During his GDC Europe keynote,
Heavy Rain director David Cage said when it comes to mature content in video games, developers have to stand up for themselves against public criticism -- and if they don't, they only have themselves to blame for their hardships.
Quantic Dream's Cage urged that the whole industry should "stop making stupid games," citing the problems of
Grand Theft Auto's 'Hot Coffee' debacle, and saying "there are still rules about this that I need to face" in the creation of
Heavy Rain.
He raged: "If you have a naked girl in the textures for your games" but you can't see the actual image in the game, "then you can go to jail if it's discovered by the ratings boards."
The french creator complained of the concept that a decompiled flat texture of breasts could even be uncovered by hackers. "Can you imagine how sexy tits could be like this?", quipping, "Have you seen the Internet"?
Unfortunately he concluded that, to a certain extent, "we should blame ourselves" for the problems, because game makers don't stand up for themselves.
He cited Electronic Arts' strong response to the
Mass Effect love scene controversy that Fox News attempted to spawn, saying that standing up for themselves is key.
In Quantum Dream's 17+ rated
Fahrenheit (also known as
Indigo Prophecy), Cage made a scene where a girl was taking a shower, and "you could briefly see for one second a part of a breast". But in certain countries "we had to put a swimsuit on the girl... to take a shower."
In his conclusion, Cage agreed that you do need a rating system, but "I would like the same rules to apply to games [that] apply to the movies and television." Is it fair to have a different rating when the game is interactive? Cage thinks not.
