David Cage has used his DICE 2013 talk to take aim at a game industry with ‘Peter Pan syndrome’. The head of the Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain studio criticised the medium as a whole for refusing to grow up while failing to move past the same old themes and genres.
“It’s time to reassess who we are, and what we are doing,” said Cage, according to Gamasutra. “Only three genres [make] the charts. Kids games, Casual games, and violent action games. When you think about it, you realize we use the same themes, the same worlds, for about 40 years. You’re a hero, and you need to kill people in order to go somewhere, free the world, free the princess, or whatever.”
“Many times when I play a game, I get the feeling I’ve played it a million times before,” he continued. “We need to move away from our traditional market, which is kids, teenagers, young adults. Think about your friends who don’t play. Think about your parents. Do they play console games? Most of the time they don’t play video games. They barely know they exist. But you can talk about books, movies, TV, with them, because those mediums are perceived as being for everyone.”
Cage went on to explain his nine point plan for change, intended to help the game industry move forward, mature and become mass market. “This new form of entertainment should be accessible to all, should be open to all themes and genres, and should be able to talk about ourselves, human beings, and societies, in a meaningful way,” he added. “It should be based on the journey, not the challenge. Finally, we will have a chance to become mass market.”
via Edge Online http://www.edge-online.com/news/game-industry-refuses-to-grow-up-says-david-cage/