Heavy Rain Creator: "The U.S. Has Problems With My Games"

[Jezzascmezza]

These Heavy Rain developers have been bitching a lot lately.
Maybe they should get to work on a new game rather than complaining about how they didn't sell as many copies of Heavy Rain as they had hoped they would.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

A) He's right, and
B) Heavy Rain didn't blast off because no one has any taste anymore

Okay, I'm a shameless Heavy Rain fan, and I can tolerate a universe's worth of cutscenes (Xenosaga, Metal Gear, etc. are on my favorites list). Heavy Rain is still on my top 10 list of all time. Still, all I hear is whining about how it's a movie -- well yes, it is supposed to be a big interactive cutscene, that's the game style, give it a chance and shut down your trigger fingers for a while. Augh.

 

[Damien Granz]

Heavy Rain Creator: "The U.S. Has Problems With My Games"

Heavy Rain creator David Cage says his games don't sell well in the U.S. because American marketers aren't interested in anything that doesn't include guns and guts.

David Cage doesn't make "normal" games. By that, I mean that a David Cage game isn't likely to feature a bulked-up meathead packing enough heat to knock over the legitimately elected government of Guatemala. Instead, he produces fare like Heavy Rain [http://www.amazon.com/Omikron-Nomad-Soul-Pc/dp/B00002NDEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317222853&sr=8-1], none of which were what you'd call smash hits in the U.S. market. In Cage's mind, the problem isn't the games, or the gamers, but the marketing departments.

"The U.S. always have problems with my games, to be honest. Nomad Soul was the first to have issues over there. We were asked to change the name over there, so it was called Omikron: The Nomad Soul, but there was still no confidence that it would sell well in the States, so it wasn't supported," Cage said in an interview with Develop [http://www.develop-online.net/features/1437/David-Cage-From-the-brink].

"The games I make don't include a gun," he continued. "Very often, American marketing departments have a problem with this. They have this image of their market being gun-loving rednecks. It's completely wrong."

Two of Cage's games were actually renamed for U.S. release: Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Quantic Dream's first game, was released in Europe as simply The Nomad Soul, while Indigo Prophecy, which Cage described as a "fucking stupid name," is better known to non-American gamers as Fahrenheit.

The U.S. videogame industry is very conservative, Cage said, and marketing departments like ideas that are simple and familiar. Story-based games, on the other hand, and particularly those with challenging stories about this like child abduction, don't get nearly the same level of commitment.

It's a valid point, even if it does come across as a bit of a cop-out. It's a fact of life that a Heavy Rain is never going outsell a Gears 3 [http://www.amazon.com/Gears-War-3-Xbox-360/dp/B002I0H79C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317223047&sr=8-1], but that fact unquestionably keeps marketing departments from really getting behind unconventional products and, as often as not, bungling the effort when they do. Yet he still has faith that persistence will, eventually, pay off.

"The only way to solve this is to keep at it; game after game, get more trust," he said. "Show them how successful you are, and hope that eventually they, and the whole industry, will turn around."


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Hey Cage, maybe it's because we like games that don't vomit all over itself halfway through and hand in a half baked ending that makes whatever was good in the beginning of the game into a piece of retroactive trash?

I'm saying that as an American that bought both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain.

Also, Fahrenheit is an even dumber name for Indigo Prophecy, especially considering that the non-American releases named Fahrenheit had all their temperature measurements done in Celsius anyways, so there's no Fahrenheit in the whole of the game. At least there was an Indigo Prophecy in our version of the game.

These Heavy Rain developers have been bitching a lot lately.
Maybe they should get to work on a new game rather than complaining about how they didn't sell as many copies of Heavy Rain as they had hoped they would.

Hah, yeah, I thought it was piracy and used games last week why we Americans didn't buy enough of his game. Now it's lack of guns, even though 2 whole chapters are nothing but shooting, and like 4 more are fights, out of a like 12 chapter game.

And Indigo Prophecy morphed into the Matrix/Dragonball Z with Old Ladies are the Internet, and both games had basically events where you are playing Simon Says to simulate sex built into them, so I'm not sure why he thinks he's so high brow anyways.

"Quick, up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right to blue, yellow, blue, red, to touch a boob." doesn't seem to me to exactly be hoity toity culture, the sort that super sophisticated types with monocles and a brandy sifter would look for in their video games.

 

[Cyberjester]

Eh. Console exclusive games that look pathetically boring aren't going to get played.. "We have serial killers. We have child abduction. We're totally edgy man, you should buy a PS3 and play us."

Try a no..

Heh. I could bring up Minecraft, but that would be mean.. Let's just send the guy a card telling him nicely to look for a different industry. Manual labour maybe. Something where he doesn't get a say.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Just one question, Sir, if I may, Sir--Have you tried to make a film, Sir? You made your games barely interactable, Sir, giving us a preset script that must be followed, Sir, and gave us puppets that must move specifically so, Sir, and I'm inclined to think that this approach is much more about cinematography, Sir, rather than an interactive media like games, Sir. And while yes, Sir, it does give it more weight when we have to make someone perform a terrible and complex action, Sir, I should prefer to have even a modicum of freedom, Sir. In a game about consequences, Sir, when the problems might change, Sir, so too should the effects of those actions, Sir. But you are getting better, Sir, if only you knew, Sir, that minor actions can compound, Sir, and not everything requires a gun, Sir. Have you perhaps tried a knife, Sir, or a half-brick-in-a-sock-for-defense, Sir?

Because improptu action would definitely improve your games, rather than everything being a scripted occurrence. Yes, I know the merits of a tightly spun story, but still, a bit of improvisation would have drastically improved my opinion of Heavy Rain, possibly to the extent that I would have bought it.

Sir.

 

[thilinab]

statistically a bit BS, heavy rain sold about 2 million copies with 44% in the North America. The same percentage wise as MW3. (stats from vgchartz).