Your Game Industry In Your Words: Week Of November 25

[Gamasutra highlights choice quotes from game industry figures such as Quantic Dream's Guillaume de Fondaumiere, Rockstar's Dan Houser, and more in this new weekly roundup.] In our original and exclusive interviews, analysis, and feature pieces over the past week, a wide variety of developers, publishers, and indies shared their thoughts with Gamasutra about topics like the dismissing storytelling in video games, changes in EA Sports' strategy, and Heavy Rain's strip scene. This Week's Noteworthy Game Industry Quotes "I kind of swore that I would stop talking about that because it got people obsessed by it. It's sort of a parlor debate, and we really never let it affect what we did." -- Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser on the games as art debate "It used to be that if you were going to describe something as 'flashy and without substance,' you would compare it to Hollywood movies. But now you can compare flashy movies to videogames. It's just a cop-out, and I would be interested to see what some reviewers making those comparison would make of a game that is sufficiently artful, like Ico or Flower." -- Kajiya Productions' Alexander O. Smith on the tendency to dismiss storytelling in video games "A lot of people in their 30s, like me, have started to think that way, and they feel like there's not enough game in them for their tastes." -- Half-Minute Hero XBLA producer Kenichiro Takaki calls out modern RPGs that place flashiness over substance "What we consider more critical is the feeling that we betrayed the trust of our players...we lost our customers' trust in a big way." -- Naoki Yoshida on how Square Enix's troubled MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV damaged the Final Fantasy brand "The last thing I want is to create a factory-like setting." -- Stephane D'Astous, GM at Deus Ex: Human Revolution studio Eidos Montreal on expanding the headcount by 100 "I believe a good game, and/or a very memorable one, will keep getting played due to its virtues rather than its marketing. I hope my games will turn out like that, so I put a lot of love and effort into them." -- Indie Hyper Princess Pitch dev Daniel Remar "I think we need to deliver some longevity in the experience, almost like an MMORPG does, so you don't have to restart every year." -- Recently-appointed EA Sports SVP Andrew Wilson on recent changes in EA Sports' strategy "We want the player to feel uncomfortable -- and if you feel uncomfortable, it means that you're a normal person. You see what I mean?" -- Guillaume de Fondaumiere, co-CEO of French-based developer Quantic Dream on Heavy Rain's racy strip scene with female protagonist Madison Paige "Making a game in a genre you hate is actually one of the most interesting experiences ever." -- Indie developer Zach Gage on creating iOS puzzler SpellTower "We actually feel it's too innovative, in many ways." -- RJDJ's Michael Breidenbruecker, formerly of last.fm, on his team's mobile augmented sound game Dimensions The complete versions of these in-depth articles, as well as other insightful pieces, are all available in Gamasutra's pages for Exclusive items and Features.