'Heavy Rain' Developer Comments On 'Modern Warfare 2' Controversy

Agreed. The game is mature in it's content and meant to be thought provoking. I realized a couple minutes into the level that it was the intended purpose and it even made me want to try to play the level without killing any poor innocent people. You can play through the level without killing civilians, but when the police show up, you have to at least knock them down with a riot shield. On the harder setting, you'd be hard pressed to finish the level without shooting at least half of the officers.

Sent to you via Google Reader

'Heavy Rain' Developer Comments On 'Modern Warfare 2' Controversy

"Heavy Rain" is definitely for mature audiences, since it features nudity, violence and crazy, murderous junk yard owners. It also features a level of realism which may disturb some players, even adult players, placing them in scenes that are stomach-churningly intense. It's this level of maturity and realism that made me wonder what the developers of "Heavy Rain" thought of the airport scene in "Modern Warfare 2." At a recent demo in New York City, I spoke to Guillaume de Fondaumiere, co-CEO of Quantic Dream and executive producer of "Heavy Rain," about the scene:

"My take on it is very simple. I don't see any reason why video games should be treated differently than movies, for instance. I think that we should leave game creators free of expressing their vision as they see fit. I think the guys at Infinity Ward had something very precise in mind when they did this scene. The real danger for me is, when you put out such a scene out of context. I can take any movie and take a sequence and make up a story and it will look like something that's amoral or that crosses the line. This is most of the time what happens in video games [in the media]."

It's worth noting that nothing I've seen in "Heavy Rain" comes close to the level or quantity of violence depicted in "Modern Warfare 2," and probably won't have any of the same controversy surrounding it, but it's interesting to see two adult-centric game developers basically agreeing with one another on what should be allowed in the medium.

•This message was sent from a mobile device.•