This is the question I had today after reading the critical reaction to Beyond: Two Souls. I grew up playing games from Konami, Capcom and the like, so I’m still getting the hang of associating a game with a person’s name. I do well with a few: Hideo Kojima, Phil Fish, Cliffy B, etc. As video games continue to become a bigger part of pop culture, I will continue to add names to the list. David Cage is the latest addition.
I became very curious about David Cage due to the self-congratulatory venom spewed by his critics. Ian Miles Cheong, the editor in chief of Gameranx, unloaded puns like this about David Cage’s failure with Beyond: Two Souls. I had never seen so many puns about one developer, so these tweets aroused my interest about David Cage. I then read Jim Sterling’s review of Beyond: Two Souls and found these two lines fascinating in their smugness: “I’ve believed for years that Cage, while an undoubtedly talented man, is simply not a strong enough creator to be an unchallenged writer and director. If Beyond: Two Souls does anything right, it’s prove that belief.” It seems Cage’s supposed failure makes Sterling a more knowledgeable critic.
I began to seek out quotes from David Cage. Surely this son of a bitch said something really controversial, I thought. Perhaps Cage was kind of like Phil Fish or Cliffy B, guys who say whatever is on their mind without caring about what others might think.
If you’re looking for another Fish in Cage, you’re out of luck. I find that Cage mainly talks about the potential of video games to trigger different emotions. I think the following quote, which prompted this article from Sterling, is the most controversial thing I could find from the mouth of Cage:
This industry will die if it doesn’t try more to be innovative and to come up with new ideas and to talk a bit more — not necessarily serious, but deeper things at some point. It’s great that you can shoot at monsters, and that’s great and it will always be there and it will always be successful, but at the same time, what about giving the choice to people? Give them different options. So if they like that they find it, but if they want something deeper and interactive, they can find that too.
Cage contradicts himself when he says the industry “will die” before pointing out that shooters “will always be successful.” Other than that, I don’t have a problem with this quote, and I don’t have a problem with Cage attempting to give people “different options” with games like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. I say this despite the fact that I have zero interest in playing his games.
Human culture at large doesn’t care about David Cage enough to criticize him. Most gamers don’t care enough about Cage to criticize him. And I didn’t even know the poor bastard’s name until I saw the critics’ bile. Why do some game journalists insist on publicizing the name of someone they don’t seem to like or respect? I’m afraid the answer is beyond me.
http://www.fateofthegame.com/who-the-hell-is-david-cage/
