the abundance of intimate scenes that had to be cut in some versions.
Heavy rain
The resulting interactive cinema was so new that Cage could not find a publisher for his next game, Heavy Rain, for a long time. In the end, Sony became interested in the project. In this game, which tells about the mysterious killer of children, Cage took into account past mistakes and realized his dream in full. The game has achieved high ratings and praise from critics. This is also an interactive movie with an unusual gameplay. It uses the analog capabilities of the controller. For example, a weak press of a button provides a slow movement of the character, a strong - accelerated. The controller must be tilted or shaken in the right places. During the game, symbols are displayed that indicate the need to press one button or another or their sequence.
Interactive movie
As we already understood, interactive cinema is a completely new genre in the gaming industry, although its prototypes have existed since the 80s. Simply put, this is a computer movie in which the player takes some part. This participation, let’s say, is intermittent: despite the unconventional control and the abundance of keys and combinations, the player must intervene in the process only in certain places.
The technology is often used Quick time events: at a certain moment you need to quickly press a certain key combination to continue the story. The actions of the characters affect what is happening around, and depending on how the player behaves, the “movie” will be shown in different ways.
Ahead of time
The failures of David Cage in promoting games, most experts explain by the fact that his projects appeared too early - the public was not yet ready for such decisions. Each time he was the first, and each time the publishers and critics at first expressed bewilderment and only then - interest.
Cage himself talks about it. As he recalls, in the late 90s he shouted at all crossroads that games should be like movies, but no one understood him at all. And when he began to say the same thing after the release of Fahrenheit, they began to listen to him.
But such is David Cage, whose projects we consider in the article. He did not want to follow the beaten track, because he believed that creating a game is an art, and art is primarily creating something new, making a discovery, and only then you can try to make money and fame.
Beyond: two souls
What else did David Cage do? The new game of the game designer, called Beyond: Two Souls, became, it would seem, an even more ambitious project. Indeed, for her "filming" were invited famous Hollywood actors - Eric Winter, Ellen Page, Willem Dafoe. Naturally, Cage invested in this game in full. The story tells of a girl who acquired supernatural abilities and learned to speak with spirits, and shows the whole 16 years of her life. However, Beyond: Two Souls turned into disappointment. The developers were overly carried away by the technical side of the game and completely forgot about the plot, or rather, what makes it memorable. Cage came out with a "tricked out", but simply uninteresting movie.
It is curious that Cage himself in the failure of the project (although there was still no complete failure) blames journalists and critics, not agreeing to admit his own mistakes. It is not good to do so to a maestro who has considerable experience.
