Heavy Rain Sales Carry Strong Message To Games Industry

It's not often that gamers themselves get to participate in changing the way the industry thinks. A legacy of monolithic studios and astronomical budgets point to gaming as a massive runaway train, only leveraging its power to make progress in the same old genres, year after year. According to Quantic Dreams' David Cage, however, gamers have voted with their wallets, sending a clear message that this train needs some new tracks.

Speaking to Gamasutra in a (slightly spoileriffic) interview, Cage was suprised but grateful for the sales numbers of Heavy Rain, his studio's latest release which blends cinematic scenarios with adventure-game puzzles and dialog options. Not exactly aiming for the same audience as other recent blockbusters, Heavy Rain's success shows in its U.S. sales of almost a quarter million in its first week alone, along with reports of stores in Europe and Japan running out of stock of the game.

As David Cage put it:

It means something because during the development of Heavy Rain, we said, "This game, whether it's a commercial success or a commercial failure, is going to send a very strong message to the industry about how interested the market is in innovative concepts and games exploring new directions. And I said that last year, before knowing the reviews and before knowing the sales. So now I can say, "Look! The market wants innovation." So this is what we should concentrate on now, and Heavy Rain is a very strong message to publishers to take more risks and support innovation.

As for what exactly those differences are, Cage defers to the words of some critics, bringing to light an interesting distinction as to what it takes to prefer games like Heavy Rain among other fare the market offers.

Many critics wrote that it was the first game for adults, and, yeah, I take that really as a very strong compliment because most games are for kids and teenagers. Most games are about feeling powerful and killing monsters and doing spectacular things and just feeling strong.

My son is nine years old, and he loves these games, because he's at the stage where he needs to master his environment; he needs to become stronger and take confidence and stuff. These games help him in order to do this. But when you're an adult, this is not necessarily what you want to play because you're beyond this stage. You expect something else. I hope that there will be more games dealing with a major audience. We shouldn't make only games for kids and teenagers.

I'm sure David isn't meaning to say that it takes a grown-up to appreciate Heavy Rain - there's plenty to love about those games on the market that don't focus quite so much on story and evoking emotions in the player. But it does make sense that the gamer who wants more of that is necessarily approaching games with a wholly different mindset from, say, the average Halo player.

What say you? Is Heavy Rain's commercial success indication that gamers are looking for less childish fantasy from their hobby, or is there room to implement its more intense psychological moments in more traditional games?