Cage defends Heavy Rain's mature content

Quantic Dream's David Cage has spoken up for his right to use sex in his games, pointing out that, "When you are 18... You won't be shocked for the rest of your life because you saw nipples."

Cage was speaking during his Developer Session at today's Eurogamer Expo in London where he demonstrated how Heavy Rain can be played in multiple ways and fielded a range of questions from the packed auditorium.

Eurogamer live-texted the entire thing, so check there for a complete transcript of events.

Cage had previously defended the use of sex in his games in a Eurogamer interview at gamescom, and elaborated on his views at today's Expo.

"As a game creator I have one very simple rule," he said. "Everything is allowed, no limits, as long as it makes sense in the story and is not gratuitous."

"So Heavy Rain is so much not about sex and violence, it's about characters and emotions... Even if Fox News comes and plays the game and says it's about sex, the whole community of gamers, I'm sure, will stand up and throw stones at them. That's what I hope. I count on you guys."

The fact Heavy Rain is an "18-plus title" should exclude him from this "ridiculous situation", he said.

"Then you start to discuss about parents don't know the ratings system, but there are porn movies on cable - if you don't pay attention to your kids, they may end up in front of a porn movie."

Elsewhere in the Q&A, Cage was asked what he took away from Fahrenheit, the last game he worked on before Heavy Rain. "Do we have two, three days for the answer?" he joked.

"The technology has evolved... Releasing Fahrenheit was considered a miracle, internally. With Heavy Rain the situation was different, the technology was better from day one," he said. "In a certain way we see Fahrenheit as the prototype for Heavy Rain, and Heavy Rain is hopefully the real thing."

Cage also talked about how the game's difficulty system works, and, perhaps inevitably, was asked whether it would be possible on another system. He said probably not.

Check out the full David Cage live text report to see what else occurred, and thanks very much to David for coming to the Expo.