Video Game developer David Cage and his studio that he founded, Quantic Dream, have created “choose-your-own-adventure” style games such as Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Some of their games have been rather high-profile and have had successful releases. However Cage, the studio, and their games have been extremely problematic.

For starters, Quantic Dream has been riddled with allegations regarding their work environment. In 2018, they were accused of having a “schoolboy culture of racism and sexism.” They’re far from the first video game studio to receive such allegations, but that doesn’t make it okay. They have apparently been working on improving their workplace since these came to light, thankfully.

Then there’s David Cage himself, who seems to be the core of the issues. He obsessively puts women characters in overly-sexual scenarios in his games, often with them being sexually assaulted. No matter what choices the player makes during a playthrough of Beyond: Two Souls, the character of Jodie Holmes is abused. Heavy Rain has Madison violently and sexually attacked while she’s in her underwear. A man also drugs her and ties her up. Cage appears to feel pulled into writing women in the most sexist ways possible and puts them in the creepiest scenarios his twisted mind can think of.

Also, for the development of Beyond: Two Souls, Cage gathered images of actor Elliot Page’s childhood without them knowing, and then animated a nude model of Page without their consent for an unavoidable shower scene. Page, obviously, considered legal action when said nude images leaked from the game’s coding. Shower scenes and nudity happen in media all the time, but this is far from the right way to go about it. This is just plain skeezy.

Cage has also publicly made sexist and homophobic statements such as Quantic Dream “doesn’t make games for f*gs” and “all women in my games are wh**es,” according to French website Solidaires Informatique. It’s no surprise that someone like him cultivated a toxic work environment.

There’s of course the “separate the art from the artist” sentiment to think about when playing Quantic Dream’s games. That doesn’t really hold up when most of the games aren’t great. Indigo Prophecy is chock full of plot holes and serious moments that come across as just plain silly, which is pretty rough for a game that focuses on story over gameplay. The plot holes continue on into Heavy Rain where the surprise killer’s thoughts include him also wondering who the killer is. Plus, Ethan’s sudden blackouts were never explained whatsoever. Again, these are such story-focused games that a digital version of David Cage introduces Indigo Prophecy as a movie that he filmed, yet they’re fairly poorly-written.

The gameplay is rough as well. David Cage has stated that “game overs are a failure of game design,” so there’s no real challenge. In fact, there are scenes in his games where the player can set the controller down and not touch it. The characters may say something unfavorable or trip, but nothing really bad would happen. A sequence wouldn’t even need to be replayed. Yes, these are “choose-your-own-adventure” story games, but the gameplay that is there still needs to be enjoyable and worth playing. The gameplay of Detroit: Become Human was handled much better, but the game’s plot points were a bit tone deaf at times with androids experiencing the same forms of discrimination that black people did. Perhaps it’s a step in the right direction for the developer, though.

There’s absolutely a place for this story-based, point-and-click, choose-your-own-adventure genre within the world of gaming. There are better developers for it, though. Telltale Games has a slew of incredible games in their library, like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. Supermassive Games does an especially great job with creating this type of game and have proven it with Until Dawn and the games is the Dark Pictures Anthology. Gamers looking for their fix of this particular genre should definitely look into these developers.