David Jaffe Interview, May 2007

The creator of God of War talks to us about his new PS3 Network title Calling All Cars, getting his ass handed to him on the Internet, and what's next.

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Kikizo: You know, I thought you were going to give a real marketing answer there... but then we remember, it is David Jaffe that we're interviewing...

Jaffe: Yeah, no kidding, no shit! No shit, my friend! I'll tell you what, I've bid my last interviews for quite some time - I've got my ass handed to me on the Net this morning, so I'm done!

Sony's Santa Monica studio

Kikizo: I've got to admit, I really enjoy it, I think Calling All Cars is the best of the PSN download games I've come across; are we going to see more PSN download games from you in the future?

Jaffe: That's all you're gonna see from me in the future! You never know what's gonna happen. This is the space I wanna be in, this is the space I wanna work with this great team I have out in Utah, and I want us to make our mark in this space. I want to really do what we can to get the players... and I guess to me it's all a journey, like when I worked on God of War, which is... I only want to do games that I feel can reach a hundred per cent of the intention of the designers behind it, and I think this game [Calling All Cars] comes a lot closer to realising that it can.

It probably won't be as successful, and it may not be as critically successful, but I think the intent - which is to provide people with fun, to make people smile, to make people laugh and trash talk with their buddies - I think that intent has been achieved much better than the intent behind God of War which was to get people to feel emotional about the story and the characters. And so, I feel that we can achieve our intent much better on the PlayStation Network and these sorts of games. And this is sort of all I've got lined up for at least the next couple of years, assuming Sony will continue to support me and put up with me.

Kikizo: I think they might. It sounds like you have several ideas for games there then?

Jaffe: We're uh... we're in design phase right now... here it is... [Jaffe holds up a sheet of paper with sketches and drawings on for a couple of seconds, PR rep chimes in, "Hey! Put that away!", everyone laughs]... I'm doing the design for game number two and three right now...

Kikizo: Are you at home or at the office right now with those designs?

Jaffe: No I'm at the office... but actually I've taken to working at home over the last month - it started because, I wanted to have a connection at my house to test Calling All Cars that was like a real person's connection. At Sony, you know, we have these amazing broadband connections and I was like, it wouldn't bring me an accurate representation. But afterwards, when Calling All Cars started to wrap up, I'm like, I get so much more work done sitting at home, than I do here at the office - this is weird that I'm actually in the office now!

Kikizo: Okay then, thanks a lot for your time!

Jaffe: Thank you guys very much.

Kikizo Staff
Interview by Adam Doree and Steve Boxer

Click here for Kikizo's interview archive.

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