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发帖数: 11737 | 1 To our American and Canadian cousins, the British Academy of Film and
Television Arts (BAFTA) is kind of the British equivalent of Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which organises the Academy Awards
, otherwise known as The Oscars.
BAFTA recognises video games and has done since the late 90s, which not only
means that we get to wear tuxedos once a year and attend an opulent awards
ceremony, but also that the British games industry gets support and
acknowledgment from a highly respected institution.
You can read my report from the 2011 ceremony over on PlayStation.Blog.EU,
but the summary is that Heavy Rain won the awards for technical innovation,
original music and best story, while God of War III collected the gong for
artistic achievement.
Just as the after party threatened us folk working the next morning with
full swing, I had a chat with Heavy Rain’s writer and director David Cage
about what these awards mean and what Quantic Dream has planned for the
future.
What are your initial feelings after collecting three BAFTA awards this
evening?
I’m very proud to have collected three awards. We came here with no
expectations and I’m proud for my team who all worked so hard during those
three years of development. I’m also proud for Sony, because they took a
big gamble on this game and showed faith and support throughout, which not
all publishers would have done.
Which is the most gratifying to you personally: winning awards, critical
acclaim or lots of sales?
Definitely sales, and not because of the money. When you create games, you
don’t create them for journalists or awards panels; you create them for
real people – for gamers. To have nearly two million people paying good
money to play Heavy Rain is a really great feeling for me.
Which of tonight’s awards is the most pleasing?
I’m proud of all of them but, from a personal point of view, it has to be
best story. I worked so hard on this aspect of the game, inventing rules for
the world; trying to be creative and emotional while all the time thinking
about the technical aspects like structure and the different variables that
were necessary to make it all work. I spent a year writing for 12 to 15
hours a day and there have been many personal sacrifices. As I said on-stage
, I want to dedicate this all to my family, especially my two sons, who I
didn’t see much of during that time but they shared my passion.
Can the auteur theory be applied to games, with development teams getting
bigger all the time?
It must be applied to games – there is no other way. If this industry wants
to mature and evolve then we need to talk about emotions and work on
stories that appeal to all people, not just hardcore gamers between the ages
of 15 and 17. We have a much wider market out there just waiting to
interact if we can go to them with the right ideas.
I know no good stories written by 50 people. A story is something emotional;
something personal that you want to share and it is strongly linked to your
own life and experiences. We need auteurs and the biggest problem in this
industry is that we don’t trust them – we trust programmers instead.
Auteurs are scary because they come back with ideas, but that is exactly
what this industry should be about.
Is this recognition of Heavy Rain the culmination of your work on Indigo
Prophecy?
We are working with a young medium and there is no pre-existing language
with which to tell an interactive story. Everyone needs to learn and I’ve
had 15 years of learning, starting with Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Nobody knew
what the story was about in that game because it was so messy and poorly
told, but then I had the chance to work on Indigo Prophecy and the story was
kind of OK for two-thirds of the game, but got a bit messy at the end. So I
progressed some more as a writer and, with Heavy Rain, I feel that there
were many stories in there and they were all good from start to finish.
Heavy Rain is the result of those 15 years of fighting and struggling with
this new language. Receiving this award is undoubtedly one of the highlights
of my career but I don’t see it as an achievement, more like the first
step – it’s like I’ve finally got something that works. Now, I can build
on it and continue learning. I’m a student and I’m still at the beginning.
For our next project we’re going to build on what we have discovered with
Heavy Rain. We own this genre of Interactive Drama and we want to show that
Heavy Rain was not a coincidence; it is something that makes sense and we
can build on it.
At the same time, we will not make a sequel and I made that very clear from
the beginning, regardless of whether the game was a success or a failure,
because I wanted to show that this is a new genre that you can use to tell
any kind of story, in any style.
We’re going to be exploring a different direction, which will still be very
dark and still for adults, but completely different to Heavy Rain. Our
challenge is to satisfy our fans, and also surprise them. |
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