David Cage does an interview about domestic abuse.

[InkyBlack]

Cage handled that interview poorly. Any other medium, especially film, I don't even know if there would be a debate on how poorly he handled it.

Speaking of film, this reminds me a lot of the director Alejandro Inarritu. I think he started out with much stronger movies (Amores Perros) because he didn't have as much control and was counterbalanced by a strongly opinionated writer. By now with The Revenant et all it's totally gone to his head, and in interviews he totally has this macho "we make high art" pushback all the time.

Cage absolutely has some common DNA here with Inarritu. There's some admirable direction and his best work was earlier on - Indigo Prophecy, snippets of Heavy Rain - but starting with Beyond as the budgets grew and Cage got more ambitious, things really spiral out of control for him.

I'll steal something said over at the Waypoint Radio podcast: "dude needs a writer." Enough said.

 

[Bobson Dugnutt]

not a great interview, even if the interviewer is being pushy there are ways to diplomatically answer questions. we all have bad days I guess

but I don't really get the hate for his work itt. beyond was good (though ellen page could be a big part of that) and fahrenheit was compelling asf before the last third of the game. not played the rest.

 

[Deleted member 5535]

This interview is really terrible, and yes, the bias is showing really well with how the interviewer is asking him. Cage is totally right in being defensive with how they questioned him.

 

[Ballpoint Ren]

not a great interview but I don't really get the hate for his work. beyond was good (though ellen page could be a big part of that) and fahrenheit was compelling asf before the last third of the game. not played the rest.

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You should take the time to play Omikron: The Nomad Soul

 

[Min]

Dunno if was posted, but Gamespot made an interview asking him the same questions, and some more, and the interview is much better conducted. Eurogamer interviewer went for the controversy fishing for the clickbait. Seems like worked out well for them.

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What a weird interview... I think I walked away even more confused about what he is trying to convey or not convey with this game. He's saying he doesn't want to provide answers only questions that the player can answer with their own choices while also stating he needs control to prevent anything that goes against his moral judgement from being in the game? He also mentions that there is a message/meaning that he's trying to deliver. He seems to be bouncing back and forth between this idea of authorship and collaboration. There was no escalated antagonism on either side of the interview this time, but if I was interviewing I would have a raised eyebrow as the interview continued.

"My role is certainly not to deliver a message to mankind--I am not that arrogant--I would just say that I'm interested in some questions and I think some questions are connected to us as people, as individuals, and some questions are connected to our world.
Now, I think it's up to the player to make these connections or not make them. It's everybody's role--again, it's a collaboration. [You s]ee in the game things that you want to see. There are things I've tried to put in there, for sure, but I certainly didn't try to tell you what you should think or what is right or what is wrong. It's more asking you, "What is your take on this?""

"I don't want to censor myself; I don't consider that there's anything I should never talk about because, again, I respect my medium and think it should be able to talk about anything. I'm just careful about making sure that what I say is something I'm fully comfortable with. I couldn't tell a story that go[es] against my beliefs to defend racism or misogyny. I couldn't do that. That's not my values. It's particularly difficult because when you give options to the player and only give them the right choices that are ok with me, then there's no choice. It becomes a film and we're not creating something together. So I need to create a spectrum, a space of choices that have fair boundaries large enough for players to find their own paths, but also respect certain rules that I give to myself; I don't want to tell a story I would be ashamed of, in terms of moral values. That's your responsibility as a writer. Would you want the player to be racist or not racist? No, that's not the kind of choice I would offer."

 

[Ænima]

not a great interview, even if the interview is being pushy there ways to diplomatically answer questions, but we all have bad days.

but I don't really get the hate for his work itt. beyond was good (though ellen page could be a big part of that) and fahrenheit was compelling asf before the last third of the game. not played the rest.

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If you liked Fahrenheit and Beyond two souls, you really should pick up Heavy Rain. To me as the better game of the 3.

You should take the time to play Omikron: The Nomand Soul

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Oh, wow. Dint knew The Nomad Soul was a quantic dream/ David Cage game. I loved that game back in the day and still find the gameplay idea very ahead of its time.

 

[Ballpoint Ren]

Oh, wow. Dint knew The Nomad Soul was a quantic dream/ David Cage game. I loved that game back in the day and still find the gameplay idea very ahead of its time.

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Can't argue with that, at least in regards to its open world gameplay. The story and characters are all inconsistent as hell though, sometimes bordering on the realm of pure nonsense, but then again we're talking about a game where the plot revolves the player's soul being sucked into a video game created by an ancient demon.

 

[Heckler456]

check those credits for past games again

he's is THE ONLY person listed for writer AND director for Beyond, Heavy Rain and most likely for Detroit as well

Hes always been the sole person for the shit writing

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He isn't the only writer and director for Detroit. There's an article about it.

 

[quincognito]

Scott Benson (guy from _Night in the Woods_) had a pretty harsh but IMO entirely accurate twitter thread about this subject here: https://twitter.com/bombsfall/status/925587756167979008

 

[Rymuth]

Rhianna Pratchett Responds to David Cage: "Step Up to the Plate and Talk About the Creative Choices You Made"

She is not wrong. Interviews are a basic part of the process of selling a game. It remains baffling the negative reaction from Cage and his fans to a very basic interview.

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While I think Ms Pratchett is on the mark here, didn't she do the exact same thing with the Lara rape accusations?

Rhianna Pratchett, who recently left the Tomb Raider franchise, slammed critics for taking the scene "out of context" and claimed "you could probably see worse in a soap opera".

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"It felt like an important debate to have, because it felt like a scene that would not have caused controversy in any other medium,"

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[Cripterion]

Too bad this game is in the hands of a mediocre writer and director.

Edit: not mediocre, talentless.

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Didn't know the game was already out for you to play it.

 

[Kenzodielocke]

Didn't know the game was already out for you to play it.

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He has a track record and the footage doesn't really inspire me with hope

 

[Cripterion]

He has a track record and the footage doesn't really inspire me with hope

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Should give the game a chance at least

 

[BrassDragon]

I find Cage to be needlessly obtuse in most of his public statements and this is no different. However, I do feel that public-facing developers need to be pushed a little harder on their depictions of violence (see also The Last of Us II marketing and the original Tomb Raider reboot sizzle reel.) When you pour valuable development time and manpower into obsessively detailing human beings being maimed, tortured and destroyed, you can't just throw up your hands and say 'hey, I'm just doing it because it's cool'.

Eurogamer is doing it a little artlessly here (the questions seem to presume Cage has no personal experience with or knowledge of domestic abuse, which is an insensitive leap) but I appreciate reporters stepping back and asking the artists why to go so deep into disturbing themes that their public consumes almost mindlessly.

 

[jett]

I can appreciate the interviewer having 0 faith that David Cage can tackle serious issues thoughtfully.

I'd love for him to nail it but his previous games really don't inspire confidence.

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This is exactly how the interview reads.

And it's a question David Cage deserves based on his previous work.

For me his most effective work was that 10-minute tech demo he made with the actor playing a wizard in a green screen. It was actually funny. Far better than his tryhard attempts at being taken serious as a storyteller (which have always fallen flat on their faces). How immediately defensive he got in this interview is probably an indication that he's self-aware about the reputation he has.

This game looks pretty good though, although I've been bamboozled several times now by Cage games that appeared to look "pretty good" in promotional materials...

 

[firehawk12]

Cage's response to questions about this game really makes him feel like an empty shirt. It's like he's taking these dramatic scenes found in other stories and just mashing them together because he thinks that having a story about domestic abuse or "droid lives matter" makes his story "artistic".

 

[TheDragon]

It almost seems like Eurogamer wants to sanitize all game trailers into Super Sunshine Happy Painting. Their coverage of PGS has been awful for me as instead of informing about how good the games were or how the medium has now more themes and shades than ever before, they are hell bent on 'my eyes couldn't see the horror'.
We want to medium to mature? It seems the reviewing outlets need to mature their understanding of video games as an entertainment medium at least on par with Movies and books. It does not matter if David Cage can do 'justice' to a topic, he has the artistic freedom to do so. It is like such trailers never even exist for movies....

 

[BrassDragon]

Why presume that Eurogamer wants to censor anything? Asking an auteur to explain his intent does not equal telling him to stop making the art he wants to make. The auteur is perfectly within his rights to not answer the questions and let the work speak for itself (preferably without being overly defensive) but telling the reporter to stop questioning is disingenuous.

Yes, we want the medium to mature - but we ALSO want the journalism covering it to mature alongside it. That means more interviews that go beyond 'How awesome is your game?'

 

[Retro!]

The interviewer seems to be bias against Cage, trying to shoot him down as opposed to empower his vision. Why is it movies can explore these themes but games can't?

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Idk I can't really think of the last movie I saw that had abuse featured in its marketing campaign. It's not that games can't tackle these issues, it's just really fucking weird to see so many games actively trading on them.

I think that's my biggest issue with Cage here. And other narrative driven studios that I think are guilty of this as well like Ninja Theory and Naughty Dog. They seem to be selling EMOTION and trauma as proof of advancement, no differently than other studios might sell poly count or matchmaking algorithms. They put these really serious scenes without context in promotional material and talk about them in interviews to sell them to an audience under the premise of "games can do this now".

So I'm on the interviewers side here. If you're going to sell these scenes to us, be prepared to answer questions about them. Especially the most basic one of "why do this"?

 

[Deleted member 23046]

I can understand why people react about Cage for a clumsy and awkward response, how he can apear pretentious, (comparing the reception of Detroit with Baudelaire's poetry...) and how before the rise of indie walking simulator, his game appeared empty and boring, making him the easy target for of trU3g4m3erZ against casualization.

But I still don't get what's outrageous in the demo, apart the questionable choice of it for a public advertising. If I correctly understand, you are supposed to defend an abused child... and ? It it's supposely more disturbing than force the player to torture a man with Trevor Philipps and throwing him in a plane to expulse him ?

The argument is for me only valuable for people who got uncomfortable during the PGS with the choice of such representation in a gaming event, than the defensive and elusive response of Cagem but not to see this theme in a game, especially when Cage's work is narratively focused on it in every of his own.

 

[TheDragon]

Yes, we want the medium to mature - but we ALSO want the journalism covering it to mature alongside it. That means more interviews that go beyond 'How awesome is your game?'

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But that is not happening because since PGS that outlet had decided that gamers are not mature enough to watch different trailers/gameplay of games together, see
'Sony's Paris press conference suggests we need a new way to show difficult games' without offering any 'resolution' for this perceived problem. Also, an interviewer is supposed to extract as much info about the matter as possible. Here it seems the only mandate he was given was to grill Cage on only one topic and ignore the game, tech, gameplay or any other thing that may be important for the actual game. Eurogamer has left me pretty sad with their negative coverage on the entire conference without offering any counterpoint.

 

[Grailly]

I was in the demo just then, and there's motion control in this - you're shaking the controller to prevent the abuse, which didn't seem appropriate to me in a scene as powerful as that.

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This is just as bad as any response Cage has given. I feel like the interviewer is implying that controllers aren't good enough for the subject matter. Or does he think buttons are better?

 

[excowboy]

I'm generally with the interviewer here - its not unreasonable to ask Cage not just why he has included a storyline about abuse in his game, but also why it was considered a good idea to build a trailer around it. Don't take that the wrong way - I'm happy to see that the medium of videogames has matured to the point that issues like this could be covered by the medium, but I also feel context is key. I don't feel like Cage had a particularly clear answer beyond 'because I can' and I do feel that's a bit problematic. Also, the interview suggests they were pressed for time, so perhaps neither party came across quite as clearly as they'd like.

I think Christian Donlan's companion piece mentioned above - Sony's Paris press conference suggests we need a new way to show difficult games - makes a good point on this. You wouldn't want to see a graphic trailer for Ken Loach's latest gritty social drama presented on stage sandwiched in between trailers for braindead action films to a group of whooping fans. Consider the presentation of this trailer against a game like Senua's Sacrifice where the developers were up front that they were addressing a complex personal and social issue and worked with professionals and experts in that field both to develop and present the game.

There is also a lot of comparison to film in this debate, but I do also feel there is an extra responsibility for videogames due to the interactivity. Watching someone's portrayal of domestic abuse is fundamentally a different experience to being involved in shaping the outcome of that domestic abuse through gameplay. This is why the medium is so incredible as it has the power to generate empathy and an emotional response of a fundamentally different nature to other artforms, but it therefore needs to take a bit more care when it addresses these ideas.

 

[ilmaestro]

Eurogamer should have come out and said what they really felt (why does Cage think he's qualified considering his past attempts) instead of asking a stupid question.

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I think this would have made me feel a lot better about the interview! To me, the tone of the questions is "I think you're shit, and I don't even respect you enough to tell you directly". More transparency would have gone a long way.

 

[SHØGVN]

Yes Mr Cage, games are an artform. Too bad your writing is more trash than art

 

[tzare]

Biased interview, bad answers from cage, and hostility from gamers that dislike his games.
Good times

 

[SplitYourInfinities]

LOL this guy, cannot understand why he is still a thing, exile him to irrelevance already. Peter Molyneux was ostracised for much less.

 

[Deleted member 1273]

Obvious loaded interview question bs. Leaning that hard on it for no real reason.

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[Sturm]

Game's not out yet. Stupid questions to ask without context. And I don't think people would question a movie with scenes of domestic violence in a trailer. They question Cage mostly because he's been a hack in the past, but let's see how the final product turns out.

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Exactly. The interview is not about the game, it's about how to fuck cage.

 

[Chocobo Blade]

Awful interview on both ends, honestly. It's okay to question his motives, but the way the interviewer conducts it is mind-bogglingly loaded and unprofessional. Of course it doesn't excuse Cage's dumb answers.

 

[Deleted member 888]

LOL this guy, cannot understand why he is still a thing, exile him to irrelevance already. Peter Molyneux was ostracised for much less.

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"Exile him"?

There's one of those mature gamer responses to giving feedback to a... video game/developer.

Peter Molyneux had a history of lying/exaggerating and then bait/switch. That cheesed some people off. Look at the end result of that cube game and then remember that project Milo nonsense.

Cage doesn't lie/deceive, people just don't think he's that good a writer. Not quite the same as Molyneux at times.

 

[Deleted member 9237]

LOL this guy, cannot understand why he is still a thing, exile him to irrelevance already. Peter Molyneux was ostracised for much less.

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Come on man, tone it down a bit

 

[Muffin]

Why do I think this game will come out, scenes like this will as always be just there without any meaning or message behind it besides "look what we can show in games!!" and shortly before his next game we will have the exact same thread again?

 

[Quacktion]

There ware a milion ways of answering these questions in a sensible and logical manner. Somehow David Cage chose none of them. Maybe he didn have an answer and really is just a robot who puts movie scenes into games without thinking much about them, which judging by his past writing endeavours wouldnt be that far from the truth.

 

[AYY LAMO]

Never do a racist game, David Cage?

African-American representation in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy was eye-rollingly bad.

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I take your 'Hip Hop always playing when hes on screen' black guy and raise you...

 

[Spikematic]

Biased interview, bad answers from cage, and hostility from gamers that dislike his games.
Good times

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Agreed. The entire situation is quite embarrassing.

 

[anyprophet]

Biased interview, bad answers from cage, and hostility from gamers that dislike his games.
Good times

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how was it biased?

 

[supkid]

Speaking of film, this reminds me a lot of the director Alejandro Inarritu. I think he started out with much stronger movies (Amores Perros) because he didn't have as much control and was counterbalanced by a strongly opinionated writer. By now with The Revenant et all it's totally gone to his head, and in interviews he totally has this macho "we make high art" pushback all the time.

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He wrote Biutiful, which I still think is his best piece of work personally, I don't see the Inarritu tie in at all personally. Sure The Revenant was a gorey movie at times, and I'd say it had to be personally, but I'm curious as to what else he has wrote that's given you that impression? Birdman? Biutiful?

I liked the trailer for Detroit mostly for the same reasons I liked the tech demo Kara, it made you feel for something that you're not supposed to feel for, an AI. When and where do the lines cross and the AI becomes more human than human?

 

[Siresly]

Guess I understand why this blunt line of questioning would make you defensive, but instead of going "stop scrutinizing my work just because you don't think games can be good", actually explain, make an argument for why your game is good. People largely want that to be the case, I assume including Martin Robinson. When you're dealing with serious, sensitive topics with blatant parallels to racism and directly about domestic/child abuse, if you are to be as respected as you think you should be, you should be able to make a proper case for your handling of these issues. Instead Cage has been...cagey.

Ideally these kinds of interviews would happen after a game's out, so it can be properly discussed. Would also give interviewers time to do some setting up, maybe get exposed to and ask about stuff like this.
But post-release interviews about previous games aren't much of a thing. So now's as good a time as any.
I appreciate attempts at digging into things to get proper answers, but evidently with Cage you need a different approach. Robinson lacked the tact, subject felt attacked.

 

[hotcyder]

Never do a racist game, David Cage?

African-American representation in Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy was eye-rollingly bad.

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He has african-american robots in Detroit but had to clarify in the interview that he couldn't be bothered to delve into any Slavery parallels.

 

[Deleted member 679]

While I think Ms Pratchett is on the mark here, didn't she do the exact same thing with the Lara rape accusations?

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damn

 

[Thuddert]

This is pretty awkward. You have an interviewer with a bias against Cage. On the other side you have Cage that gives a Tommy Wiseau like answer.

 

[chrominance]

But I still don't get what's outrageous in the demo, apart the questionable choice of it for a public advertising. If I correctly understand, you are supposed to defend an abused child... and ? It it's supposely more disturbing than force the player to torture a man with Trevor Philipps and throwing him in a plane to expulse him?

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To be fair, LOTS of people had problems with the torture scene in GTA V, and for very good reason: it's a textbook example of throwing in something shocking for the sake of a limp joke that does double duty as the most basic and obvious social commentary (hey guys, did you know that torture doesn't work?).

I personally don't think David Cage is so tasteless as to take that route with domestic violence. If nothing else, Cage seems earnest in his intent, and that's worth something. I think what we're all worried about is that Cage will handle the issue clumsily, and given how serious an issue it can be, I think it's worth at least asking the guy what his intent is.

I'm generally with the interviewer here - its not unreasonable to ask Cage not just why he has included a storyline about abuse in his game, but also why it was considered a good idea to build a trailer around it. Don't take that the wrong way - I'm happy to see that the medium of videogames has matured to the point that issues like this could be covered by the medium, but I also feel context is key. I don't feel like Cage had a particularly clear answer beyond 'because I can' and I do feel that's a bit problematic. Also, the interview suggests they were pressed for time, so perhaps neither party came across quite as clearly as they'd like.

I think Christian Donlan's companion piece mentioned above - Sony's Paris press conference suggests we need a new way to show difficult games - makes a good point on this. You wouldn't want to see a graphic trailer for Ken Loach's latest gritty social drama presented on stage sandwiched in between trailers for braindead action films to a group of whooping fans. Consider the presentation of this trailer against a game like Senua's Sacrifice where the developers were up front that they were addressing a complex personal and social issue and worked with professionals and experts in that field both to develop and present the game.

There is also a lot of comparison to film in this debate, but I do also feel there is an extra responsibility for videogames due to the interactivity. Watching someone's portrayal of domestic abuse is fundamentally a different experience to being involved in shaping the outcome of that domestic abuse through gameplay. This is why the medium is so incredible as it has the power to generate empathy and an emotional response of a fundamentally different nature to other artforms, but it therefore needs to take a bit more care when it addresses these ideas.

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The fact that Detroit needs to be sold as a big-budget videogame using traditional big-budget videogame marketing tactics is at least partially responsible for the cognitive dissonance, I think. The trailer is basically saying "choose your own domestic violence prevention adventure!" which feels completely out of whack with the gravity of the actual situation. I don't know how much of that specifically is Cage's fault, given that Sony is likely the one responsible for cutting that trailer, but he must have been aware that this was happening and that some people might take that the wrong way.

 

[ozz ex machina]

Cage handled that interview poorly. Any other medium, especially film, I don't even know if there would be a debate on how poorly he handled it.

Speaking of film, this reminds me a lot of the director Alejandro Inarritu. I think he started out with much stronger movies (Amores Perros) because he didn't have as much control and was counterbalanced by a strongly opinionated writer. By now with The Revenant et all it's totally gone to his head, and in interviews he totally has this macho "we make high art" pushback all the time.

Cage absolutely has some common DNA here with Inarritu. There's some admirable direction and his best work was earlier on - Indigo Prophecy, snippets of Heavy Rain - but starting with Beyond as the budgets grew and Cage got more ambitious, things really spiral out of control for him.

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Interesting, to me The Revenant and Birdman are by far his best movies. I really don't think it's a fair comparison at all. His first few films I actively cannot tolerate due to the eye-rolling multi threaded "ooh look at how these tie together" narratives. He's matured and found a much stronger voice as more of an auteur as he has gotten older, with much better films as a result.

I'm not sure what David Cage has proven really aside from one of his games every few years can be a fun change of pace for gamers. I've played all of his games and none have been very compelling pieces to engage with aside from a bit of fun and something different to my usual video game experiences. I expect nothing more from Detroit.

 

[A Syrian Communist]

Can't argue with that, at least in regards to its open world gameplay. The story and characters are all inconsistent as hell though, sometimes bordering on the realm of pure nonsense, but then again we're talking about a game where the plot revolves the player's soul being sucked into a video game created by an ancient demon.

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That sounds like one of my Japanese animes.

 

[Abominuz]

I take your 'Hip Hop always playing when hes on screen' black guy and raise you...

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Dead :) Point proven.

 

[Dragoon]

How does the interviewer say this

I'm not disputing that at all. The concern I have is that it's using something like domestic abuse and child abuse - which is a very real issue for unfortunately far too many people - and using it as window dressing rather than exploring the ramifications of those issues.

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without playing the game?

Garbage interviewer. If I was in Cage's place, I wouldn't have interviews with him again.

 

[Stop It]

I'm just as shocked at people responding with incredulous replies at a creator being asked about what driven him to include anything in their creation, as the response itself.

And yes, Mr Cage, try reading any decent interview with a movie director and one of the first subjects will be "So director X, what made you tackle this subject?".

And guess what, they answer.

It's not hard. In fact, rather than whining about being asked about difficult subjects how about taking a leaf from the movie industry books and actually talk openly about the creative process, including the tough stuff.

Nearly every film has a director commentary, nearly all directors will tell you exactly why they directed nearly every scene when they're asked. If the gaming industry stopped treating the media and by extension the audience with contempt, unworthy of being told these details, then it'll be taken far more seriously.

There's nothing wrong with games tackling social issues. There's everything wrong with doing so with a blinkered vision that means because you've created something that you're beyond question.

 

[Crossing Eden]

He has african-american robots in Detroit but had to clarify in the interview that he couldn't be bothered to delve into any Slavery parallels.

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And started a trailer with said black robot singing Hold on Just a Little Longer....dude really has no spine when it comes to being confronted about the subject material he's using for the sake of literally forced emotions.

 

[hotcyder]

And started a trailer with said black robot singing Hold on Just a Little Longer....

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https://kotaku.com/despite-political-overtones-david-cage-says-detroit-is-1795939952