Heavy Rain cost €16.7 million to make and made Sony "more than €100 million"

[curl-6]

S.T.A.G.E. said:

curl-6 said:

veritaz said:

It's a blend of both, which is why i said it's a different experience. I think it succeded in what it was setting out to do and it shows in the fans, profit, reviews.

But the problem with playing both sides of the field is that ultimately you have to succeed as one or both. Heavy Rain wouldn't pass the standards expected of good movies, and because it reduces gameplay to a series of QTEs it doesn't win out as a game either. The erosion of gameplay quality in favour of story and visuals, the Hollywoodization of gaming, is already a grave threat to the medium, and Heavy Rain is a game that exemplifies this trend.

Who cares what the standards are the hollywood movies? The game is a push in the right direction to get games to be more interactve and give control over an story and make it your own. Not every game is the same and the variety is what makes its personal value seem. Games have proven themselves to become a medium which has always strived to become the point between films and life, in which you control the outcomes of situations and go into actual worlds. Games were always mean to evolve and technology allows that to happen. Games can still be games, but it also depends on how good you've become at gaming. Casual games are still games, story driven games are still games, you have to finish it, as simple as that. 

By moving towards films though, games move away from their own identity as a unique art form and therefore lessening the medium's greatest strength. I have no problem with games giving the player control over a story's outcome, but when QTEs take the place of what could and should be playable scenes, and when story is prioritised above gameplay, it's like a car trying to be a boat and ending up as a weird hybrid that works on neither land nor water.