David de Gruttola, known to the general public under the pseudonym David Cage, is a wonderful person for our time. His life path is unusual in that he is a professional musician who, in his thirties, decided to become a game designer and literally revolutionized the world of computer games.
If a person is talented, then he is talented in everything. David Cage games, the list of which is not yet so long, are very popular all over the world. What is the reason for such success? This is what we will talk about today.
David Cage: biography. Start of the journey
David was born in 1969 in the city of Mulhouse, in the north-east of France. He played the piano from the age of five, then studied at the Philharmonic and worked as a musician from the age of 14. At eighteen, he moved to Paris and began working for a record company, and in 1993 founded his own project, Totem Interactive. 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 latter genre, as a result of which his name appeared in the credits of applications known in the 90s: Super Dany, Cheese Cat-Astrofe starring, Timecop, Hardline.
The games of those years differed in many ways from modern ones, had 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 Gruttola.
Quantic Dream
David himself loved to play games, including those he had a musical hand in creating. He studied the process of game development, followed the development of projects and at some point decided to try to create an application on his own. In 1997, when the musician was 28 years old, he created his own game studio, called Quantic Dream. This is the age at which it seems to many young people that it is time to stop "playing with toys" (in every sense of the word) and to take up the mind. But our hero at this age, one might 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 easier for English-speaking partners to contact him.
First development
The first project, called Omikron: The Nomad Soul, David Cage carried out as a real beginner. He wanted to create the game of his dreams right away. The ambitions were huge: the project combined several genres at once - a fighting game, a quest, a role-playing game, an action movie, andand 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 in creating games, and his studio was not yet so famous that investors were interested in cooperation. Therefore, David and his team (six developers) failed to fully implement the project.
However, it didn’t fail completely: an interesting story and the aforementioned combination of genres all 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 why it was accepted by critics quite favorably. Omicron, of course, also found weaknesses, but not very large ones. This is how David Cage got his first fame as a game designer.
What does it take to play well?
Inspired by the success, but also de alt with the shortcomings of the first project, French screenwriter David Cage set about creating a new game. At that time, he already clearly understood his “mission”. He said that in the 25 years of the existence of the gaming industry, little has changed in it; technology has advanced, but the concepts have remained the same. As a result, Cage said, the world was overflowing with monotonous game crafts, and the possibilities of new technologies were not fully used. We need to do something new, Cage decided.
Among the shortcomings of the thengames, he also called the abundance of violence and the lack of "cinematic". Games should have at least some art, he said, and bring them closer to cinema.
Great Gaming Prophet
Even at the dawn of his passion for game design, David Cage expressed a kind of prophecy. In the mid-90s, his studio created a prototype game for the PlayStation. The project was brought to the publisher, but there Cage was advised to create this game for the PC, since the PlayStation, in their opinion, was dying. Cage obeyed, apparently reluctantly. Subsequently, it turned out that this publishing house went bankrupt, and the PlayStation not only did not die, but also gained wild popularity.
Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is David Cage's second game released in 2005. This is the world's first "interactive drama" in which cinematography has become the predominant element. The game has an extended plot-movie, in which an everyday, albeit strange, case (a hero in a diner's toilet kills a random visitor while in an incomprehensible trance) develops into a fantastic story about the struggle of supernatural forces.
Character control has become completely non-standard, which further enhanced the realism. The "movie game" turned out to be a film 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 movie was so new that it took Cage a long time to find a publisher for his next game, Heavy Rain. 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 to the fullest. The game has achieved high ratings and praise from critics. This is also an interactive film with an unusual game process. It uses the analog capabilities of the controller. For example, a weak button press provides a slow movement of the character, a strong one - accelerated. The controller must be tilted or shaken in the right places. As the game progresses, symbols are shown indicating the need to press one or another button or their sequence.
Interactive cinema
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. Participation is, let's say, inconsistent: despite the unconventional control and the abundance of keys and combinations, the player must intervene in the process only in certain places.
Quick time events technology is often used: at a certain moment, you need to quickly press a certain combination of keys so that the story continues on. 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
David Cage's failures in promoting games are explained by most experts by the fact that his projects appeared too early - the public was not yet ready for such decisions. Anyonce he was the first, and each time publishers and critics first expressed bewilderment and only then - interest.
Cage says it himself. As he recalls, in the late 90s, he shouted at all intersections that games should be like films, but no one understood him at all. And when he began to say the same thing after the release of Fahrenheit, they already began to listen to him.
But this is David Cage, whose projects we are considering in the article. He did not want to follow the beaten path, because he believed that the creation of a game is an art, and art is first of all creating something new, making a discovery, and only then you can try to earn money and fame from this.
Beyond: Two Souls
What else has David Cage been working on? The new game of the game designer, called Beyond: Two Souls, has become, it would seem, an even more ambitious project. After all, famous Hollywood actors were invited for her “shooting” - Eric Winter, Ellen Page, Willem Dafoe. Naturally, Cage invested in this game in full. The story tells about a girl who gained supernatural powers and learned to talk with spirits, and shows the whole 16 years of her life. However, Beyond: Two Souls turned out to be a disappointment. The developers were overly carried away by the technical side of the game and completely forgot about the plot, or rather about what makes it memorable. Cage made a "fancy", but simply uninteresting movie.
It is curious that heCage blames journalists and critics for the failure of the project (although there was still no complete failure), not agreeing to admit his own mistakes. It is not good for a maestro with considerable experience to act like this.
Who writes music for games?
Carried away by the stories about the innovative games of David Cage, we forgot that he was a musician by education and first profession. So, he does not write music for his games, it is done by other project participants. So, the music for Fahrenheit was written by Angelo Badalamenti, an American composer who became famous for soundtracks to David Lynch films, of which Cage is a fan. However, the game designer takes the choice of musicians for his games seriously, going through and trying different options.
Some compositions in "Fahrenheit" belong to other authors. They can be opened and listened to separately. David Cage games are unusual, creative. They deserve the attention of gamers. We wish this person success and more creative ideas!
