Twisted Metal Creator David Jaffe Working on F2P Shooter

A post on GamesIndustry today reveals the new project coming from David Jaffe, the Twisted Metal co-creator who left Eat Sleep Play earlier this year to start a new company. According to the post, Jaffe’s next project will be a browser-based, free-to-play third-person shooter, something he decided on after narrowing down his ideas from 10 different concepts.

“I’m fleshing that out and generating assets for a lot of concept art…kinda just getting up a rough prototype, and then just figuring out who the team exactly is going to be,” he’s quoted as saying. “That’s what a lot of my meetings have been about today [at E3].”

Jaffe went into more detail about his feelings on the free-to-play phenomenon and that he hopes to break out of the standard formula:

“I hate free-to-play but I love aspects of it. I love the instant-on, I love the low to no barrier of entry to get all kinds of people to jump in and play, I love the fact that you’re sitting there at lunch and can play for five minutes or you can get sucked in and play for three hours. You don’t have to sit there and power up your f***ing machine and go through legal screens and load screens and load the game. I know that sounds kind of petty but when you think of all the distractions and fragmentation of entertainment today, for me that’s kind of a pain. I’ll choose to do other things rather than sit down and load up a triple-A game unless it’s super, super special.

[...] So while I love parts of free-to-play, I hate other parts. I hate how it’s like the tail wagging the dog and it’s the business model and all about getting people to pay [with more micro-transactions]. You can listen to developers all day long tell you it’s not pay to win, but you know, it kind of is pay to win. I’m not saying they’re evil or they’re lying—but one of the things they like to say is pay with your time or pay with your money. Well both of those are really shitty.

[...] For me it’s about starting a company and finding the right group of people that really believe in this vision that there’s great stuff about free-to-play but we want to make it genuinely for gamers. And I know a lot of people say that, but what they mean is we’re making games that are thematically and mechanically appealing to gamers, but then we’re going to f**k it all up with a business model that kind of pisses gamers off and keeps gamers away.”

The whole post has plenty more classic Jaffe goodness, though it’s not really too big on specifics about what this game will eventually be. Even still, it’s nice to know that he’s out there making moves and trying to shake things up. Twisted Metal and God of War are still pretty momentous, genre-defining titles that have influenced countless games that have come after them. If anyone can make F2P new and exciting, it’s Jaffe.

Via GamesIndustry