Sony is well known across the industry for the amount of freedom it affords its developers and creative personnel, and its insistence on delivering fantastic, single player, story focused experiences in an era where the market seems to be moving away from that kind of product. And now, to corroborate this perception of Sony, Quantic Dream’s David Cage, whose next game Detroit: Become Human launches exclusively for the PS4 next week, has talked about how Sony has never pushed the studio to do anything, leaving them to their own devices.
“No, never. They never imposed anything on us. It’s always been the decisions of the studio. We seek the talent on our own,” Cage said in an interview with Les Numériques (translated by ResetEra’s Birdseye). He added how, in spite of the fact that Heavy Rain sold over 5 million copies, the studio was never asked to make a sequel to it by Sony- something that they didn’t want to do themselves.
“We didn’t want to do it. Sony didn’t even ask us the question. With them, we want to invent new things, to try new stories. It’s an atypical adventure. It’s a luxury with maximum freedom. But there’s no mystery. Every game we make is profitable and finds its audience. Heavy Rain reached 5.4 million units on a single platform. Each game is profitable and generates profits.”
He also lauded Sony for consistently proving that single player games are not dead, in an age that multiplayer titles like battle royale games are taking the world by storm. “Sony does a remarkable job showing that singleplayer games are not dead. We can talk about God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us… They keep an audience for that.”
It is certainly amazing how much leeway Sony gives its developers- perhaps this is why they have been able to foster such great studios that attract fantastic talent, and put out so many amazing games on a routine basis- because they afford creatives the time and space that they need, the freedom that they need. As long as the company keeps this attitude up, Sony’s first party can only continue moving from strength to strength.