GDC Europe Feedback 1 : David Cage’s conference
by Christophe on August 26th, 2009, under Chris
That was very interesting and relevant for one thing : I-must-learn-to-speak-english ! write in english, eat in english, drink in english and finally dream in english.
That really was a torture not understanding all conferences.
One of the most famous for me was David Cage’s one, Quantic Dream’s founder, with his speech “Writing Interactive Narrative for a Mature Audience” and this sentence “We need to be proud of who we are” about the censorship (which resonating especially in this GDC in Germany).
He asked why making games should be always for teenagers with big weapons, big tits and poor mechanics. We can assume to be adult and we can show others feelings than kill-jump-kill… and it’s not dirty to see people kissing in a game, or making love. That can be shown without pornography, like movies.
“Movies”. It’s the word around this speech turned. And it’s there I found the argument went too far because video games was automatically compared to movies, to conclude video games are only like children toys.
Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding by me about what said David Cage but video games needn’t to have the same language of movies. No to count a story doesn’t mean not to give mature emotions.
In his speech, he explained video games can have two playing ways : The sandbox (the most of games) and a Rollercoaster (rare).
He told us he prefers the Rollercoaster than the sandbox, where a child are caught for God, pushed by simplist feelings where as the rollercoaster offers an emotional trip… but we can be very passive in a looping and waked up inventive in a Sandbox.
We can assume to make “toys” without meaning “childish toys”.
Playing is a shame for an adult ?
Why saying “we need to be proud of who we are” and being mixed up by the cinema ?