Interview: David Cage talks future of Quantic Dream, demos, and more

Earlier this year, Quantic Dream made a massive change by breaking away from their exclusivity with Sony. For almost a decade, the French studio has released their three titles exclusively on PlayStation platforms. This summer, they released Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls on the Epic Games Store with Detroit on the way.

This move brought the acclaimed narrative adventures to new audiences and signaled a new future for Quantic Dream. We spoke to gaming auteur and one of Quantic Dream’s key players, David Cage, about this massive change and the future of the studio.

What sparked the choice to bring Heavy Rain and the other QD games to PC?

Over many years, we’ve met people who were interested in our games but could not play them because they did not own a PlayStation. Some discovered our titles at a friend’s house, others watched them on YouTube. It was clear that our experiences were not available to everybody who might be interested in them. So, after 12 years working exclusively with Sony, we felt it was the right time for us to make our games accessible to PC gamers too. For us, it wasn’t just a business decision: it was the opportunity to tell our stories to more people around the world, and to keep evangelizing about interactive storytelling.

Any chance they’ll be brought to other platforms like Xbox or will they remain on PC and the PlayStation console family?

We are exclusively focused on PC for now.

There’s a key partnership in PlayStation for Quantic Dream, has that changed or will that relationship continue going forward?

We had a wonderful relationship with Sony for 12 years, they supported our work and gave us complete creative freedom. On our end, we were fully committed to the PlayStation brand, by creating technologies that showcased the hardware and experiences that were unique to the platform. When we talked to Sony about taking a different path they were very understanding, and I am glad we have maintained friendly relations since then. PlayStation will always be a very special platform to us, and we certainly intend to keep developing on it in the future.

What were you specifically able to do with the PC version of these games that you couldn’t on PS3/4?

The primary reason behind these PC versions was not to push specs, but really to expand our audience for our past and future games. We also wanted to make sure that our games would run smoothly on as many PC configurations as possible, and not just on high-end setups. Heavy Rain and Beyond run at 60fps in 4k, which is great, but I think that gamers have higher expectations for narrative and emotion than for purely technical specs.

Can we expect all QD games to launch on PC the same day or around the same time as their console counterparts going forward?

Yes, that is the plan.

Demos have fallen to the wayside over the last generation but these PC releases like Heavy Rain have demos. Was it important to you to give that option and do you see an importance in free downloadable demos?

The Heavy Rain demo on PS3 was one of the most downloaded on the PlayStation Store. It was important for us at the time to show what the game was, because many people believed that narrative games were just cut scenes with almost no interaction.

We always wanted to show that it was possible to tell an interactive story where the player is in control of the character at all times, and that was clearly the purpose of these demos.

I think that the demo for Detroit: Become Human was also very instrumental in the success of the game. We work very hard to create quality experiences. We want to show that, and to ensure gamers have a clear idea of what they are buying. This notion of transparency is very important to us: we have a lot of respect for gamers and we always want to be honest with them. That is why we do not do CG trailers, for example. All our trailers run in our game engine, so there is no confusion for players and no disappointment when they run the final game.

Why did you choose Epic Game Store over the likes of Steam? Can we expect them to come to Steam later?

Epic was very motivated by the idea of publishing our titles on their store. They offered visibility and marketing support, which was very important to us. Their platform is new and we knew that enticing players to migrate onto it would take time, but it was also an opportunity to expose our games to PC gamers who might not be familiar with our work yet, securing extra visibility straight away. Moreover, I don’t think a monopoly is a good thing in any industry. Giving gamers, publishers, and developers a choice between PC platforms is positive and healthy for everybody.

Will future games be exclusive to the Epic Game Store for PC launches?

The deal we have with Epic is only for these three titles, for a limited period. Nothing is decided yet for our future titles.

Quantic Dream is known for delivering deep narrative experiences but has recently opened themselves up to publish more titles outside of your development house. Will you be sticking to publishing narrative experiences or will we see shooters, platformers, and other genres previously unseen from you as a studio?

As a publisher, we want to focus on titles that are both original and high quality, in any genre and on any platform. There is no specific focus on narrative titles. Originality and quality are our only metrics.

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Big thanks to David Cage for his time and answers. Heavy Rain and Beyond are now available on the Epic Games Store and PS4. Detroit: Become Human is available on PS4 with the PC version coming soon.