Sam Lake, David Cage And Hideo Kojima – Most of you, of course, know these people, and even if there are those who do not talk about anything listed, you probably heard about their work: Max Payne, Fahrenheit, Metal Gear Solid And many other games … no, masterpieces, Once and for all, the industry.

Immediately make a reservation for those of you who have the names of both other projects and the people who gave them to us in your head – no one here detract from other people’s merits. In creating the wall of text bOlosha than it turned out, I simply did not see both meaning and pleasure, therefore the names of today’s “three players” were selected exclusively subjectively and purely from personal preferences.

Initially, I wanted to talk about some, albeit insignificant, but interesting little things from their life, who had not yet had time to become familiar in official biographies. When preparing the material, I found in horror that these same biographies are good if they consist even with a pair of paragraphs, but only dry information about the date of birth and real names are able to convey, and often they generally begin from the moment the light is already (!) I saw the first project of one of them.

What are these people? How they came to the industry? What they are interested in? Does any of them have a family, in the end?

Therefore, in my current story, I will try to highlight at least some aspects of their life, if possible, not very deepening into the details of the development of a particular game. This will not be so simple, since the attitude to the publishing of any information about himself about the heroes is different, someone is more famous, someone less, and if Runet told something about one, then only foreign interviews gave the answers about another.

So who are you, Mr. ..?

“Prose is a form of art, cinema and acting also forms of art, like music, painting, and t.D. Some can even consider classic games, like chess, as a form of art. Video games use the elements of all of them combined to create something new. Why can’t video games be a form of art?"
© Sam Lake, Interview, April 25, 2004.

This charming, slightly stuttering guy will always open any of my personal lists of people associated with a video game industry. Too strong emotions at one time gave me the original part Max Payne.

Of all the three people who will be discussed today, Lake’s road to paper and Peru was surprisingly the most smooth and successful. Cinema, along with books, has always been for him a natural interest, which was simply obliged to develop into something more. By the way, while writing a script for the first Max Payne, Lake also worked on a novel, called "Undertow", Some of the ideas from which, subsequently migrated to Alan Wake. In an interview, he joked that in this way he had to rob himself.

It is not surprising that Sam and now, at every opportunity, indicates what an important source of inspiration for him is modern pop culture. Over the past few years, a separate place in his life has been occupied by a variety of series. Lake was looking forward to showing the fourth season "Games of Thrones", A "Real Detective" became for him an unexpected discovery, leaving behind tons of inspiration and a painful expectation of the next story. In this vein, the format of the new project seems to be absolutely not surprising Quantum Break, which will include both the gample-shoer, and a separate TV show, the plot of which will be closely interrupted with the story told in the game itself.

Although, it is very important to note that when it comes to the plot component of its projects, Sam prefers not to focus on other representatives of the game industry, believing that this can be imposed on it any artificial “blocks”.

Concept "Writer’s Block", когда писатель почти физически не может выдавить из себя ни строчки, вообще является для Лэйка достаточно болезненной темой, т.To. At one time he had to face it personally. In the plot tie Alan Wake A completely real incident came from the life of his screenwriter, who was forced to fight such a “block”, having left the bustle of the city in a wooden house on the shore of the lake.

Fortunately, now Sam has a complete order with creativity. In addition to working on Quantum Break, which absorbed it almost completely, he tries to write every day if he has at least a couple of free minutes. Sam sincerely believes that over time, such sketches can result in something serious. There is no need to go far for examples: when working on the script to Max Payne 2, Enterprising Finn sent one of his early poems to the vocalist of the group Poets of the Fall, Having asked him to write a song, focusing on his impressions of read. So the famous Late Goodbye, which we all know and lovely love.

Not a single, at least a self-self-respecting writer, can ignore the printed word and Lake’s racks of his library, real or electronic, have never been empty. He is a big fan Kurt Vonnegut And Stephena King, I read from the recent Jeff Vandermer "Annihilation", from which he had purely positive impressions.

Suddenly, it is a fan of the Fantasy genre, not hiding that the love of “Sword and Magic” was instilled by various RPGs. Dreams once to try to work in this direction.

Sam Lake sacredly observes T.n. “Movember”, or “non-breech”, which is https://gamblingdata.net/casinos/bbcasino/ not just a kind of flash mob, when men ignore a razor, but represents a serious social movement, originating in Australia and providing not only a demonstration of courageous bristles, but also significant monetary donations for the study and combat of prostate cancer and other male diseases.

In conclusion, I will allow myself to celebrate two things: Sam has a daughter, and his favorite treatment: "Dearest of All My Friends …"

David Cage

This person also cannot be ignored – too much he gave the gaming industry, each of his idea sparkles too brightly.

David began to get involved in video games from the age of ten and was a real dinode as a teenager. At the same time, he never thought that “toys” could become his work, he was used to just enjoy the process, without attaching special importance to this. Over the years, music has replaced games into the background. True, as we know, already being a professional musician with his own music company Totem Interactive, Cage again returned to the video game industry, first as a composer, and then having tried himself and as a screenwriter, a game designer, and the director, in fact.

In the first major project Omikron: The Nomad Soul Yesterday’s young composer was faced with difficulties. Cage did not have any specific business model and where others would have been possible to think tightly, but whether the game is worth the candle, David simply took and invested all the money from music into the project, completely relying on his intuition, which suggested that everything would work out.

Patience and unhealthy risk craving – generally two main features of the leader Quantic Dream. At the same time, his approach to managing the company is very serious and limited to strictly business needs: no expensive sports cars, yachts, or palaces on the shore – all funds exclusively to improve new projects – and his team completely shares such priorities, supporting the perfectionism of his leader.

Surprisingly, the musical roots did not lose their influence on everything that Cage does. Music in his works is always in the first place, sometimes eclipsing even the visual part: “After all, this is not about 90 minutes of the video, but about 12 hours of music! And this is a tremendous work, believe me, ”says David.

When he first met with Hans Zimmer and his team, in order to invite them to work together on Beyond: Two Souls, Their first reaction was almost a complete absence of at least some interest in creating a video game, because the whole team, along with the composer, was confident in the absolute identity of all representatives of this industry, without any significant differences.

David had to explain in detail in detail that his past projects and this one in particular, use a fundamentally different approach and differ significantly about everything that they saw earlier. He gave them a script, talked about the characters and tried to convey to them his vision of the musical component in the game, as the highest element to reveal the emotional depth and the ideas laid in the plot. The famous composer had no choice but to penetrate and say “yes”.

David Cage has an extremely unusual and subtle idea of ​​human psychology and relationships between people. His vision of the plot-thematic picture consists of “faces of gray”, without a clear division of pure tones, and he does not hide that he always tried to bring it to his projects, trying to force the players to experience complex, or mixed emotions that they are not used to getting from video games, without pursuing only banal laughter or tears.

His very view of the world around the world is non -standard. For example, in one of the interviews, Cage said that he came to the main idea of ​​Beyond, watching homeless people: “If you meet them on the street and if they are not quite healthy, some of them may well have a conversation with an imaginary friend – at the same time he can very upset them or greatly angry them. To one of the starting points Beond, I came thinking, and what would happen if one of such imaginary friends existed?"

He independently decided to participate in Hollywood actors in Beond: Two Souls, and called the candidates based on the script he wrote. At the same time, David was very worried about the reputation Ellen Page And William Defoe: “They trusted us and we did not want to let them down. We did not want to disappoint them, we wanted them to be proud of their work. We wanted people to say “I really liked your work in Beond”, not “that you have forgotten in such a shitty game?"

David Cage is also a gentleman of the Legion Honorary Order and the only video game developer at the moment, who received such a reward for his merits.

Hideo Kojima

I’m afraid I can’t choose the right words, for the introductory paragraph about this person. Without even playing any of the parts of the series Metal Gear or Metal Gear Solid, Maximum – watching the plot video to Snake Eater And Guns of the Patriots, I am simply a tremendous respect for this master, who, throughout a significant segment of his life, is engaged in his favorite thing, bringing each of his creations to the ideal, in his own, current understanding.

Of all our today’s heroes, the path of Kodzima was the most thorny, difficulties pursued him from a young age. As he himself says with a good -natured smile: “The most powerful memories of my childhood are connected with death. Once, I almost drowned in the river, a wild dog attacked me, and once the train almost moved when I walked through the path. I had to survive quite a lot of things that are life -threatening while I grew up ".

His family often moved, so Little Hideo, and not very easily finding contact with people, pulled away even more and began to spend time alone with himself. At the same time, his parents addicted him to the TV, because because of their work they simply had no time left for their son. He watched everything: starting from soap series and culinary shows, ending with anime and gears about the wild.

Kodzima regularly remained at home alone: ​​“… I hated it: the house was quiet and empty. I still remember this feeling of loneliness, I still feel strange, already returning to my own family and output someone at home. Each time, traveling and stopping at the hotel, I try to turn on the TV almost earlier than going to the room in order to somehow cope with a sense of loneliness … ".

Like most young children, Kojima wanted to become an astronaut. Over the years, this lost the desire to be a detective. Hideo, in one of his interviews admitted that even then he wanted to create something, perhaps be an artist, an illustrator.

True, any creative undertakings faced a rigid public conviction that only a good school, coupled with higher education, can lead to highly paid work. Japanese division of people into groups could also turn into serious consequences for those who did not want to swim in the bulk. Hideo’s desires to become a director, or the writer inexorably encountered iron social norms about a decent life. All this only exacerbated, forcing a creative person to feel lonely and detached.

Even from the high school, Kojima wrote his own stories, which he often sent to various publications: “… I have never been published. They wanted a story a hundred pages, and mine always spun in the area of ​​four hundred … "

Unfortunately, parents never supported the creative undertakings of his son and in the end he left attempts to share his ideas with them, looking for understanding among peers. This led to certain successes-in the first directing chair in life, Hideo was seated by his friend, who had made a video camera somewhere around 8mm.

But he could not find a complete understanding. Most friends studied diligently, giving all their time to classes. Kojima even managed to put together his musical gang, but his friends did not see the opportunities that he saw, they did not believe that “entertainment” could be earned for a decent life.

All this achieved a kind of climax after the end of the Economic College, where Hideo was forced to go, succumbing to public pressure. While all acquaintances were scolded through “solid firms”, the young Japanese guy seriously considered the prospects for working in Konami. It is worth noting that the video game industry, especially at that time and especially in Japan, to put it mildly, did not use respect.

“I remember this very well,” says Kojima. – Everyone around said “Don’t do this!"" Don’t do this!"And after a short period of time, after I got a job at Konami, I was invited to a wedding, where I was supposed to prepare a congratulatory speech. In Japan, such people are usually accepted to briefly represent and the presenter then said: “This is Hideo Kojima. A man of great talent, which he was removing in vain in Konami ". I remember I met a former college friend who asked me only one question: “Why?" – while we exchanged handsome. But people have changed their minds since then. Now they greet me with undisguised admiration ".

Kojima with very great respect recalls the father, who told him about the war, about the bombing of Tokyo, about how he fled along the street in search of shelter, in the middle of smoke and fire. About wounded children whom he found on the streets and took to a safe place. These stories had a great influence on Hideo: “I believe that my father inspired me more than I myself can imagine, even though we never shared each other’s interests”.

That was the path of the Japanese genius to work in Konami. At the same time, the rather controversial moments of those years remained overboard, which I did not find confirmation: that the same films shot on the 8mm camcamer showed to classmates for a symbolic fee of 100 yen;that his parents actually instilled in him a craving for a serious cinema and gave money for going to the cinema, and then discussed the films watched with him;that the idea of ​​the Stealth genre did not inspire him at all a childish love for hide and seek, but a very specific film "Great escape", where the hero had to constantly run away and hide from his enemies.

We will have to keep silent about that joy from the lesson to love at the first stages of work in Konami, when Kojima scared his colleagues with his indefatigability, bordering on insanity, otherwise the volume of the text will turn out to be simply disrespectful towards the first two heroes of today’s story.

They have different views on video games, the approaches to their creation differ. Everyone came to the industry in their own way. Someone was given naturally and easy, someone was just lucky, and someone had to break through with a fight with a step. But they are unconditionally united by the desire to bring something new, to contribute to the development of electronic entertainment not towards mass or dulling, but by giving preference to individuality, the depth of each specific project. And it is unfortunate that the biography of such people in the free access can fit in a couple of lines, while about the next pop dummy, unknown graphomaniacs are able to issue huge walls of the text, and journalists fill them with personal issues on the day and night, while Gagrodelov ask exclusively about their work, chasing the same information in the circle of the same way.

It remains only to hope that someday it will flash in the next interview a simple question: “Tell us about yourself?"

“If the goal of your life is only a desire to find a job, earn a little money at the end of the month and not have special problems, then there are many similar places around you. If you want to be those who try to be creative, try to come up with some ideas, try to create something, taking on all the accompanying risk, then you are waiting for another way. You need to try to imagine what people will like two years or five years later and try to work on it, even if it means that no one will understand you today. Trying to do something differently, it can be incredibly exhausting and extremely risky. I feel real happiness from everything that I did and what it led me to, but it is possible if I were somewhat more pragmatist, my life was easier. I have no regrets, I always did the best of what I was capable of at the moment. I love what I do, I like to explore new ideas and this true reward is already on my own. ".