Ethics are a core component of a human’s psyche; they allow our behaviors to show themselves to the public, and we make choices based on our thoughts and feelings. What has been asked many times before is, “Do games allow players to show how far they are willing to have their ethics tested in a situation during a game?” An example of ethics being applied to gamers that do challenge them to think of their actions in the long run is the game by Quantic Dreams called “Detroit: Become Human.” Quantic Dreams based the idea for the game on a book called “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil. This book is about how we humans go beyond our physical means and transcend to mechanical versions of ourselves, such as becoming androids. This caused the designer of the game, David Cage, to research this book in hopes of finding an idea that he could base his game on. He told GamesBeat about the whole concept: “That was important to me because it made me realize that there would be a point in the future where there will be machines that are more intelligent than we are.” This concept of AI being smarter than us caused Cage to pitch the idea of a game set in the future, when AI would be used to deal with the worst jobs, such as garbage disposal and other tasks. Even though they could be smarter, humanity instead wanted to use them to take care of the lower-class jobs while the humans thrived. While getting into the meat of the idea, two theories behind the androids came to David’s mind, “What will happen by then? There are two theories. The first one is that they’re just machines. Just because they have more power, that doesn’t mean they’ll develop consciousness, because consciousness is something other than brainpower.” That was one theory flowing through David’s head. The other theory was, in his own words, “Then there’s another theory, which is that we’re just biological machines, and consciousness emerges from the power of our brains. If that’s true, it means there will be machines that also have a sense of consciousness. How will we react as a species when another species appears that intelligent, that has consciousness and emotions? What will our position be if that happens one day?” GamerBeat responded to David with an interesting comment: “I do think the whole game ultimately became a good articulation of the issues people should think about around AI.” So, Cage responded to that by saying, “I hope so. I wanted the game to be food for thought. I don’t pretend to have any answers to any of these questions. They’re very complex, and people are spending their lives studying and trying to foresee what’s happening. I don’t pretend to come with answers. But I came with a couple of questions. It’s interesting. Some people saw that, and most people didn’t. Most people just saw a story about androids. But some people saw the interesting questions in the game. I think they’re there.” These were some of the thoughts that David had when coming up with the creation of “Detroit: Become Human.”¹

Who is David Cage, why did he want to go through with this plan, and what was the reasoning behind all of this? Of course, we need to start with a basic question: who is David Cage? He was born in the Alsace region of France, and he had a normal childhood until he was around the age of sixteen, when he became quite well-known for producing freelance musical content for multiple sources of media. To Cage, though, that life became stagnant. He wanted to branch out when it came to doing something interesting, when his idea fell into video games since he played them all the time, but felt that “there’d never been one created that achieved everything he thought the medium was capable of.” At that point, he started writing his own game idea. When he finished it, he sent his idea to some of his friends at Cyro Interactive, and they knew each other because Cage made his first video game soundtrack with them. When his friends found out about his idea, they laughed it off since 3D was still nothing remarkable at that point in time. After months of work and shipping to different publishers with a demo, no progress was made, so Cage went back to France defeated. A year later, Cage founded Quantic Dreams with the money he made producing music, and they worked on a demo known as “Omikron: The Nomad Soul.” With the demo completed, he sent it to Eidos Interactive, which was well known for Tomb Raiders. Within a day, Quantic Dreams and Eidos Interactive signed a contract which gave Quantic Dreams a month to become a full-fledged studio, and that’s how Cage grew in popularity as well as Quantic Dreams coming into existence.²

Quantic Dream wanted the story to reflect real-world issues. “Detroit: Become Human” reflects upon discrimination, segregation, technological ethics, and how far human empathy can stretch through not just the characters they created but also the empathy the players have when playing the game. GameSpot put an interesting question to David Cage, “You had an interview where you said you don’t want it to carry a message but instead ask questions, but you also said you wanted it to be more than just a story about androids. Could you clarify your intentions?” David pondered this question for a bit and gave an answer, “When you watch a film, the film is made. A game is unique in the sense that it is a collaboration between the creator and the player. I create context for choices and I ask questions, but I don’t control what the player is going to do and how they will behave and what answer they’re going to give. So it is something we create together. My role is certainly not to deliver a message to mankind—I am not that arrogant—I would just say that I’m interested in some questions and I think some questions are connected to us as people, as individuals, and some questions are connected to our world.” David wanted to share a thought that had been in his mind ever since creating “Detroit: Become Human,” the thought of seeing how the players’ ethics are tested when an important moment in the story happens, even if the choice seems wrong. David wanted to see and understand how the player’s ethics work when choosing an option on a moment’s notice in the game.³

The creation or release of something, “Detroit: Become Human,” for example, is often accompanied by controversy. One controversy that was being talked about constantly was the use of violence and domestic violence in the game. When questioned about this, David Cage gave an enlightening answer. He wanted the players to come up with their own thoughts. He explained by saying, “I don’t want to censor myself; I don’t consider that there’s anything I should never talk about because, again, I respect my medium and think it should be able to talk about anything. I’m just careful about making sure that what I say is something I’m fully comfortable with. I couldn’t tell a story that go[es] against my beliefs to defend racism or misogyny. I couldn’t do that. That’s not my values. It’s particularly difficult because when you give options to the player and only give them the right choices that are ok with me, then there’s no choice.” He believes that just because he shows something to the audience, they should not think just like him. Instead, he wants them to come up with their own opinions about the matter if they have positive thoughts or negative ones from the cutscene. The audience should have free will to decide what emotions they should feel from seeing scenes that cause mixed emotions to stir inside them.⁴

Even after all the controversies had died down, many media outlets tried to expose what they believed to be hidden allegations behind the game, “Detroit: Become Human” still launched. The same media outlets believed that the game was meant to be propaganda. Despite this, the game received high praise when released. Everyone was praising the game for its narrative, emotional story, character writing to make the players understand their problems, as well as their ideals, and understanding what the game was trying to show instead of telling them. From the PlayStation Blog, they described this game by saying, “Detroit: Become Human treads some familiar narrative ground within the sci-fi genre, but its follow-through on giving the player ample, meaningful choice and its impressive technical display makes it one of the brightest gaming highlights of 2018.”⁵ From another review company known as “TechRadar,” the writer of this review, Dom Reseigh-Lincoln, gave his review in the end by saying, “While it carries many many of the traits of that make a Quantic Dream game so different from the rest of Sony’s first-party exclusives, Detroit: Become Human is still a bold and accomplished experience that’s leaps and bounds away from its previous efforts.⁶  This game was a gem in the sand with how many hearts it captured when it was released, to where almost everyone agreed that “Detroit: Become Human” was a masterpiece.

In the end, “Detroit: Become Human” won multiple awards in the “NAVGTR Awards,” in which the Internet Movie Database or “IMDb” has logged which award “Detroit: Become Human” won. The award they won was in the categories of Animation and Technical. They also have logged that the game was a nominee in running in the “Game Awards 2018” in the categories of “Best Game Direction” and “Best Narrative.” Even though the game itself didn’t win many awards when it was released, it is still considered to be a masterpiece of a game by gamers and others alike. For a creator, one of the most important things to have your game undergo is to have an impact on someone’s life through your work.⁷