Heavy Rain Creator: "The U.S. Has Problems With My Games"
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
FlashHero said:
go to direct2drive for Fahrenheit (indigo prophecy). it's actually a really good game, but the plot goes bat shit crazy about half way through.
Suddenly, L.A. Noire is a knockout hit! Your argument is invalid, Cage!
Seriously, though, the guys at Quantic Dream need to stop bitching about how the game world didn't look at their interesting-but-flawed art project and say it was a gift from God. They're not doing themselves any favors. Fuckin' frogs.
Seriously, though, the guys at Quantic Dream need to stop bitching about how the game world didn't look at their interesting-but-flawed art project and say it was a gift from God. They're not doing themselves any favors. Fuckin' frogs.
Heavy Rain Creator: "Sure does ***** a lot..."
Used market ruined the success of my game
Marketing dept ruined the success of my game.
The article title 'Heavy Rain Creator:' recently just seems to be a story about this guy complaining about something. Get over it guy.
Used market ruined the success of my game
Marketing dept ruined the success of my game.
The article title 'Heavy Rain Creator:' recently just seems to be a story about this guy complaining about something. Get over it guy.
I hadn't actually bought Heavy Rain yet. It did look interesting and I wanted to support something different by finding a new copy and saving the money for it.
But with this guy's pretentious attitude about how he must be God's gift to the gaming world, it's becoming hard to justify the price for a new copy over a used one.
But with this guy's pretentious attitude about how he must be God's gift to the gaming world, it's becoming hard to justify the price for a new copy over a used one.
His assessment couldn't be any further off the mark. Marketing for video games plays such a minor roll that it borders on ridiculous. The biggest seller of games is gameplay style, followed by reviews. All the marketing that most counts existed for your games. You went to electronic shows and let magazines post big long previews of your game. The only thing you didn't do was put ads on television or radio really. Which no game really does, with rare exception.
You had the second part of my original statement aced with both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. The first bit you failed at though. The games were great, but they are clearly designed for a niche market. Basically, you made an adventure game. And then you proceeded to release said adventure game on a console, which is always hostile towards adventure games. I think you would have done much better with a PC release, where the majority of people interested in an Adventure game, actually lives. I liked both games. But I didn't get to play Indigo Prophecy till years after it had released and I didn't think about it till I saw it on a Steam sale. And I can't justify $60 on an adventure game, so I don't actually own it. I got it through gamefly originally.
You had the second part of my original statement aced with both Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. The first bit you failed at though. The games were great, but they are clearly designed for a niche market. Basically, you made an adventure game. And then you proceeded to release said adventure game on a console, which is always hostile towards adventure games. I think you would have done much better with a PC release, where the majority of people interested in an Adventure game, actually lives. I liked both games. But I didn't get to play Indigo Prophecy till years after it had released and I didn't think about it till I saw it on a Steam sale. And I can't justify $60 on an adventure game, so I don't actually own it. I got it through gamefly originally.
I can understand that. US markets tend to favour foaming at the mouth action shooters. Not the slow paced drama of heavy rain.
And don't have a go at me for inferring that MURICANS ARE STOOPID. Some are, some aren't. Like every other country on the planet. Every country has their favored load of games. America = FPS's. Germany - RPG's. Japan - JRPG's, UK - Action/adventure, Korea = MMORPG.
And don't have a go at me for inferring that MURICANS ARE STOOPID. Some are, some aren't. Like every other country on the planet. Every country has their favored load of games. America = FPS's. Germany - RPG's. Japan - JRPG's, UK - Action/adventure, Korea = MMORPG.
On the one hand I disagree with Mr. Cage's previous assessments that the market and the American audience and used-game sales(!) are to blame for Heavy Rain not being a gigantic success. You're not some artist misunderstood in your own time, Mr. Cage. You're still a bright-eyed, bubbling-with-ideas developer who hasn't quite gotten used to the idea that not everybody thinks it's as brilliant as you do. That's OK. Every developer goes through that phase. In all honesty, I thought Heavy Rain was all that and a bag of chips, but I understand that not everyone will agree with me. I don't think he even reads negative reviews if he concludes that they "didn't get it"!
On the other hand, marketing teams are the devil. Everyone who is not already in marketing knows this. If he says they didn't trust his games to sell unless they tricked the audience into thinking they were guns-blazing action titles, I'd be willing to believe that.
Anyway, read the article. It's not as bad as it sounds from the post above, no matter how positively they tried to spin it.
On the other hand, marketing teams are the devil. Everyone who is not already in marketing knows this. If he says they didn't trust his games to sell unless they tricked the audience into thinking they were guns-blazing action titles, I'd be willing to believe that.
Anyway, read the article. It's not as bad as it sounds from the post above, no matter how positively they tried to spin it.
John O'Reilly I completely disagree with you there. Heavy Rain [the one copy] has kept me, my boyfriend, my brother, my boy friends bothers and our friends entertained for HOURS on end. This is regardless of the fact that we have played it all separately and together at my house. Graphically it is a stunning game, the animations and slight subtitles in muscle movements as well as the intense story [better then hundreds of movies I've seen] have kept us all hooked. Lets not forget that the way you interact with the game itself felt very inventive and original, yet natural.
The fact that the game can go many number of ways has meant that we have played it through more then once just to see what we missed out on - a better ending, the death of a loved character or a better arse whooping to a villain we detested being a generalisation of the many possible out comes. It, for us, is this means of switching up the out come that has kept us all on our toes for every play through. And each of us has had a different ending despite any prior knowledge of the games story.
The replay value is there.
To that end, it was worth the full amount paid.
If any one would like a new way to play Heavy Rain, it makes a fairly good party game [depressing atmosphere aside].
Get some beers/drinks in and whatever else you want, grab a friend for each of the playable characters, decide whom is whom and play the game whilst changing whom plays as the game changes characters. Each segment of each character is short enough to prevent boredom. This leads to a very organic and interesting game play experience and ending by which no one truly knows how the story will pan out. Plus you get the full enjoyment of watching and taking in what is happening on screen, some thing which I feel I could not fully appreciate the first time around as I was too involved with the quick time events.
Also I doubt Mr Cage has much say in how much his games will cost on release.
Also has any one noticed that the microwaves in that world appear to be powered by uranium rods? How else could they cook food that quickly?!
The fact that the game can go many number of ways has meant that we have played it through more then once just to see what we missed out on - a better ending, the death of a loved character or a better arse whooping to a villain we detested being a generalisation of the many possible out comes. It, for us, is this means of switching up the out come that has kept us all on our toes for every play through. And each of us has had a different ending despite any prior knowledge of the games story.
The replay value is there.
To that end, it was worth the full amount paid.
If any one would like a new way to play Heavy Rain, it makes a fairly good party game [depressing atmosphere aside].
Get some beers/drinks in and whatever else you want, grab a friend for each of the playable characters, decide whom is whom and play the game whilst changing whom plays as the game changes characters. Each segment of each character is short enough to prevent boredom. This leads to a very organic and interesting game play experience and ending by which no one truly knows how the story will pan out. Plus you get the full enjoyment of watching and taking in what is happening on screen, some thing which I feel I could not fully appreciate the first time around as I was too involved with the quick time events.
Also I doubt Mr Cage has much say in how much his games will cost on release.
Also has any one noticed that the microwaves in that world appear to be powered by uranium rods? How else could they cook food that quickly?!
The reason we don't like his games is not because they're not shooty-bang-violence-fests, if that were the case we wouldn't like Mario and the like.
The reason we don't like his games is because they're giant quick time events. That's not good gameplay.
The reason we don't like his games is because they're giant quick time events. That's not good gameplay.
Come to think of it, today I was reading an article on avant-garde vs. kitsch. For internet videos, avant-garde would be something like Rubber Johnny and kitsch would be something like cute cat video #580,000,000,001.
If Gears of War is the easy-to-swallow, easily-sellable patriotic mush, then games like Heavy Rain are just thought experiments and developer whims. If that is the case for Mr. Cage (and it certainly seems like it is), asking that it sell like hotcakes and be something different that not everybody will like seems like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
If artistic endeavour is all he wants to do in the industry, then he should be satisfied with what he's making under the understanding that whether it sells or doesn't, he's pushing the envelope and breaking new ground (I'll let you guys argue over whether the ground should ever have been broken at all). If selling games is what he wants to do, he could just make another random war game with patriotic undertones, and be satisfied with paying the bills and making lots of dough. He cannot make a niche game and then whine when it isn't universally accepted; nothing new or challenging is.
If Gears of War is the easy-to-swallow, easily-sellable patriotic mush, then games like Heavy Rain are just thought experiments and developer whims. If that is the case for Mr. Cage (and it certainly seems like it is), asking that it sell like hotcakes and be something different that not everybody will like seems like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
If artistic endeavour is all he wants to do in the industry, then he should be satisfied with what he's making under the understanding that whether it sells or doesn't, he's pushing the envelope and breaking new ground (I'll let you guys argue over whether the ground should ever have been broken at all). If selling games is what he wants to do, he could just make another random war game with patriotic undertones, and be satisfied with paying the bills and making lots of dough. He cannot make a niche game and then whine when it isn't universally accepted; nothing new or challenging is.
I'm going to start out by saying that I've played and enjoyed Heavy Rain, despite the games plot-holes and shortcomings.
Yes, marketing sucks. US consumers have known that for a long time. Heavy Rain was still very well known and respected in my circle of friends for its ambition. Yet we fully acknowledge the game was flawed. Mr. Cage, you cannot blame the consumer for not liking your product. You can only blame the creator. This does not earn you any respect and makes you look like a child.
Yes, marketing sucks. US consumers have known that for a long time. Heavy Rain was still very well known and respected in my circle of friends for its ambition. Yet we fully acknowledge the game was flawed. Mr. Cage, you cannot blame the consumer for not liking your product. You can only blame the creator. This does not earn you any respect and makes you look like a child.
I feel like Nintendo would like word with you, behind their piles and piles of money.
Seriously, every time this guy talks he just comes off as a huge egotistical prick. Your games don't sell because of poor marketing and poor design. Blaming the country's tastes just makes us like you even less.
Also, you don't make games, plotholes, French, etc, etc. You get the idea.
Seriously, every time this guy talks he just comes off as a huge egotistical prick. Your games don't sell because of poor marketing and poor design. Blaming the country's tastes just makes us like you even less.
Also, you don't make games, plotholes, French, etc, etc. You get the idea.
I think the title would be more apt if it said
"The World Has A Problem With Heavy Rain Creator."
Seriously. Every time this guy opens his mouth, he seems even more like a pretentious prick.
"The World Has A Problem With Heavy Rain Creator."
Seriously. Every time this guy opens his mouth, he seems even more like a pretentious prick.
I got Heavy Rain... It is not a game, so of course people are going to have issues with it. Not saying it was BAD, but I sure didn't like it. It was just boring. They also dropped the ball by not allowing you to influence who the killer is. They leave it open ended until the end of the game but only allow one of the 4 characters to be the killer when all 4 really could have been.
Katamari Damacy (one of my top favorites from last gen along with Burnout Revenge) comes to mind too. I was playing Flower the other night and didn't kill anyone. Go over to metacritic and look at the top scores: not all those games involve big tough guys with guns.Ciler said:
The big problem is that this Cage guy is such a pretentious douche, he can't even realize why his games are so bad.
I can support innovative gaming but at a time where people are getting real sick of QTEs, they may not appreciate a game entirely made up of them...no matter how good you think the story is. That's not innovative. Ironically what is innovative is something like VATS (from Fallout 3) where the player isn't just given a cinematic reward to pressing the right button at the right moment: it allows the gamer to make a tactical decision regarding the cinematic. QTEs haven't been innovative since Dragon's Lair; what's innovative now is finding creative and fun ways AROUND QTEs.
And why is he trying to make it sound like his game got no hype. I thought it got too much.
The thing is I actually partially agree with him alot of the people marketing games in the U.S. don't seem to have a high opinion as to the games American gamers will enjoy.Evill_Bob said:
What makes Cage look like an asshole is that his games specifically didn't do well because they're dull (though Heavy Rain is the only one I had experience with to be fair). In Cage's case American marketing wasn't at fault if I remember right every one I knew was excited about Heavy Rain, but when it came right down to it once people started playing it and the reviews and even harsher Let's Plays no one wanted to go anywhere near it.