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The Quantic Dream games keep me up at night. (And not only because of the excess blue light I get from my PS4.)

As an acclaimed and well resourced developer, Quantic Dream has proven it has the ability to elevate the "interactive drama" in a manner that is not only innovative and compelling, but also highly accessible to non-gamers. And yet, the studio's persistent refusal to get out of its own way (and drop its toxic, tone deaf narratives in favor of quality storytelling) continues to baffle.

For many people interested in gaming, the image of white, college-aged men packed onto a sofa screaming at each other as they mash the controllers in their hands is an intimidating one. Between vicious online forums, lacking introductory materials, and scads of popular games that challenge anyone who hasn't logged a few hundred hours on their system of choice, the gaming world has become an impenetrable mess.

Many independent gaming studios (like The Fullbright Company of Gone Home and Giant Sparrow of What Remains of Edith Finch) have created comprehensible exploratory narratives that appeal to novices. But no mainstream company with high visibility and prestige has come so close to creating a framework to hook beginner gamers as Quantic Dream.

Quantic Dream's four most recent interactive dramas (Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human) garnered massive followings. Each game explores engaging storytelling tactics and accessible mechanics that could become the bedrock of an introductory game empire.

However, Quantic Dream seems to be all thumbs when it comes to selling relatable, sensitive, developed narratives. While gamers of any skill level can pick up and play a QD product, these games don't always serve as shining counterpoints to the toxic reputation clouding the gamer community.

The studio that cracks the code on entry-level, adult gaming will be able to declare ownership over a largely untapped customer base. And while Quantic Dream could still lay claim to that lucrative market, the studio will first have to assess the good, bad, and fixable realities of its four previous titles.

The good

1. QD games have elegant, simple controls. The mechanics of QD games are gold for inexperienced users. Once you've mastered looking around a room and moving your character, your hand will be held for nearly every other step of the game. Need to pick up a book? "Great, press X." Need to put that book down? "Great, press X again." If, like me, you struggle to remember the basics of a game after stepping away for a day or two, QD will keep you on track with constant refresher courses. And, perhaps more importantly, the mechanics are intuitive and immersive no matter the task.

2. It's tough to get "stuck."Walking in place in the corner of a dark basement, desperately mashing R2 trying to get your avatar to turn around. We've all been there. One of the main benefits of games that play like movies is that the story will generally continue even if you get confused, become lost, or fail in a scene. Most QD games hinge on alternative storylines and moral choices. So, if you don't manage to find your way out of a level or you make a questionable decision somewhere along the way, the game will adjust the story to the reality of your track record. No game over, no lost progress. Just different (possibly worse) outcomes.

3. They're so pretty.No ifs, ands, or buts: QD games are visually stunning. The futuristic Detroit of QD's latest release rivals nearly every digitally rendered landscape out there. The various backdrops to Beyond: Two Soulsare similarly breathtaking. While the older Indigo Prophecyand Heavy Rainhave struggled to hold up visually in the modern gaming landscape, they remain monumental accomplishments from their time of release. QD's character motion capture techniques and dynamic camera work stand out as achievements in graphics.

4. The premises work for most people. Trying to explain Plants vs. Zombiesto my mother was harder than my college differential equations final. QD games make life a little simpler. Serial killers, sentient robots, paranormal activity: these are concepts that most folks can wrap their heads around. Sure, it gets more complicated as the games progress, but at the start it's palatable for everyone, including daytime TV types.

The bad

1. The storytelling is often shoddy at best.Bizarre, clunky dialogue seems to be an industry standard and, sure, games with multiple endings can struggle to clean up every plot hole. But the creative direction of QD games is too often completely lackluster.

The Beyond: Two Souls narrative was told in a non-linear, Memento-style order which could have been fine. But the bizarre B plots, flashbacks, and extemporaneous details made the story so confusing the creators had to add a timeline between each scene to show you where in this spider web chronicle you actually were.

Alternatively, Heavy Raintold a fleshed out, gradual story that played much like a film noir. Which was great. Until, in its final moments, it pulled the rug out from underneath hours of gameplay with an uninspired and nonsensical twist. In the game's finale, you discover that a character you had been playing as a detective investigating a string of murders was in fact... the murderer! Which could have been fine if you had any idea that was coming. Instead it comes out of left field in a way that is just infuriating.

2. QD gamifies social injustice relentlessly. It's easy to think of oppression as a fun boss level to your video game when you don't have to actually face it in your life. Peppered with tone deaf racist and sexist stereotyping, QD games (unsurprisingly) come from a predominantly white male creative studio.

In an upsetting scene from Beyond: Two Soulstitled "Homeless," you "play" as your protagonist, living on the streets in the middle of winter. You develop "tactics" for gaining enough money for food, including panhandling and prostitution. You later defend a homeless friend who is being beaten and filmed by a group of privileged passersby, and even have to deliver another homeless woman's baby in an abandoned building.

All of that can seem reasonable to the storyline, but something about "playing" around in the harsh reality lived by thousands of Americans (and others around the world) seems more than a little trite.

3. Sexualized violence against women is the norm. QD is by no means the worst of the worst when it comes to objectionable female representation in video games. However, not a single one of QD's four interactive dramas manages to be devoid of the gamified abuse of women.

Indigo Prophecy features a young woman's kidnapping. Heavy Rain includes a wholly unnecessary dream sequence in which the game's main female character, Madison Paige, attempts to survive a home invasion while running around her apartment in her underwear. (QD earns "bonus" points here by also making the only lead up to the action in this scene an extended sequence of Paige drying off after a shower.) Beyond: Two Souls features an attempted rape of Ellen Page's underage character on a pool table. And finally, Detroit: Become Human sets up its main android to face the realities of domestic abuse within her first moments on screen.

If QD has any hopes of garnering a beginner female audience, they'll need to drop the titillation and accept that rape and abuse aren't one size fits all backstories for their female characters.

The fixable

While we as consumers have no choice but to judge a work by its final form, we can always question what decisions resulted in the product we receive. The Quantic Dream games are created by dozens of talented programmers, animators, writers, and other creatives who are likely not directly responsible for much of the odious content the games include. The studio's creative leadership, however, can and should be held accountable for their decision-making.

Recently, several former Quantic Dream employees accused the studio of fostering an unhealthy work environment that lent itself to racist, homophobic, and misogynistic behavior—as well as claims of inappropriate sexual conduct and abusive work demands. If the adage of art imitating life holds true, this should be unsurprising to players of QD games.

The studio has vehemently denied these allegations and David Cage—Quantic Dream's co-founder and writer/director—has personally responded to many. In a statement to the French publication that originally broke the story, Cage said, "You want to talk about homophobia? I work with Ellen Page, who fights for LGBT rights. You want to talk about racism? I work with Jesse Williams, who fights for civil rights in the USA." This problematic statement makes clear Cage not only misunderstands tokenism, but also has limited interest in seeing beyond his own warped vision of representation.

To break into the mostly untouched market of first time gamers, Quantic Dream will have to accept that narrow, prejudicial thinking and garbled storytelling will not get them there. Unfortunately for a studio leader like Cage who seems reluctant to change, this could mean being ousted from the video gaming empire he helped build from the ground up.

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