David Cage’s studio, Quantic Dream, is certainly a controversial one. There are some that love the company’s output, including such titles as Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. However, there are also plenty who find the studio intolerable, in no small part because of the behaviour of Cage himself. In recent years this has blown up a bit and might be the reason why the studio has been lying low. There has barely been a peep since Detroit was released in 2018.
However, at least one company sees plenty of value in the company, controversies or no: the very large Chinese technology, NetEase, has announced that it will acquire the company.
While NetEase promises little intervention in the design and developmental process of Quantic Dream’s own projects, they have pledged the benefits of high-tech facilities and resources to assist them. NetEase CEO, Ding Lei: said via a statement:
“NetEase will continue to fulfil our promise to support Quantic Dream to realise its full potential. By combining the wild creativity and exceptional narrative focus of Quantic Dream with NetEase’s powerful facilities, resources and execution capabilities, we believe there are infinite possibilities that could re-define the interactive entertainment experience we provide for players worldwide.”
And what does NetEase get out of it? As it was previously mentioned, Quantic Dream will be the company’s first European studio, marking an integral stepping stone for the huge technology company to break into new markets and globalise. So let us hope for a mutually beneficial deal, and for project details the likes we’ve never seen before to be released as a result.
And, perhaps they could settle Cage down just a little. That would be a pretty good outcome too.
“re-define the interactive entertainment experience we provide for players worldwide”
Corporate speeches like this are never a good sign. The only thing that could have been worse is if they replaced the word “players” by “consumers”.
I still look forward to anything Quantic Dream puts out though. It’s been a while. I don’t know what behaviour you’re refering to and unless it’s something really agrecious I really don’t care.
It gets pretty egregious. There’s been ongoing court cases and everything about it, starting from when several news outlets reported on conditions at the studio: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/jan/15/game-developer-quantic-dream-accused-of-toxic-and-sexist-working-environment
And then Cage’s defence of that working environment wasn’t exactly great: https://www.fanbyte.com/games/news/report-in-my-games-all-women-are-whores-says-david-cage/
Ehh… I’ve loved art made by much worse people than David Cage. Besides, That comment he made, trashy though it is, doesn’t hold true if you actually look at the work. Take Beyond: Two Souls. A story with a very well realized main female character. I would have loved DBH if it wasn’t for that God-awful twist. And also the way that the endings were kind of Binary good and bad.
Speaking of Beyond: Two Souls, Cage and his team made a 1:1 recreation of Elliot Page (then Ellen)’s naked body, against their wishes, and then failed to secure it, so it leaked: https://www.businessinsider.com/ellen-page-explored-legal-action-against-sony-over-nude-video-game-images-2015-4
Now, I’m not saying that David Cage needs to be cancelled or whatever. Nor do I let who he is affect my opinion of his games – I’ll defend Heavy Rain to death as one of my favourite narrative-driven things. But I think it’s fair to say the guy has a loose understanding of some pretty basic ethics, and if Quantic Dream belonging to a corporation helps curb the edges of that behaviour, I’d be alright with that.
Oh, wow. That’s… That’s pretty scummy. Makes me sad too because that game has a special place in my heart for some pretty personal reasons. Well, at least it’s not in the actual game. God willing the better angels of Cage’s nature will prevail.I don’t feel like you can tell the kind of stories he does without at least some degree of empathy. Hopefully the right people will come around to help him him show it and live by it when he’s not writing a story.
Yeah, one of my favourite interviews that I’ve ever done is when Cage gave me an entire hour to *dive deep* into his creative process. It was fascinating and a good conversation, especially since he didn’t need to extend me that respect – back then DDNet was so much smaller: https://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2013/09/beyond-david-cage-games-art-and-man.html (I’ve got to fix that headline up. Got ruined in the site migration).
So I’ve always had a lot of respect for him as an artist. I wasn’t happy when I started seeing these reports emerge at all.