David Cage talks about the difficulties of addressing issues like gay marriage in video games
Quantic Dream’s David Cage is outspoken, that much is an understatement. Recently he spoke in a French interview about how difficult it is to work real adult issues into video games.
Issues stemming from religion like gay marriage and other topical problems are touchy subjects in the video game industry. Not everyone wants to talk about them, and those that do talk about them have faced criticism in the past. Cage explains why talking about issues like gay marriage is more difficult to do so in a video game than killing people with a chainsaw in the same game.
By cons, if I want to talk about homosexuality in a game, if I want to tell a relationship between two consenting adults, it’s complicated. All those subjects which are real adult subjects, important, on which there are things to say, it is much more difficult to do than kill 10,000 people with a chainsaw.
Cage goes onto elaborate why talking about subjects like gay marriage are more difficult in games than other things like displaying intense violence by saying that video games are still seen by many people as something meant for children.
I think it is extremely complicated because we are in a medium that is still considered by society as a toy destined for children. And a toy for children, we do not talk politics, no sex, no real conflict is not talking about real people. When this is the fantasy , which has a sword and that will kill the goblins, things are going well. Therefore we will want to discuss real topics, it will become much more difficult.
Heavy Rain certainly didn’t shy away from difficult topics like child abuse, murder, prostitution, drugs, etc. Cage and company aren’t afraid to speak their minds and I think it helps that their games aren’t going to be confused with the latest Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. Quantic Dream’s games aren’t usually as popular as those titles so I’d say a wide majority of its players are adults.
Whereas you see a lot of COD/GTA fans being under the age of 17, some closer to 13. He is dead-on when he says that one reason why its hard to discuss difficult subjects in video games is because society still believes they are a child’s play thing.
Once the whole world realizes and accepts that video games aren’t just for kids perhaps we’ll be able to have more intense, detailed conversations through gameplay about these subjects.