Jaffe: I Would’ve Proudly Admitted if Twisted Metal Was Delayed Due to Uncharted 3
Upon Twisted Metal’s delay many thought it was due to the fierce competition such as Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. While that wasn’t the case at all, God of War creator David Jaffe himself would have been happy to delay his title, if he was given a choice, due to the launches of Naughty Dog and Infinity Ward’s respective games.
Speaking to Complex, David Jaffe admitted that even though it would have been a smart decision to delay Eat Sleep Play’s title due to the two blockbusters, it wasn’t due to that reason, but the Twisted Metal director would have made the decision if it came to that:
I think the real trick with this new Twisted Metal is the best game we’ve ever made. I’ve never been so proud of a team or as proud of my own work in a game that I’ve put out—and I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years. We’re not naive about it all, we understand that we have a mountain to climb given the competition that is hitting the shelves just next month. But we know we have our hardcore Twisted fans and we love them as much as they love us!
Honestly, we have no clue if there’s going to be a huge audience or a minuscule audience or something somewhere in-between that’s going to show up after our fan base buys their copy. But I’ll tell you this, man—if the reason we were moving [the release date] was to get out of the way of Call of Duty or Uncharted 3 then that’s smart business. I would have proudly owned that decision, but that’s definitely not the reason.
Additionally, the outspoken developer also commented on the fact that real life violence is occasionally blamed on titles such as Grand Theft Auto:
Video games are the whipping boy, y’know? That’s how you know you have arrived. People are always a little afraid of stuff they didn’t grow up with. It’s absurd because you think that people would be more open-minded. The funny thing about it all is—I have this debate with people all the time—that anybody who plays video games and is engaged with the culture are intensely aware how the brain works. I don’t have a degree or anything to back this up, but as a way person, I’m watching, and you see gamers almost in a meditative state while playing the game. The only way to make great gameplay is to engage the brain. The people who criticize the games are the ones who basically have never actually sat down and really engaged in a good game. If they did that then they would very quickly realize that all of these surface elements are commentary on what is corrupting our society.
Jaffe continued by stating that videogames only has a minor element of shock value, which wears off after the first few minutes, and hence videogames can hardly be blamed for real-life actions of the gamer:
Yeah, there is an element of shock value that effects you for the first few minutes, but then it wears off. If it’s a good game, your brain is rationalizing on how to drive this car to the mobster’s hideout without wrecking the car and blowing up the bomb in the trunk. Your brain goes to that place of solving puzzles, spacial relation challenges, and resource management puzzles. I totally get how someone who is not familiar with all that would just look at the surface and come to such a conclusion, but I think it is unfortunate that we live in such a time. People spitting off utter nonsense without any real understand of what they’re talking about is classless. So, I say that you say that I don’t think video games were responsible for 95% of the things that most people lay at it’s feet.
Twisted Metal is due for a launch on Valentine’s day, February 14th next year, exclusive to PS3.
