Getting the player emotionally involved is the holy grail. We try to make players forget they're playing a game. We want them to live the experience and suspend disbelief.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of emotional engagement in gaming, aiming for players to fully immerse themselves in the experience.
David Cage highlights that the ultimate goal in game design is to emotionally engage players, allowing them to lose themselves in the narrative and the world of the game. By achieving this, he suggests that the experience transcends mere play, encouraging players to suspend their disbelief and truly live the story as if it were real.
In practice
During a game design presentation, you might quote this to emphasize the importance of player engagement.
My goal is for 'Heavy Rain' to leave an imprint in you and change a little bit of who you are and how you see things. Maybe the key characters and key moments will leave a trace in you. If you don't have this ambition as a video-game creator, then maybe you should do something else, because this is what creation and art is about.
Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.
Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.
I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.
I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect. I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.
There's always a need at a critical time for poetry.
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