《底特律：变人》与《逃出生天》两大游戏制作人畅谈未来游戏叙事

原作者：Dean Takahashi 译者：Vivian Xue

Josef Fares和David Cage都是热爱叙事的游戏开发者。他们都创作过令玩家记忆深刻的作品。但二位的游戏创作方式截然不同。

上周在巴塞罗那的Gamelab活动上，我们与Fares和Cage来了一场 “炉边谈话”，并从中发现了两位开发者迥异的创作方式。Fares是瑞典工作室Hazelight的创立者，因在TGA颁奖大会上大骂“去他妈的奥斯卡”而出名。Cage是Quantic Dream工作室的联合创始人，作品有《暴雨》、《超凡双生》以及《底特律：变人》。

Fares希望打破传统的被动式观影体验，并利用电子游戏独有的交互技术。因此他表示自己制作游戏时首先专注于构思玩法和游戏概念，而不是剧情。与此相反，Cage说他的创作总是从情感层面出发，思考他想通过游戏传达的内容，写出一个剧本后再思考玩法。

在Cage的最新作品《底特律：变人》中，他设置了许多将剧情引向不同结局的选项。但Fares在创作《逃出生天》(A Way Out)时脑海里只有一个近似线性的剧情和两个结局。我们讨论了这些不同点，并思考怎样把这些创作方式融合起来，打造优质的剧情游戏。

这些不同的创作方式反映了游戏剧情和交互性之间的核心矛盾。一款游戏既可以让玩家沿着预设的轨迹体验它，也可以呈开放式，为玩家提供各种选择。

“对我来说游戏最美好的地方在于我们可以（和玩家）共同创造一些东西，”Cage说。

下面是本次讨论的文字版：

GamesBeat：你们愿意谈谈自己是如何创作游戏的吗？Josef？

Josef Fares：有意思的是，我们俩的创作方式有很多截然不同的地方，也有许多非常相似的地方。每个人的工作方法不同罢了。我呢，首先思考的是游戏机制，以及游戏概念本身。接着根据它们构思一个剧情框架，并以此为基础构建起整个游戏。我对游戏的交互性非常感兴趣，试图创造出一个能够与剧情和谐交融的游戏机制。机制是剧情的一部分。《兄弟：双子传说》、《逃出生天》中都是如此，并且在接下来的作品中我们会进一步融合剧情和机制。这就是我从零开始创作游戏的过程。

David Cage：我的方法——并没有什么规则。有时我的创作始于一种情感。有时是某个想法或者某个时刻。比如《暴雨》的创作始于我和6岁的儿子在商场里走散的经历。当时我是如此恐惧，我很想试试能否通过一种交互式游戏体验还原这种恐惧。

《底特律：变人》的最初灵感来自Ray Kurzweil的书《奇点临近》，里面讲到未来机器会可能比人类更聪明。看完书后我的脑海中不知为何浮现出了一个画面，我们每个人都在一名机器人助手的陪伴下逛街购物，这些机器人帮我们提购物袋，但当我们进入餐馆时，他们只能在门外等候。这群机器人外形与人类并无二致，却不能进入餐馆。于是我想到“如果我是其中一名机器人呢？如果我认为这不公平呢？”

剧情创作就是这样开始的。我试图把人物联系起来，看看能擦出什么样的火花。但我最看重的是人们在这段体验中的感受。情感是一切。当然你在游戏里做了什么、点击了什么按钮也很重要。这些都是关键，是一种让你沉浸在游戏世界中的方式，是游戏的关键组成部分。但同时，根据我的个人经验，人们记不太清楚自己在游戏中做过什么，而是对曾经的感受印象深刻。如果让你回忆最棒的游戏，你印象更深的大概是游戏带给你的强烈情感触动和剧情转折点，而不是你按下的按钮。这也是为什么相比于其他，我更重视情感。

GamesBeat：剧情和交互性之间存在矛盾吗？

Fares：我认为是，但以一种好的方式存在。我同意David的言论，但可能因为我以前是做电影的，如今我往往试图尽可能远离情感创作。我同意David说的情感非常重要，但我认为电子游戏中的叙事有其特殊之处。电子游戏这个媒体本身，交互性本身，与游戏机制是联结在一起的——我认为游戏机制不仅仅是按下按钮。

比如我制作了一款关于爱的游戏，或者关于酗酒的父母。如果我能让玩家感觉自己掌控游戏，对游戏的发展负有责任——也就是当你能够更主动地在游戏里互动时，游戏就能对你产生更为强烈的情感触动。这是游戏的独特之处。

Gamesbeat：《荒野大镖客2》中有一个很有意思的场景，玩家扮演的角色醉醺醺地行走在酒吧里寻找某个人。你看到的每个人都是幻象，而你试图从他们中找出真正的人。这个场景你们认为怎么样？

Fares：感觉不错。这游戏有点长，不过这另当别论。我认为如今大部分游戏都太长了。我们没那么多时间。

Cage：我认为电子游戏的独特之处在于你能和受众一起创造。如果你是电影制作人，你拍了一部电影让观众们看。他们或许能对电影产生情感联系，但他们无法改变电影内容。而游戏最美好的地方就在于我们可以和玩家一起创造。在《底特律：变人》中，我与数百万素未谋面的玩家一起讲述故事。这是这种媒体最令人激动的地方。这是交互体验的独特之处。

我同意Josef所说的控制的重要性。拟真感，即能够站在角色的角度感同身受。有时候游戏通过“侵蚀控制”（erosion of controls）带来这种感受，我们刚刚谈到你必须弯曲手臂——如果你通过游戏机制完成这个动作，就会产生一种拟真感。这让你感觉自己就是该角色。这唤醒了你的某种记忆。或许有朝一日你在现实生活中这么做时，你会从情感上回忆起这一刻。

喝醉酒是一个很好的例子。我们把这种称为“侵蚀控制”，即控制角色的难度增大。像这样增强玩家情感参与度和沉浸度的技巧有很多。

GamesBeat：不同游戏对剧情和交互性的矛盾处理方式不同，导致了它们不同的风格。有没有那种极端剧情性或是极端交互性的游戏？这种处理矛盾的方式是线性游戏和开放世界游戏的区别所在吗？

Fares：我认为，两种类型都应该存在。但如果你问我更喜欢哪一种，我更喜欢线性的体验。如今有许多开放世界游戏——今年我玩了《刺客信条》、《荒野大镖客》、《往日不再》和《蜘蛛侠》。事实上我最喜欢的是《蜘蛛侠》，它没那么长。但我把这些游戏都打完了。开放世界游戏的一个问题是设计上太重复，导致我遗忘了剧情。相比之下我更喜欢线性游戏——《最后的生还者》或者《风之旅人》这种。这种游戏我可以从头体验到尾。

尽管如此，这并不意味着像《底特律：变人》这种游戏不好，我也打完了这款游戏。我确实很喜欢它。然而，我担忧的是行业的走向——“线性”似乎成了一个贬义词，我不喜欢这样。两种游戏都应该存在。并不是所有人——当然我认同选择是电子游戏的一部分。但选择出现在电影中，就像Netflix正在测试的功能（让观众决定剧情走向）。这并不是电子游戏特殊的地方。两种游戏都应该存在——我们可以做选择，也可以按设定好的剧情体验一个游戏。

正如David提到的，一切在于情感联系和情感触动。如果我们看一部经典电影，你会被其中的情节触动。选择不一定能使这种触动更强烈。选择可能增强这种情感，也可能使它弱化。这也是为什么我认为两种模式的游戏都应该存在。但我听到人们对“线性”持负面态度，我觉得这不好。似乎游戏就应该提供多重选择，就应该是开放式的，偶尔让人迷惑。

我想试着做一款开放世界游戏，但我告诉你，它会很不一样。我更愿意做一个只有10个小时，但是充满了独特内容的游戏，也不愿意通过重复内容来增加时长。玩开放世界游戏时，你很容易忘记进展到哪个阶段。这也是为什么我更喜欢《蜘蛛侠》这种更短、更有重点的体验。

Cage：我认为互动剧情的叙事方式有很多，我不认为有正确的方法和错误的方法之分。不同的游戏的叙事方法不一样。无论是开放世界游戏还是线性游戏，《底特律：变人》其实是一种互动戏剧，你的选择在其中发挥了很重要的作用。不同游戏满足不同观众口味，我觉得这完全没问题。

从技术的角度，从结构的角度来看，剧情和交互性的结合方式是多种多样的。如今很多动作游戏用一个动作场景、一个过场动画和一个动作场景的组合，把剧情和动作玩法分割成两部分，这是一种处理方式，这种方式没有问题。我们在《底特律：变人》中换了另一种方式，我们让你站在角色的角度上，让你自己做决定，面对你的决定带来的结果。

当这些选择是有意义的，当你的选择事关接下来故事的进展时，游戏带给你的情感触动将更为强烈。如果只是一个打开左门还是右门的选择，没人会在乎。但如果这个选择触发了情感参与，它就变得重要了。我认为相比于那种你能够对角色的决定表示赞同或反对，但不能影响剧情发展的游戏，它增加了一个维度。

在《底特律：变人》中，游戏剧情根据你的选择发展。你从情感上对这些角色负有责任。这是我最喜欢它的地方。

Gamesbeat：《底特律：变人》有多少种结局？在你(Josef Fares)的最新游戏里，你设置了两种结局。

Fares：两种结局——它们是整个游戏概念。事实上，我更希望只有一种结局。

Cage：我们无法准确计算出《底特律：变人》一共有多少种结局。[笑] 结局不是最重要的，而是通往结局的不同路径。体验过程是多种多样的。游戏的结局，不同的角色可能存在或死亡，做出不同的道德选择，或者以不同的境况结束。

以角色马库斯(Marcus)为例，他是革命的发起者。这个人物有好几条道路，他可以成为暴力革命的领导者，也可以成为一名和平主义者。游戏中还有许多其它选择。

Gamesbeat：如果玩家只体验了其中的一两种剧情就不玩了，你们会觉得遗憾吗？

Cage：不，完全没问题。这是游戏概念的一部分。我们试图平衡所有的选择。如果你面对0%或10%的人会选的选项，那么这个选项本身是没意思的，它没有那种进退两难的感觉。我们喜欢50%-50%的选择(游戏邦注50%的人选择其中一个选项，50%的人选择另一个选项)，玩家将根据他们的道德观和身份做出选择。你可以想象如果这事发生在你身上，你会怎么做。我们通常把选择平衡成50%-50%或者40%-60%，最多30%-70%。但我们意识到这对玩家体验和游戏的销售产生了非常积极的影响。

举个例子。过去，YouTube博主总是为我们造成困扰。他们上传游戏视频，人们看了以后会觉得“好的，我知道剧情了。我不需要玩这个游戏了。”而《底特律：变人》转变了这种情况，这些视频博主只能展示其中一种剧情发展。玩家看了后想“我认为他应该选另外一个，我想自己打一遍看看会发生什么。”因此突然间这些视频博主成了我们的朋友，帮我们宣传了游戏。

但总的来说，我最喜欢听两名玩家讨论这款游戏。“你见过这个吗？你见过那个吗？这个角色死了。”“什么？不！”他们会对比自己的体验，发现是如此不同。这是令我更为欣喜的地方。有些玩家可能觉得剧情是线性的，那是因为他们的游戏方式导致的剧情本就应该是那样的，但事实上剧情发展十分多样化。

Gamesbeat：这场讨论的有趣之处在于我们将讨论未来可能的变化。你提到了YouTube。如今一些游戏直播平台，如Mixer或Twitch，他们希望游戏开发者多多考虑直播观众，以及他们是否有权影响游戏的进行方式。例如，他们可以给那些被困住的玩家空投一些增强道具。你可以让观众们参与到游戏的剧情里。这些有可能实现，并且会影响游戏制作的方式。

Fares：是的，可能，但我对这些不太感兴趣。我确实认为，有时候开发者们——他们太过关注玩家想要什么了。我觉得这种关系就像，在一段恋爱关系中你总问另一半 “我能为你做什么？”你会对此感到疲惫的。你既要付出也要懂得灵活索取。我爱我的玩家们，但他们也应该尊重我信任我，相信我将为游戏带来的理念。

从剧情创作的角度来看，拥有一个清晰愿景并坚定地实现它很重要。我相信我的决定，我不知道David的情况，但就我的两部游戏而言，如果我当初根据社区的看法或人们自以为的喜好设计，这两款游戏不可能成功。因此我更相信我自己。

Cage：我想简单说明两点。首先，我对“crowd play”（集体游戏，允许使用不同设备的玩家共同对游戏中的选择进行投票）很好奇。《底特律：变人》有一些与之类似的地方，我们经常看到一些YouTube博主在直播时询问玩家他们希望角色怎么选择。是的，我做的是单人游戏，但是这种玩家社区可以影响剧情发展的概念非常吸引人。

当我去中国时，我惊讶地发现许多人在当地的视频网站上看游戏直播。他们在直播中互动。在中国你可以看到飞满弹幕的直播。我看不懂他们在说什么，但愿是些好话。[笑] 但很多人都在看游戏视频并评论。

Gamesbeat：你是说大部分玩家会一起打《底特律：变人》？

Cage：是的，这款游戏拥有非常强大的社交属性。许多人和他们的男女朋友一起玩，就像在一起看电视剧或者电影，除了一点，他们可以改变内容。现在这已经成了一个笑话。每当有人告诉我他们玩了这款游戏，我会问他们是不是和妻子或丈夫一起玩的，“你怎么知道？” 他们会说。我之所以知道，因为很多人都是这样。这是玩这类游戏的一种很流行的方式。我非常喜欢这一点。

作为一名创意人士，思考工作的方式有很多。要么根据营销简报——它会告诉你应该做这个，做那个——因为这是去年成功的经验。按照这样做就能成功。这是一种游戏制作方式，我也尊重这种方式。但我认为如果你想成为这个行业的创新者，你必须思考人们四年以后会喜欢的东西，而不是他们去年喜欢的东西。

这是一种不同的方式。这有风险。你得前往人们不想让你去的地方。也许他们现在不看好你所做的东西。这没问题。我们的工作就是要承担风险。

Fares：我的观点和他差不多。我喜欢制作玩家觉得他们不会喜欢的游戏，或者不知道他们喜欢的游戏。这是一种惊喜感。“我从没想到我会喜欢上这个游戏。”

就你之前提到的YouTube社区，《逃出生天》是一款线性游戏。它有一些选择，但这些选择导致的是不同的玩法体验，不会影响剧情。它们更多的是对玩法产生影响，因为我对玩法更感兴趣。但当游戏发行时，虽然它只是个小小的独立游戏，却排在Twitch的第一名。我想的是“完了！这下所有人都知道游戏结局了。”不过后来我得知游戏卖得非常好。人们看了直播后想要体验这个游戏。

但这是因为人们想要和还没看过直播的人一起体验游戏。因为这是一款双人合作游戏，你可以和朋友一起玩。最有意思的部分是结尾发生了一些意想不到的事，我喜欢这样刺激玩家的神经。在《兄弟》、《逃出生天》和接下来的游戏中……

Gamesbeat：你就像一个提线木偶师，玩弄玩家。

Fares：是的，我喜欢让玩家们震惊。我记得我和一名设计师说过，我们要在下一款游戏中做这个场景。“人们看到这个肯定会吓傻的，我想让他们彻底发疯。”就像我们想随游戏附赠一些尿布(笑)。这就是我每天的目标。去他妈的，去他妈的，疯狂起来。下款游戏同样疯狂。

Cage：有时候我觉得Josef有点疯狂过头了。[笑]

Fares：我就喜欢这样。我感觉我们在这方面聊得越多，我们的方法差别越大，我们的感受不一样。我对交互性更感兴趣。我们的方法不一样。

GamesBeat： 其中一个不同之处是你希望把玩法应用到玩家所做所有事情中。

Fares：是的，是的。

GamesBeat：每个选择发生时，你会问David，“为什么这个选择不能让玩家做点什么呢？”

Fares：我昨天刚和David说，我玩过他的所有游戏，我真的很喜欢它们，但有时候我想，“这个地方可以提升。”我认为我不会改变什么——

Gamesbeat：你有一个安抚婴儿的例子。

Cage：有意思的是，这是我们下了很大功夫的一个方面，即如何增强游戏日常场景的可玩性？给你一把枪去杀人是玩法的一种。但这不是唯一玩法。互动机制有很多种。

在《暴雨》中，我们设计了一个让玩家安抚婴儿的机制。我们总是尝试去做这个方面。如何增强可玩性？我们在创作游戏时有一个叫做“拟真感”的概念，如何让玩家通过手柄，模拟角色在屏幕中所进行的动作。我们开发了这种方式，让你可以真正展开——真正控制角色的手臂。甚至可以控制他们捡起一只玻璃杯。

增加日常场景的可玩性是很有意思的，因为突然间游戏不再局限于僵尸和战争的故事。你不需要成为一名战士或者杀人。你可以做任何事，你可以悲伤也可以搞笑，做任何现实生活中可能做的事。

今天有个人问我，为什么游戏里非得有那些惊心动魄的场景，不能像《广告狂人》这种电视剧一样，多一些戏剧化的情境。为什么电子游戏总是专注于武器和暴力？我们就不能做点别的内容吗？这个人说的对。是的，让我们制造与暴力、杀人无关的游戏。事实上这种游戏是存在的，但是让我们创造更多吧。这是一种推动行业发展的有趣方式。

Gamesbeat：也许你想要比如把玻璃杯扔进向壁炉里，这种更互动性的东西，给玩家多一些控制权。

Fares：我确实同意你现在所说的。这是个非常好的观点。这也是我现在的动力。未来我想做一款关于爱的游戏，但它的可玩性和互动性非常高。想象下一个性爱场景，一个具有高度可玩性的场景。以一种美丽而感性的方式，你懂我的意思。未来的事谁说得准呢？与某样事物产生强烈的情感联系，这是令人兴奋的一方面。

我同意David昨天说的。Nathan Drake（《神秘海域》主角）杀了那么多人，为什么仍然魅力不减？他杀了几千个人，这很奇怪。我觉得游戏可以——我不喜欢用“好玩”这个词。但切会儿黄瓜然后去做别的，可能会很好玩。游戏不一定是射击和打打杀杀。游戏可以有一些特别的东西，我觉得这是非常令人激动的。特别是在剧情游戏中。在一款多人竞技游戏里，你肯定不想切黄瓜。

Gamesbeat：《我的世界》是一款非常流行的游戏，但是游戏剧情由玩家自己创造。你们喜欢这类游戏吗？

Fares：再次说明，我不会讨厌任何游戏。我认为所有游戏都应该存在。我讨厌的是行业、玩家、测评人和记者去定义某些游戏应该是好的，另一些游戏是差的。《我的世界》是个好游戏。玩家可以自己创作内容是一件很美好的事。显然很多人喜欢做这种事。我个人不玩这类游戏，但这只是我自己的喜好。

Cage：Josef说的对。不同的游戏迎合不同玩家的口味和期待。有时候你想要一个优质的剧情，有时候你不想要。我不认为所有游戏都应该有剧情。有时候剧情对游戏无关紧要。即便有些游戏剧情不协调，比如一名连环杀手却喜欢讲笑话，但谁在乎呢？这不是重点。但是有一些游戏你必须慎重地考虑剧情。“在我的游戏里，剧情是重点。”因此我们必须认真审视剧情中不协调的地方。

再次强调，我认为这是一个可以自由讨论的话题。存在适合不同人口味、叙事方式不同的游戏是件好事。

Gamesbeat：谈到游戏技术，David，你说你们非常重视游戏的视觉效果和人脸真实感。今后在增强真实感肯定对你们来说更加容易了。但你们想继续追求真实感吗？你们希望达到什么样的程度？

Cage：超写实本身不是目标，只是一种服务剧情的手段。它不是游戏的最终目标，不是所有游戏都应该写实。只不过它很符合《暴雨》和我想叙述的写实类剧情。

我不觉得我们在技术这块越来越得心应手。我反倒觉得越来越难了。为了打造真实感，如今你必须开发光线追踪、人体肌肉系统之类的技术。过去你只能用80个多边形创造人物。这是一个挑战，但这是你可以克服的。而如今技术变得如此复杂。你越逼近真实，你就越难处理额外的细节来进一步增强真实感。难度是越来越大了。

老实说，我们正在学习的一切都非常有趣，光线、动画和演员指导。我希望有一天我们能把我们学到的这些真实感呈现知识运用到非写实的作品中。

Fares：以我们现在的经济条件，我们还没法追求写实。但我没法花时间做相似的事。我认为你们的人脸效果很惊艳。如果你去看顽皮狗之类的工作室的游戏，他们在这方面做得真的非常出色。但正如你所说的，越是逼近真实，你要付出的努力就越多，你所要跨越的障碍就越高。会更加困难。

Cage：并且传达情感不一定要通过写实。如果你能为一个方块创造合适的动画，让它说些俏皮话，它同样可以极具表达性。看看皮克斯，他们的动画从来都非写实，但却有着极其动人真实的剧情。写实不是游戏的目标，不是必须的。

Gamesbeat：放眼其它剧情游戏，哪些令你们欣赏？这是一个问题，另一个问题是，如果你们关注了去年的各大游戏奖，《战神》和《荒野大镖客》是最受瞩目的两个竞争者。即便这两款游戏都非常优秀，《战神》几乎拿下了所有奖项。你们觉得原因是什么？

Fares：正如我之前提到的，我玩了所有这些游戏。就我个人而言，我最喜欢《蜘蛛侠》。这并不意味着我不喜欢《战神》。我认为《战神》是一款好游戏。但《蜘蛛侠》更能触动我。

《战神》之所以赢了《荒野大镖客》，我相信是因为《战神》团队做了些很酷的尝试。Cory和他的团队做了一些很棒的事。我把这一切归功于Cory和他的团队，当然还有索尼，他们以一种全新方式呈现一个著名IP。这对于一款3A游戏来说是一种狂妄的、有风险的尝试。我认为他们所冒的风险值得这些奖杯。

《荒野大镖客2》是一款从许多方面来看都很伟大的游戏。要说缺点的话我觉得有点太长了，在任务设计方面有点重复，就是来回杀人。我认为这是他们输给《战神》的地方。

再次强调，我非常崇拜这款游戏，只是我对重复机制很敏感。我认为《战神》和《荒野大镖客》都有点太长。我喜欢更短的体验。这也是为什么我更青睐《蜘蛛侠》。特别是《荒野大镖客》，我玩了一会儿就想放弃了。太长了！谁有时间打完它？我甚至不需要照顾孩子。我想知道你玩过这个游戏吗？这年头谁能打完它？

这也是另一件值得我们思考的事。许多人对我说，“哦天哪，50%的玩家完成了《逃出生天》！”你觉得我会高兴？我疯了吗？这就好比你拍了一部电影，一半的观众中途离场！玩家没有完成我们的游戏是个很严重的问题——如果有人和我谈重复可玩性，我会拍他脑袋！我们应该首先专注于做好体验。气死我了。

Cage：这是一个有意思的话题。很少人知道只有25%-30%的玩家会打完游戏。正如Josef说的，这就好比在电影院观众中途离场，这是件糟糕的事。78%的玩家完成了《暴雨》，《底特律：变人》和这个差不多。人们想知道接下来发生了什么。剧情就可以帮你达到这个目标。

在《底特律：变人》中，我们试图让人们通过重复打游戏观看所有剧情分支，这在剧情游戏中是很少见的，我们会展示剧情分支图和不同的结局。

Gamesbeat: 是的，我想我从没玩过一款展示所有剧情分支的游戏。

Cage：这是一个艰难的决定。这背后有个小插曲。我们当时正在制作《暴雨》，在发行前进行了一些游戏性测试。我们每个月邀请数十名玩家试玩，为我们提供反馈。游戏中有一个警察追捕嫌犯的大场面。追捕过程从大街上开始，经过一家隐蔽的超市和一间冷藏室，分为三个场景，场面十分劲爆，充满了特效，非常惊心动魄。

有位玩家在第一部分跟丢了，操作没跟上，于是他停在了大街上。但由于游戏不会结束，剧情仍在继续。他只能原路返回。剧情继续发展，后来我们问他：“你觉得怎么样？你打得如何？” 他说，“哦，挺不错的。”“你没感觉自己错过了什么？”“没，我应该跟着那家伙，但无论如何他都会逃掉，所以我打的不错。”我们意识到，我们花了这么多精力设计这场追捕和剧情分支，但玩家却认为剧情是线性的。

开发《底特律：变人》时，我们没有忘记这次经历。于是我们思考如何才能确保人们了解幕后的一切。其实我很喜欢隐藏剧情，在《超凡双星》中，甚至连表面都是非显性的，选择是非显性的。一切都是自然发展的。这种很美好。但你知道吗？没有人知道存在多少选择。但有时候你会想这样设计对吗？也许把一切都隐藏起来并不是个好主意。

《底特律：变人》对我来说是一种妥协。我们向玩家展示他们错过的内容，使玩家了解它们的存在。这是游戏成功的主要原因。我们从玩家那里得到了无数反馈。

Fares：但这让我感觉有压力。当我看到它时，我心想：“天！我得重玩一遍了。该死，我错过了这个！”我会感觉有压力，但我还是会重玩一遍看看区别。站在开发者的角度，我会想 “天，我要做好多内容。”你昨天告诉我游戏剧本有4000多页。真是太疯狂了。

Gamesbeat：我想到那些可怜的艺术家，他们写的剧情没人看得到。

Cage：我们试图确保至少30%的玩家看过任何一条分支，根据我们的数据大致如此。此外，并不存在艺术家写了剧情没人看这种情况。如果这样他估计会相当郁闷。但是，并不是这样的，每个人都参与了所有剧情的创作。

就创作灵感而言，随着年龄的增长，我愈发容易受到生活、情感和现实经历的触动，我试图把它们改编成游戏。当你还年轻时，你倾向于重新创造你喜爱的东西——游戏或者电影。和其他人一样，我也是这样开始创作的。《幻象杀手》是受到许多事物启发诞生的，《暴雨》也是。《超凡双生》可能借鉴的少一些，《底特律：变人》可能更少一点。我想随着年龄增长，你试图提升你的创作，试图去表达自己的声音，而不是借鉴。

Gamesbeat：人们对游戏的发展方向存在一种忧虑，也就是由F2P游戏和移动游戏引领的一种风潮，游戏似乎在无限扩展内容，从而让玩家不断回归和消费。制作一款运营长达四五年的游戏，比起一款在100个小时以内完成的游戏要好得多。这类游戏的盈利能力是如此之强，有时发行商觉得“我们想要更多这样的游戏”。你们觉得这是一件坏事吗？

Cage：Josef估计对此不满意。

Fares：我恨。不，我不是恨。我只是——但愿吧——我相信有许多热爱游戏的玩家，愿意花钱购买游戏的玩家，他们会让开发商们明白这类游戏是有市场需求的。我所说的是《底特律：变人》、《战神》、《荒野大镖客》、《蜘蛛侠》、《刺客信条》这类游戏。我想这些玩家是一个很庞大的群体，我确信。

市场上确实有些令人担忧的趋势，但我相信F2P市场很快就会衰弱。《Apex英雄》曾经炒的火热，但热度很快就下去了。制作F2P游戏很困难，你必须争夺玩家们的时间。我不知道，我只是觉得真正优质的单人体验，真正伟大的游戏，永远不会消失。有足够多的玩家在那里支撑它们。

很多人说当你年纪大了，可能就不玩游戏了，但我认为这是不可能的。如果让我住在一间没有游戏主机或者PC的房子里，我会想“这是在折磨我吗？”就好像缺失了某样东西。看历史类题材的电影时我会想，“没有电子游戏他们是怎么活下去的？”我希望并且相信电子游戏会成为一种风潮。我们永远不会失去《最后的生还者》这种游戏。我想我们会一直渴望这类游戏。

我想有一点可以证明。观察手游行业，它已经是一个超级庞大的市场，赚了很多钱，但它到现在仍然没有取代主机游戏市场。我觉得它们会成为两个分支。

Cage：我很高兴看到各种游戏。我最喜欢的就是游戏的多样性。不同风格的游戏适合不同的人、一天不同的时刻，甚至人生不同的阶段。我也玩F2P游戏，我挺喜欢的。

Fares：什么？你也玩《糖果传奇》之类的游戏？

Cage：不，我没玩过《糖果传奇》。我玩《炉石传说》，这是其中一个。

Fares：好吧，听说那游戏挺不错的。我曾经参加这个叫King的公司的一个演讲。他们在谈论创新。而我心想“你们认真的吗？”[听众大笑] 我不反对创新商业模式。你必须创新才能赚钱。但别告诉我你们是创新公司——这帮人试图把名称带有“传奇”(saga)的游戏告上法庭。拜托，认真的吗？你们的游戏简直千篇一律。

实话实说吧，你是来赚钱的，这没有问题。但别和我谈创新。你们想要创新赚钱的方式没问题。但那不是创新——他们还把自己比作皮克斯。哦，拜托，我不想骂脏话。

Cage：太迟啦Josef。（你已经暴露了）

Fares：是啊。

Cage：额，我刚才讲到哪了？如果你观察去年的排行榜，榜单上大多是单人游戏，无论是《荒野大镖客》、《战神》还是《蜘蛛侠》。不同游戏满足了玩家们不同的口味，我很高兴它们都存在。

Gamesbeat：我想我们得留点时间给观众们了。在场的各位有什么问题想问吗？

观众提问：如果我想做一款有选择的剧情游戏，我该如何通过隐藏选项、二重选项或者三重选项给玩家带来惊喜呢？怎么为他们提供一些和二元决策/显而易见的选择不一样的东西。

Cage：老实说，我不知道。但这是一个很好的问题。我认为并不存在一个带给玩家惊喜的秘诀。Josef在他的游戏里设计了转折，我在《暴雨》里也设计了转折。转折是一个很强大也很难制作的部分，如果你想保持游戏的一致性。但转折只是制造惊喜的一种方式。

在我看来，设计选择的秘诀是确保不只有一个好选择和一个坏选择。选择不是非黑即白的，黑白之间的地带才有趣。永远不要给出明显的答案。让玩家们思考如果事情发生在他们身上，他们会如何抉择。

我经常提到一名《暴雨》玩家，他曾经搁置了游戏好几天，因为无法下定决心怎么做。他得思考。我喜欢这样的选择。问人们有趣的问题，但这也只是制造惊喜的方式之一。

观众提问：你们在设计游戏时会利用之前游戏的数据吗？比如关于玩家做某些选择的方式的数据。未来二位有希望合作吗？

Fares：当然！为什么不呢？游戏有多个主管，像电影有多个导演一样，会是一件非常棒的事。这会很有意思。我们可以把想法合在一起。

Cage：我很欣赏Josef目前的工作。当然，他还是一名非常有才华的导演。要看未来有没有好的项目和合作机会。就你提出的第一个问题，关于数据，《暴雨》和《超凡双星》的数据来源于Playstation的成就奖杯系统(trophy system)。在《底特律：变人》里我们有了一个更先进的数据系统，我们把它称为遥测（telemetry），我们可以从世界各地的玩家所做的选择中获得准确数据。我们能够了解谁做了这个决定，谁在某个地方失败，等等。我们什么都知道。

我倾向于不使用数据，因为正如我之前提到的，如果你想变得有创意，你不能对着一张数据表格说“我要写一些和这个类似的东西，因为它被证明是有效的。”你创造新的想法，发现新的挑战，而不是试图复制过去的作品。每一款游戏都应该是不同的。它们有各自需要你去挖掘的真相。我不想使用数据创作。我希望从创意出发。

Fares：我也是这么认为的。

观众提问：我们发现近年来电子游戏很喜欢围绕“父母身份”(parenthood)这个主题。比如《战神》和《最后的生还者》。一代游戏制作者已经为人父母。你们认为随着游戏开发者年龄的增长，接下来的主题会是什么？

Fares：我还没孩子，所以……

Gamesbeat：也许围绕 “爷爷奶奶们”？

Fares：也许是爱情故事吧。[笑] 预测未来的事物是很困难的。我的心愿是继续以独特的方式为玩家们带来独特的剧情和作品。我坚信如果你听从内心的声音，即便它听起来很老套，我们依旧能创造一些很酷的东西，一些很棒的游戏。有待我们挖掘的东西太多了。我希望开发商们敢于冒风险、尝试疯狂的想法。即便有时候我们会失败，这不是个问题。我希望未来出现越来越多创意独特的游戏。

Cage：对我来说最重要的是“感同身受”。创造能让人感同身受的角色。对我来说这是一个新颖的概念。过去我们创造了太多超级英雄，那些拥有强健体魄、勇敢无畏的、毫无弱点的主角。如今我们的游戏主角有各自的需求和弱点，因此更能令我们感同身受。

制作《暴雨》时，我的想法是创造一些能令人们产生同感的东西。我想“我自己是一名父亲，我有一名父亲。我了解这种关系。”这也是为什么我能真正沉浸到这个游戏里。这也是《战神》成功的部分原因，因为玩家对角色经历更能感同身受。

观众提问：你们怎么看待电子游戏和电影合并这种趋势？你们认为未来我们能够看到二者的融合吗？这是件好事吗？

Fares：我并不完全同意。我认为他们是两种不同的媒体。书籍、音乐和戏剧，每一种媒体都有各自讲述故事的方式。我坚信——当然，作为一名制作电影出身的人，我拥有很多本有时间去探索和尝试的工具。我们在电影诞生至今的一百多年间学到了很多。而就游戏而言，我们可以发现和挖掘的东西还有很多，并且我相信我们可以通过电影、书籍和其他叙述故事的方式获得很多灵感，他们是各自独立的媒体。我并不认为它们中的任何一种会取代彼此。

但我确实相信，从情感层面来看——如果你有一个非常强烈、非常具有感染力的故事，如果你能让人们参与其中，它的感染力会更大。这就是游戏的交互性所带来的好处，这也是电影所无法做到的。但我不认为游戏会取代电影。它们永远会是两个独立的媒体。

Cage：我同意。当照相技术诞生时，它其实是在复制绘画技术。而电影技术又是对照相技术的复制。所有的媒体都从彼此身上学习。我认为交互性从本质上看是与众不同的。它的本质在于与人们共同创造。它完全改变了创作语言。你可以从电影或者诗歌或者任何艺术中借用语言，但你必须让它变得独特，因为你要创造这种和人们共同创造的交互性语言。对我来说这是交互性的核心。

Gamesbeat：我有点担忧的是，格斗游戏看起来越来越像纪录片（真实）了，并且游戏主题似乎在模糊士兵和市民之间的界限，比如在最新的《使命召唤》。游戏内容令人非常不安。电子游戏应该是好玩的，以好玩为目的……

Fares：我并不完全同意这一点。电子游戏不一定只是好玩。它还在于交互性。它可以是好玩的，但是——电子游戏里有很多伟大的场景，它们与好玩无关，而在于场景本身，它带来的感觉。

Cage：我同意Josef的观点。游戏可以超越好玩。总是有游戏因为好玩而存在，但是我们开始挖掘这个媒体的其它潜能。我们可以通过它表达我们对世界的观点。这也是一种危险的行为，就像你所说的——我们可以谈论各种话题，就可能会引发不愉快。我们可能以错误的方式表达。但我想说的是我们可以谈论各种与我们生活的世界有关的，能够令人们感同身受的话题。我喜欢游戏的这种进化方向。

观众提问：对那些刚入行，想要制作更多情感参与度高的游戏开发者，你们会给他们提供哪些意见？

Fares：对我来说，如果我坚信某样事物，我不会停止追求它。我准备好了尝试所有方式。我是一个友好的人——我对任何人都不会刻薄——但我永远不会停止追求我坚信的事物。我有极高的自信。我控制不了自己。我知道你可能感觉没有安全感。但我就没有这种感觉。如果我坚信某事我就会矢志不渝地追求它，什么也无法阻挡我。

如果我参加一场会议，在我还没发言之前我就知道人们会做出什么反应。我不知道如何解释这一点。这是一种感觉。这也是为何我走到了如今这个位置。如果我决定去做某事，它就会发生。我不遵循公式——做这个你就会成功。也许原因之一是，我不像David，我没有孩子，因此我可以冒任何风险。

制作《逃出生天》时，我的助理告诉我，“如果你继续做这种游戏，你会失去你的房子，失去一切。”哦，管他呢，我不在乎。我宁愿沦为乞丐也不愿意做我不喜欢的东西。我需要激情。如果你给我1亿美金，我会说我没什么感觉。我是一个激情驱动型的人。我需要激情。

我能给出的建议是，对自己保持真诚是理解内心声音、你想做什么、你想创造什么的关键。这是一种感觉，如果你能理解这些——我所说的话。听从感觉。

Cage：如果你只听别人的，你永远做不成什么。同时如果你从不听取他人建议，有时你会做些傻事。重点在于寻找平衡点。但听从内心是最重要的，因为几乎没有人会为你做这件事。坚信你想做的、你想成为的人并为之奋斗。

Fares：我是个会听别人建议的人，虽然看起来不像，但我真的会。我超级灵活的，如果你去问我的团队，我的态度是，尝试一切。让我们把每一块石头翻过来看看。

观众提问：相比于某部电影的导演，大众对游戏制作者的名字似乎没那么熟悉。为什么会出现这种现象？

Fares：我倾向于认为游戏是一种合作的产物。尽管和电影一样，你需要一两个声音推动概念。这很重要。但当然了，它是合作的产物，无论是大公司还是小团队，你必须有一个有领导力的声音。游戏界越来越明白这一点

我们通常把优秀的游戏归功于两三个推动者。《战神》，你的游戏，顽皮狗的游戏，我们的游戏都是如此。让我告诉你吧——许多电影导演都被高估了。指导一部电影事实上比你想象得要简单的多。如果我让一个10岁的孩子指导电影。我告诉你，只有一个好摄影……

Gamesbeat：顺便提一句，你怎么看待奥斯卡？

Fares：去他妈的奥斯卡！不不不，我真正想说的是电影制作人有时候太把自己当回事了。来制作一款游戏吧，看看你们还得意的起来吗。我告诉你们！我做了6年电影，和制作游戏相比，做电影就像在公园散步一样。我并不是说它很容易，但显然容易得多。只要有摄影指导在场，你只要喊一句“开拍！”你就可以去吃饭了。我只是说人们低估了制作游戏的难度。我们需要更多的尊重。我不知道为什么我这么激动了。

Cage：我还能说什么？额，我无法说我赞同你的观点，但是——我的意思是，你知道很多游戏主管。我想每个人大概都知道10大游戏主管是谁？这些人会越来越多，但确实，游戏是合作的产物。制作一款游戏需要动用许多人力。确实我们对游戏团队和工作室的宣传要大过对这些幕后成员的宣传。

这取决于不同游戏，我想如果是一款运动题材游戏，可能游戏主管就不会像剧情游戏主管那么受人关注了。但我相信不久的将来会发生变化。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Joseph Fares and David Cage are game directors who love storytelling. They have created memorable games that players rave about. But they share little in common in how they approach creating their games.

We discovered this in a fireside chat at the Gamelab event last week in Barcelona. I moderated a talk between Fares, founder of Hazelight in Sweden and famous for saying “fuck the Oscars” on The Game Awards, and Cage, cofounder of Quantic Dream and builder of games like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human.

Fares wants to get away from the purely passive watching of film and take advantage of the unique interactivity of video games. So he makes a point of focusing on gameplay patterns and the concept for a game first, rather than on storytelling. By contrast, Cage said he always starts with emotion first, and what he wants to say in a game. He writes a script and then thinks about the gameplay later.

In his most recent game, Detroit, Cage included many options for different endings. But Fares always had in mind just two different endings and a mostly linear narrative for A Way Out. We talked about these differences and wondered what was the best way to blend these techniques in a game with a good story.

These different approaches reflect the core tension in games between story and interactivity. A game could also be on rails, or give players all of the choices they can make in an open world.

“What is fascinating to me about games is that we create something together [with the players],” Cage said.

Here’s an edited transcript of our panel.

GamesBeat: Do you want to describe how you start making a game, Josef?

Josef Fares: It’s interesting. We have very different approaches to some things, but others are quite similar. It’s just the way we work. For me, I approach — every game I think about is about the game mechanic first, and the game concept itself. Then, from that — there is a story arc, but from that I go and find the game. I’m super curious about the interactivity in a game, how to create a game mechanic that almost dances with the story. It’s part of the story. That’s something that both in Brothers, A Way Out, and our next game, we’re trying to push even further. That’s the way I approach a game from the get-go.

David Cage: My approach is to start — there’s no rule. Sometimes it starts with an emotion. Sometimes it starts with an idea or a moment. On Heavy Rain, the game started with something that happened to me when I lost my son, my six-year-old boy, in a mall. I was so scared. I was curious to see if I could create that impression, that fear, in a game, an interactive experience.

Detroit started based on a book called The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, which is about this idea that one day there could be machines that are more intelligent than we are. I had this image, for whatever reason, that we would have an android assistant who’d go shopping with us and carry our bags. But at one point we’d go in a restaurant and these androids would wait outside. I had this image of a row of machines looking exactly like people who wouldn’t be allowed to go in the restaurant. I thought, “What if I was in the shoes of one of these androids? What if I thought this was unfair?”

That was the starting point of the story. I started pulling strings and trying to see what stories came with that. But in a nutshell, the most important thing for me is what people feel during the experience. It’s all about emotion. Of course it’s very important what you do, what buttons you press. All of this is key. It’s a way to be immersed in the world. It’s a key component. But at the same time, my experience is that people remember not so much what they did. They remember much more how they felt. If you think of the best games that you’ve played, probably you more remember those strong emotional moments and the turning points in the story than the buttons you pressed. That’s why I focus on that beyond anything.

GamesBeat: Do we have a basic tension here between story and interactivity?

Fares: I would say yes, but in a good way. I would argue — I agree with what David is saying, but I think it might be because my background is as a filmmaker. I tend to try to get away from that as much as possible. I do agree with David that emotions are very important, but I also believe that there’s something unique to the storytelling in video games. The medium itself, the interactivity itself, connected to the game mechanics — for me it’s not just pushing a button.

Let’s say I make a game about love, or about an alcoholic parent. If I can make it feel that you’re in control of that, make you feel responsible — when you’re much less passive in a game, much more interactive, it’s a more emotional, powerful impact. That’s unique to games.

GamesBeat: There’s a good scene in Red Dead Redemption 2 where you play a drunk person wandering a saloon, trying to find somebody. Every person you see is an illusion and you’re trying to find someone real among them. That’s a good scene to you?

Fares: That’s a good scene to me. The game was a bit too long, but that’s another discussion. I think games are too long in general. But I don’t think we have the time.

Cage: To me what’s unique is the fact that video games are the only medium in which you create something with your audience. If you’re a filmmaker you create something on their own and you show it to people. They can emotionally react to it, but they can’t change the content. What’s fascinating with games is that we create something together. In Detroit I tell a story with millions of people I’ve never met. This is the most fascinating thing when you think about it. It’s unique to interactivity.

I agree with what Josef said about the importance of controls. The sense of mimicry, the fact that you feel in the shoes of the characters. Sometimes playing with the erosion of controls, what we were talking about with having to bend your arms — if you do it mechanically it’s a sense of mimicry. It makes you feel like you’re the character. It awakens something in you. Maybe if you did that one day in your life, it’ll remind you emotionally of this moment, because you’re doing it physically.

Being drunk is a good example. We call that erosion of control, the fact that you have a hard time controlling your character. There are many tricks you can play like this that will reinforce involvement and immersion in the story, but also emotional involvement in the experience.

GamesBeat: Solving the tension results in some very different kinds of games, this tension between story and interactivity. Are there certain kinds of games you would put on one end of this spectrum or the other? Is it a difference between a game on rails versus an open world?

Fares: The thing is, both games should exist. But if you ask me, I’m more the type of guy that likes more linear experiences. You have open world games today — this year I played Assassin’s Creed, Red Dead, Days Gone, and Spider-Man. I liked the Spider-Man game the most, actually, because it wasn’t too long. But I finished all of them. The problem with open world games that they tend to end up in a situation where you have to copy and paste design, which makes me lose the story. For that I do enjoy the linear type of games more — The Last of Us or Journey. That gives me an experience I can follow from beginning to end.

With that said, that doesn’t mean that games like Detroit, which I also played and finished, I don’t find enjoyable. I did enjoy it. However, what I fear this industry is going toward — “linear” and “rails” seem to be said in a negative tone, which I don’t like. I think it’s stupid to say that. Both games should exist. Not everyone — sure, I do agree that choices are part of video gaming. But choice is something we’re seeing in movies, like they’re testing on Netflix. That’s not unique to gaming. Both should exist — being able to choose, but also being able to follow a story.

As David said, it’s about being emotionally attached and emotionally touched by a game. If we look at a great movie, you’ll be emotionally touched. A choice wouldn’t necessarily make that emotion stronger. It could make it stronger, but it could also make it weaker. That’s why I think both games should exist. But I do hear the negativity about “on rails,” which I don’t like. It’s the opposite of what I’d say. Games are supposed to have so many choices now, to be so open, that it becomes confusing sometimes.

I’d love to make an open world in the future, but let me tell you, it’ll be very different. I’d rather do an open world that’s maybe a 10-hour experience, and the world is full of content that’s super unique and different, rather than having to repeat myself. You can lose the story in an open world. That’s why I enjoyed Spider-Man, which is more of a shorter, focused experience.

Cage: There are many different ways of telling an interactive story, I think. I don’t think there’s a right one and a wrong one. There are different games telling different types of stories in different ways. What you’ll get naturally from an open world, for example, from what you’ll get from a game on rails, from a game like Detroit that’s really an interactive drama where your choices matter. There are different games for different audiences, and I think that’s absolutely fine.

Even technically, as a matter of structure, there are different ways of putting this together. Many action games these days make the choice of having an action scene, a cutscene, and an action scene. Splitting the story and the action into two parts, which is one way of doing it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We took a different direction in Detroit where we chose to put you in the shoes of the characters, let you make the decisions, and let you face the consequences of your decisions.

For that’s something important. I think that the choice makes the experience emotionally stronger when the choice is relevant, when it’s emotional, when you can relate to the choice of what’s going on. Just a choice of whether you want to open the left door or the right door, no one cares. But if it’s something emotionally involving, it becomes important. Then I think it takes on another dimension than, for example, a story where the characters make decisions and you can agree or disagree, but you can’t change what’s going on.

Here, you tell the story. The story is told through your choices. You feel emotionally responsible for the characters. That’s what I like about it.

GamesBeat: For Detroit, how many endings could you have had? In your last game, you could have two endings.

Fares: The two endings — that was the whole game concept. I’d like to have one ending, really.

Cage: We could never exactly count them, how many endings there were to Detroit. [laughs] It wasn’t about the endings. It was about having different paths leading to them. The journey itself is different. Different characters can be present or be dead or make different moral choices or be in different situations at the end.

You take a character like Marcus, who starts this revolution, for example. He has different paths. He can become a violent character who leads a violent revolution, or a pacifist character. There are many other choices in the game.

GamesBeat: Would it bother you or your team if players only choice maybe one or two of the branches and never played all of the rest?

Cage: No, that’s absolutely fine. That’s part of the concept. We tried to have choices that are balanced. If you have a choice where you have 0 percent or 10 percent of the people making it, it’s not really an interesting choice. It means the dilemma wasn’t really there. We love choices when it’s really 50-50, depending on your moral values and who you are. You can project yourself into the choice and think about what you’d do if it was happening to you. That’s the kind of choice we like. We have a balance that’s usually about 50-50, 40-60, sometimes 30-70 max. But what we realized is the very positive impact it had on the community and on the sales of the game.

Let me give you an example. In the past, YouTubers for example were kind of a problem for us. People were showing the game and players would watch the videos and think, “Okay, I get the story. I don’t need to play the game. I know what it’s about.” With Detroit we saw the opposite happening. They were showing one playthrough, but they couldn’t show everything happening, all the branches. Players watching it thought, “I wish he’d done this. I’ll play the game to see what would happen with my own choices.” Suddenly they became our allies and helped us promote the game.

But in general what I love the most is hearing two people talk about the experience. “Did you see this? Did you see that? This character died there.” “What? No!” They compare their playthroughs and realize how different they are. That’s what I prefer. Some players may think that their story was linear, because the story they had was the story they were supposed to have. It’s about explaining, no, your story is what it is because you played it that way, but it could have been very different.

GamesBeat: Part of why this is a fun discussion because of what could change in the future. You brought up YouTube. In some games now, like Mixer [or Twitch] games, they encourage the developer to take into account the audience for streamers and whether they get a say in how the game is going to proceed. They can drop in a bunch of power-ups for the player at a certain stage in the game when they’re struggling, for example. You get audience participation in the story of your game. Things like this could happen and change the way you make games.

Fares: Yeah, it could, but for me I’m not really a big fan of it. I do think that sometimes developers — too many times they wonder what the players want, the player community. I almost compare it to a relationship. If you’re in a relationship and you’re always asking your partner, “What can I do for you?” you get tired of that. You need a fluid give and take. I love my players, but they should also respect me and trust me, trust the vision I bring to the game.

From a story perspective it’s important to have a clear vision and stick with it and trust it. I know my decisions — I don’t know what experiences David has had, but from my two games so far, if I had based my decisions on what the community would say or what people think they want to play, those two games would have been impossible. So I do trust myself more.

Cage: There are two quick things. First, I’m curious about crowd play. We had something not exactly like that in Detroit, but we could see some YouTubers playing the game and having the people posting in real time what they’d like to see the player do. That was very intriguing. Yes, I’m working on single-player games, but there’s something very intriguing in this concept that the community can drive the story in a certain way.

I was very surprised, traveling to China, when I realized that many people watched the game on the local video sites. They were commenting on it live. You could see the video with the stream filled with text passing by in Chinese. I couldn’t read it, but I hope they were saying nice things. [laughs] But they were all watching the game and commenting on it.

GamesBeat: You mentioned that most people played Detroit socially.

Cage: There’s a very social component to the game. Many people played the game with their boyfriends or girlfriends, the same way they’d watch a TV series or a film together, except they can change the content. It’s become a joke now. Every time someone comes to me and says they played the game and liked it, I’ll ask if they played with their wife or husband, and they say, “How do you know?” I know because everybody did. It’s very popular to play this type of game this way. I really like that.

There are different ways you can consider your job when you’re a creative person. Either you receive a marketing brief telling you all the boxes that you need to tick — do this, do that — because that’s what was successful last year. This is what you need to do to be successful. That’s one way of doing games, and I respect that. But I think that if you want to be a creative person in this industry, you need to think about what people will like four years from now, not what they liked last year.

It’s a different approach. It’s about taking risks. It’s about going where maybe people don’t want you to go right now. Maybe they don’t believe in what you’re doing. That’s fine. Our work is about taking risks.

Fares: I say something similar very often. I’d like to make games that players don’t think they’re going to like, don’t know that they’re going to like, but they like it. That’s the surprising element. “I didn’t expect to like this game!”

To what you said before about the YouTube community, A Way Out is linear. It has some choices, but those choices are based on different gameplay scenarios. They don’t affect the story. They affect more of the gameplay, because I’m more interested in that. But when it came out, a small game like A Way out, still an indie title, it was number one on Twitch. I thought, “Oh shit, we’re fucked. Everybody knows the ending now. That’s it.” But then they told me it sold really well. People saw the game and wanted to play it.

But in A Way Out’s case, it was because people wanted to experience the game with someone who hadn’t seen it on Twitch. That worked out for us. It was a co-op game, so you could play it together with someone. The fun part is that something happens very unexpectedly at the end. I like to mindfuck with the players. There’s a moment in Brothers, A Way Out, and in the next game as well….

GamesBeat: You’re the puppet master, toying with the players.

Fares: Yeah, making them double-take. I remember I told one of my designers that we were doing this scene in the next game. “When people see this they’re gonna shit themselves. I want them to go totally nuts.” Like we want to deliver the game with a couple of diapers. [laughs] That’s my goal, every day. Fuck it up, fuck it up. Let’s do some crazy stuff. The next games are going to be crazy.

Cage: Sometimes I think that Josef goes too far. [laughs]

Fares: That’s what I like about this. I do think the more we talk about this, we have different approaches, I would say, but you don’t feel we do. I feel like I’m way more interested in interactivity. I think we have a different approach on this.

GamesBeat: I think one difference is that you want to put gameplay into almost everything the player does.

Fares: Yes, yes.

GamesBeat: Every choice that happens. You’d ask David, “Why can’t this choice somehow involve the player doing something?”

Fares: I just said that to David yesterday. I’ve played all of his games and I really enjoy them, but sometimes I think, “There could be more to this.” I don’t think I would change anything —

GamesBeat: You had this example of rocking the baby.

Cage: It’s funny, because this something we work on a lot. How do we make daily life playable? That’s what we have in mind. Giving you a gun and shooting at people is one definition of gameplay. I don’t think it’s the only one. You can have different ways of interaction.

In Heavy Rain you had this baby in your arms and you needed to rock it. We always want to play with this kind of thing. How do we make things playable? We have this theory we call the sense of mimicry. How do we make you mimic, with your controller, what your character does on the screen? We developed this approach where you actually unfold — you really control the arm of the character. Even picking up a glass is something you actually do.

Making daily life playable is something interesting, because suddenly you’re not limited to the stories you tell with zombies and wars. You don’t need to be a soldier or kill people. You can play anything. You can play a tragedy or a comedy, anything happening in real life.

I had a discussion today with someone who asked me why we don’t have more dramas, more things like Mad Men, the type of TV show where nothing spectacular happens. Why are games always focused on big physical things, where weapons and violence are involved? Can’t we create a game that wouldn’t be about that? This person was so right. Yes, let’s create games that aren’t about violence, that aren’t about killing people. There are games like that out there, of course, but let’s create more. This is an interesting way to develop in this industry.

GamesBeat: Maybe you would want to be able to, say, throw the glass in the fireplace. A bit more interactivity, a bit more control for the player.

Fares: I do agree with what you’re saying now, though. It’s a very good point. That’s what triggers me now. I’d like at some point to make a love story, but make it really playable and interactive. Imagine making a sex scene, a really nice one, playable. [laughs] In a beautiful, emotional way, you know what I mean? Imagine if you could do that. In the future, who knows? Really getting an emotional connection to something. There’s something very exciting about this.

I do agree with what David talked about yesterday as well. How can Nathan Drake kill so many people and still be this charming guy? He’s murdering a couple of thousand people. It’s weird. It would be interesting to — I believe that gameplay could be — I don’t always like to use the word “fun.” But it could be fun to just chop up a cucumber for a while and then go do something else. Gameplay is definitely not necessarily about shooting and fighting and stuff like that. That’s all something that can be unique to games, and I believe it’s super exciting. Especially in storytelling. If you’re doing a multiplayer game, a competitive game, you don’t want to cut up cucumbers.

Cage: Especially not in a sex scene. [laughs]

Fares: It doesn’t have to be a sex scene. I’m talking about a love story, something emotional.

Cage: A love scene with cucumbers?

Fares: I mean, love is not about sex, you know? Or it is, also, but — you know what I mean.

GamesBeat: I was wondering about Minecraft. It’s a very popular game, but the story is what the player is making. Do you like a game like that or not?

Fares: Again, I don’t dislike any game. I think all games should exist. What I don’t like is that the industry and community and players and reviewers and journalists have decided that one thing should be good and this other thing should be not good. Minecraft is great. It’s fantastic that people can create their own content, create their own worlds. It’s obviously something that people want to do. Personally I don’t play Minecraft. But that’s me.

Cage: Josef’s right. There are different games for different people and different expectations. Sometimes you want a great story and sometimes you don’t. I don’t believe we should have stories in every single game. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Even having some narrative dissonance, where you’re a serial killer and then you make jokes, in some games who cares? It’s not the point. But there are some games where you’re serious about storytelling and you think, “This is what is strong about my title. It’s the story.” Then you need to pay attention to narrative dissonance.

Again, I think it’s an open discussion. It’s great that there are different games for different people with different approaches to storytelling.

GamesBeat: Back to technology, David, you put a huge emphasis on visual quality and realism of human faces. It’s going to get easier for you to make those things much more realistic. But do you want to go there? How far along toward that realism do you want to go?

Cage: Photorealism isn’t a goal by itself. It’s just a type of rendering to corresponds to the stories I had to tell at the time. I’m not saying this is an ultimate goal and all games should be realistic. It just worked well with Heavy Rain, with the type of realistic stories I wanted to tell.

I don’t necessarily think it’s going to get easier with technology. I think it actually becomes harder and harder. Now you need to develop raytracing. You need to develop muscle systems and things like that in order to re-create a human being. In the past, you had maybe 80 polygons and you had to make a human being with them. That was a challenge. But it was something you could handle. Now it’s become so complex. The closer you get to realism, the harder it gets to handle the extra details that make it more and more realistic. It becomes more and more challenging.

Honestly, everything we’re learning is very interesting, about lighting and animation and directing actors. I wish we could one day reinject what we’ve learned about realistic rendering into non-realistic things.

Fares: I’m not really in a place where I can use photorealism right now, economically. It’s better now. I always call us more like triple-I, double-I, something like that. But I don’t think I can afford to spend the time to do something similar. I believe that your faces are amazing. If you look at Naughty Dog and those guys, they’re doing some really impressive things. But as you say, the more realism, the more work, and the more uncanny valley things pop up. It’s much harder.

Cage: And it’s not necessary to achieve emotion. You can have a cube that’s incredibly expressive if it’s animated the right way and it’s telling you something interesting. Look at Pixar. They’re not doing realism, but they make films with stories that are incredibly moving and very convincing. It’s not a goal, not a necessity.

GamesBeat: If you look at some of the storytelling games out there, what are some things you admire? That’s one question. The second one is, if you looked at the competition last year for the award shows, it was between God of War and Red Dead. Even though they were both very well-done, God of War won almost every single time. Do you think there’s a reason for that?

Fares: Like I told you, I play all the games out there. Personally, my game of the year was actually Spider-Man. That doesn’t necessarily say I didn’t like God of War. I think God of War was a great game. But for me, I connected more with Spider-Man in some way.

The reason why God of War won and not Red Dead, I do believe it’s because God of War took some risks that were really cool. Cory and the team did something amazing. I give credit of course to Cory and the team, but also to Sony for taking a very well-known IP and totally going a different way. That’s cocky and that’s risky for a triple-A title, and I think it really deserved to win. I feel like that’s the reason why.

When Rockstar did Red Dead 2, it’s a great game in many ways. A bit too long if you ask me, a bit too repetitive in the mission design. You’d go out and shoot something and go back. I think that’s one of the reasons God of War won.

As far as games I admire, again, I’m very allergic to repetitiveness in game mechanics. I felt that both God of War and Red Dead were a bit too long. I needed a shorter experience. I think that’s why I was a bit more invested into Spider-Man. Especially with Red Dead, that locks me out after a while. It was so long! Who has the time for that? I don’t even have kids. I imagine for you — could you even play the game? Who finishes these games today?

That’s another thing we should talk about. If you look at — people are saying to me, “Oh man, A Way Out, 50 percent of players finished your game!” I should be happy about this? Are you fucking crazy? It’s like making a movie and half the people walk out of the cinema! We have a serious problem with people not even finishing our games, and still people are saying — if somebody talks to me about replayability, I’ll slap them in the head. [laughs] We should focus on having a great experience first. This just fires me up.

Cage: It’s an interesting question. Very few people realize that it’s between 25 and 30 percent of people completing a game that they started. As Josef said, it’s as if in the cinema people leave in the middle of the film, which is a bad thing. On Heavy Rain we had 78 percent of people completing, and similar with Detroit. It’s just the story. People want to know what can happen next. A story can achieve this for you.

What’s interesting with Detroit is we managed to make people replay the story to see all the different branches, which is quite rare in a narrative game. It’s because we showed the branches and all the variations and the story. That’s something important.

GamesBeat: I don’t think I’ve come across another game that showed the flowchart of all the branches.

Cage: It’s been a difficult choice. There’s a small story behind this. We were working on Heavy Rain, and on Heavy Rain we had these playtests before we released the game. We did playtests with dozens of people a month to get feedback. We had this spectacular chase where the cop is chasing a suspect. The chase started in the streets. Then there was a covered market and then there was a cold room. It was a three act chase, very spectacular, a lot of special effects, very breathtaking.

There was this guy testing the chase. He lost in the first section, lost control, and he stopped in the street. But because the game had no game over, the story didn’t stop. He had to go back. The story continued, and then we asked him, “What did you think? How did you do in the scene?” He said, “Oh, I did great.” “You didn’t feel that you lost something?” “No, I was supposed to follow the guy, but he was supposed to escape anyway, and so I played well.” We realized that we had spent so much time developing all of this chase for the guy to just assume the game was linear, when there were actually so many branches.

On Detroit we remembered this story. We thought about what we could do to make sure people would know all the things behind the curtains. I’m usually the kind of guy who likes to hide what’s behind the curtain. On Beyond even the interface was invisible. The choices were invisible. Everything was organic. It was beautiful. But you know what? No one knew all the choices that were there. Then you think maybe that’s not the right decision. Maybe hiding everything from the player is not a good thing.

Detroit, to me, was a better compromise. It was about showing part of what you missed, so you understand it’s there. It played a major role in the success of the game. We got incredible feedback from the community about that.

Fares: It stressed me out a little bit. When I saw that, I thought, “Oh, shit! Now I have to replay it now! Shit, I missed this thing!” I got stressed out. But I’ll replay it to see how different it is. That’s always something that stresses me out. I know, from being a developer — I think, “Oh my God, that’s so much content.” You told me yesterday that there were 4,000 pages. That was insane.

GamesBeat: I think of the poor artists that did all the branches nobody sees.

Cage: We tried to make sure that at least 30 percent of the players saw any given branch, and that’s pretty much the statistics we have. And there’s not one artist working on all the branches that no one will see. [laughs] He would be pretty depressed. But no, everybody worked on everything.

As far as games that inspire me with their storytelling, the older I get, the more I’m inspired by life and emotions and what I experience in the real world. I try to translate that into games. When you’re a young writer you tend to re-create what you liked, the games or the films. Like everyone else, this is what I did when I started. Fahrenheit was inspired by many things, and Heavy Rain as well. Beyond a little bit less, and hopefully Detroit a little bit less. I guess that getting older and trying to do better at what you’re doing is trying to find your own voice, what you have to say that is you, and not borrowing from someone else.

GamesBeat: There is one worrisome direction where games are going, where with free-to-play and mobile games, the whole point is really just to stretch everything out, so that the player comes back every day and gets monetized more. If you have a game that’s going to last four or five years, that’s better than a game that you can finish after 100 hours of gameplay. These kinds of games are generating so much revenue sometimes that the publishers are looking at that and saying, “That’s what we need more of.” Does that seem like a bad thing?

Cage: Something tells me that Josef’s not happy about this.

Fares: I hate it. No, I don’t hate it. It’s just — hopefully — I do believe that there are enough gamers out there who love games, who’ll buy games, and who’ll make sure that the publishers understand that these types of games are needed. I’m talking about games like Detroit, like God of War, like Red Dead, like Spider-Man, like Assassin’s Creed. That’s a huge community, to be sure.

There are some worrying trends, but I do believe that the free-to-play market will drop soon. You have something like Apex that’s super well-marketed, but then it drops down. It’s hard to make free-to-play games. Everybody’s fighting for people’s playing time. I don’t know. I just believe that a really great single-player experience, a really great game, will never disappear. There are enough gamers out there who love them.

For me, I know that they say when you get older you’ll maybe stop playing, but that’s not possible. If I come to an apartment and I see there’s no console or PC, I think, “Don’t you have a toilet in here?” It feels like something is missing. I sometimes look at historical movies and think, “How the fuck did they survive without video games?” I love to play that much. I hope and believe that will prevail. We’ll never be able to not play something like The Last of Us. I think we’ll always want.

I think that will adjust itself. If you look at the mobile industry, it’s super big and it’s made a lot of money, but it still hasn’t taken over the console gaming market. There will be two different branches, I’d say.

Cage: I’m happy with all games. What I love about games is their diversity, the fact that there are different styles of games for different people and different moments in your day and your life. I play some free-to-play games and I really enjoy them.

Fares: [laughs] What, do you mean you play Candy Crush and all that?

Cage: No, I don’t play Candy Crush. I play Hearthstone, for example.

Fares: Okay, I’ve heard that was good. I was just at a speech from this company called King. They were talking about creativity. I’m like, “What? Are you serious?” [Audience cracks up] I don’t have anything against being creative in a business mode. You have to be creative to make money. But don’t come and tell me you’re creative — this guy tried to sue someone whose game had “Saga” in the name. Come on, are you serious? All your games are similar to all your other games.

Just be honest about it. You’re here to make money? That’s fine. That’s not a problem. But don’t talk to me about being creative. You want to be creative in the industry at making money, that’s fine. But not creative — also they compared themselves to Pixar. Oh, yeah, sure. Okay, I’m not gonna talk shit.

Cage: Too late, Josef.

Fares: Yeah, too late.

Cage: So, what was I saying? At the same time, if you look at the charts last year, it’s mainly single-player games, whether it’s Red Dead or God of War or Spider-Man. There’s an appetite from players for different types of experiences. I’m glad they all exist.

GamesBeat: I think we’ve wound up the audience a little. Does anyone have any questions in the audience?

Fares: We have more jokes if you guys want.

Cage: We can work on a show, a two-man show.

Question: If I make a game about decisions, a story-driven game, how should I surprise the player with a hidden option, a second option, or third option? Something they don’t expect when they expect a binary decision or an obvious choice.

Cage: I don’t know, honestly. But it’s a good question. I don’t think there’s a magic recipe for how to surprise the player. Josef worked on a twist in his game. I worked on a twist for Heavy Rain. I think the twist is something that’s powerful and challenging to make, if you want to be consistent. But that’s one way.

For me maybe the secret to offering choices is to make sure there’s not just a good choice and a bad choice. It’s not about being black and white. What’s interesting is the shades of gray between the two. It’s always a question where the answer is not obvious. That will make you ask yourself what you would do if it was happening to you. You have to think about it.

I often mention a gamer who played Heavy Rain, and he left his console on pause for days because he couldn’t make up his mind about what he should do. He had to think about it. That’s the kind of choice I love. But that’s one way to surprise people, to ask them interesting questions.

Question: Did you use data from your previous games, the way the players that made certain choices, in your later games? And do you think in the future we might see a collaboration between the two of you?

Fares: Absolutely! [laughs] Why not? It would be nice to have a couple of directors, like they’ve done in movies. That would be really interesting. We could put it together.

Cage: I have a lot of respect for what Josef is doing. He’s a very talented director, of course. It’s more about the project and the opportunity to do it. As far as your first question, about statistics, we got some statistics based on the trophy system for the PlayStation with Heavy Rain and Beyond. With Detroit we had a more advanced statistics system, what we call telemetry, where we get exact data from the choices made by players in the world. We know exactly who made this decision, failed here, died there, and so on. We know everything.

I tend not to use this, because again, if you want to be creative, it’s very hard to take a sheet of data and say, “I’ll write something like this again because it worked here.” I still believe I should be creative and have new ideas and find new challenges, rather than trying to use what I’ve done in the past somehow. I think each game is different. It has its own truth that you need to find. I don’t want to work with data. I want to work from creativity first.

Fares: I like that approach as well. Approved. [laughter]

Question: We’ve seen a trend in video games around the theme of parenthood recently. We had God of War, The Last of Us. A generation of game developers have become parents. What do you think the next coming theme like that will be, as game developers get older?

Fares: I’m not a parent, so….

GamesBeat: Maybe being grandparents?

Fares: Maybe it’s about love stories. [laughs] It’s hard to know what the next thing will be. My hope is that we keep delivering unique titles and unique ways of telling stories, unique games in general. I do strongly believe that if you listen to your inner voice, even if it sounds very cliche, we’ll create some really cool, kick-ass games in the future. There’s so much to discover. I do hope publishers dare to take those risks and do more crazy ideas. Even if sometimes we fail, that’s not a problem. I hope that’s what the future holds, great games with unique ideas.

Cage: I think the key word for me is “relatable.” You create characters that you can relate to. For me that’s something new. In the past we created a lot of games where the characters, the main characters, were superheroes, big muscles, no fear, no weaknesses. And now we’re starting to have heroes who have their own needs and their own weaknesses. They’ve become much more relatable because of that.

When I worked on Heavy Rain, my idea was to create something that people could relate to. I thought, “I’m a father. I have a father. I understand this relationship.” This is why I felt truly engaged in the experience. That’s part of the success of God of War. It’s because they made this character much more relatable.

Question: What do you think about the fashion or the way video games and cinema merging into one thing? Do you think we’ll see a fusion between those two mediums? Is that a good thing?

Fares: I wouldn’t necessarily agree on that. I think they’re two different mediums. If you look at books and music and theater, every medium has its way of telling a story. I do believe that — of course, having a background as a filmmaker, you have a lot of tools that have had time to be explored and tried. We’ve learned a lot over the hundred years that movies have existed. With games we have a lot to discover, and I believe that while we can get inspiration from movies, books, and other ways of telling stories, they’ll be their own medium. I don’t have any fear that either will take over, anything like that.

But I do believe that emotionally — if you have a story that’s super strong, super impactful, it could be even more impactful if you’re actually part of it. The interactivity adds another layer in a way that movies can’t do. But I don’t think that will take over. There will always be different media.

Cage: I agree. When photography appeared, it was about copying painting somehow. And then when cinema appeared it was copying photography. All media learn from each other. I think the essence of interactivity is very different. It’s about creating something with people. It totally changes the language. It’s fine that you borrow some parts of your language from films or poetry or art or whatever you want, but you need to make it something unique, because you need to create this language of interactivity that will allow you to create something with people. For me that’s the heart of it.

GamesBeat: I am a little worried about what happens when a combat game looks more like a documentary, and the theme switches to the blurring of the lines between soldiers and civilians, like in the latest Call of Duty. The content becomes very disturbing. The gameplay potentially puts the player in a place where they shouldn’t be. Video games are fun, for the purpose of fun….

Fares: With that I don’t necessarily agree. It’s not only about fun. It’s about interactivity. It could be fun, but — there are many scenes in video games that are great, but they’re not about fun. They’re about the scene itself, about feeling.

Cage: I agree with Josef. Games can be more than fun. There will always be games that are fun and that are played because they’re entertaining, but we’re starting to discover with this medium that we can do something else. We can use it to say meaningful things about us and about our world. Which is a danger, because with what you’re saying — now we can talk about things. We can say unpleasant things. We can say things in the wrong way. But what I want to remember is that now we can say something that’s relatable and connected to our world. That’s what I love about this evolution of games.

Question: Would you have advice for developers getting started, trying to get into a position to make more emotionally involving games?

Fares: For me, when I believe in something, I won’t stop. I’m ready to go all the way. I’m a nice guy — I’m not mean to anybody — but I never stop going after what I believe in. I have extreme self-confidence. I can’t help it. I know you’re not supposed to. I know you’re supposed to feel a bit insecure. But I just don’t. When I do something I just believe in it so much that nothing can stop me.

If I’m in a meeting, I know what’s going to happen before people even know what I’m going to say. I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s just something I feel. It’s how I ended up in this industry. When I decided to do it, it happened. I don’t have any formula — do this and you’ll be come successful. Maybe the reason is because I don’t have kids like David does. I can take more risks.

I know in A Way Out, my accountant said to me, “If you keep going like this you’re going to lose your house, lose everything.” Okay, yeah, whatever, I don’t care. I could literally be on the street begging rather than doing something else I don’t like. I need to feel that passion. If you gave me $100 million I’d say know if I didn’t feel it in here. I’m a passion-driven guy. I need to have that.

The only tip I could give is that being really true to yourself is one of the key points for trying to understand what your inner voice is, what you want to do, what you want to create. It’s something you feel in here. If you connect with this — that’s all I’m saying. Just feel it.

Cage: It’s always a different mixture to find between listening and trusting yourself, and at the same time listening a little bit to others. If you only listen to others, you never do anything. At the same time, if you never listen to others, sometimes you do stupid things. It’s finding the right balance. But believing in yourself is the most important thing, because very few people will do it for you. Believe in what you want to do and who you want to be and fight for that.

Fares: I do listen to a lot of people. It doesn’t look like it, but I really do. I’m super flexible. If you ask my team, my attitude is, try everything. Let’s try to turn every stone over and figure it out.

Question: The general public, we know the names of directors in film much more than we know the names of directors and creators in games. Why do you think that’s the case?

Fares: It’s coming. In the game industry, everybody knows your name. Directors are becoming more and more — I think it’s important to have — coming from a movie background, very quickly, I would still argue that gaming is more of a collaboration. It’s as important in movies, though, that you need a voice or two that’s pushing the vision. That’s important. Of course it’s a collaboration, whether it’s a big team or a small team, but you need to have a voice there. Games, more and more, understand that.

We tend to see that games that are really interesting have one or two people pushing it. We see that in God of War, in your games, in the Naughty Dog games, in the games we do. In the future that will become bigger. And let me tell you this — a lot of movie directors are way overestimated. It’s way easier to direct a movie than anybody thinks. I can have a 10-year-old direct a movie. [laughs] I’m telling you! If you have a good DP….

GamesBeat: What do you think of the Oscars, by the way? [Audience laughs]

Fares: Fuck the Oscars! No, no, no. The thing is, what I’m trying to say is that movie people sometimes take themselves too seriously. Come here and make a game and we’ll see how cocky you are, motherfucker. I’m telling you! I made six movies and it’s a walk in the park compared to making a game. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s definitely easier. You have your DP there and you say “Action!” and then you go have dinner. I’m just saying people underestimate how hard games are to do. We deserve more respect. I don’t know why I get so excited about this.

Cage: What can I say after that? Well, I can’t say I agree with you, but — I mean, you know many game directors. Everybody knows probably, what 10 big game directors out there? There will be more and more. But it’s true that it’s collaborative work. There are many people involved. It’s been true that we’ve promoted teams and the names of studios much more than the people behind them.

It depends on the games. If you do a sports game, maybe the role of the game director isn’t the same compared to something that’s built around narrative. But I think it’s going to evolve in the near future.（source：Venturebeat.com）