Jaffe quits ESP, “casual” future claim is “exaggerated”

go jaffe you do what you wanna do and to all the haters who disagree then fuck yous cause you made him do it

Wonder how this affects the three-game deal ESP had with Sony.

Wasn’t Eat, Sleep, Play formed with the intention of making small games anyway?

Be free again Jaffe! Swear like never before!

Ta ta Jaffe. I wont miss the tripe you produce.

@2 I wonder if that’s considered over after Twisted Metal on the PS3? As technically speaking that’s the third game they’ve worked on.

I’m not sure there can be any clearer indication of what’s happening in games right now. They don’t get any more core than Jaffe.

Twisted Metal ios on its way then… And Super Rocket jet cars (or whatever it was) ios too no doubt.

Updated.

#6 Really? You mean like God of War, which was largely a streamlined modification of slashers like NG or Dmc. Very much core indeed. As for Twisted Metal, Plants and Zombies is more core than that game.

There wasn’t a single game featuring D.Jaffe that wasn’t made with the broadest target audience and maximum income in mind.

#6 well i think that what he said on previous interviews about gamers and developers only wanting graphic power for next gen consoles, instead of developing/creating new ways of interaction, gameplay etc, has something to do with this, and i think this news is not bad, we need innovation from time to time, and sometimes we pursue this instead of the common and well know path, maybe he wanted to expand other views more with the core touch too, wish him luck and success in everything.

@9 – I’m not sure PvZ is more core than TM. You’re right that he always aims at being as popular as possible, but it’s popularity very much within the core market. I suppose I mean by “core” the concept of creating big budget games on a disc for consoles. For the smaller guys it just doesn’t make sense any more.

@10 – Yep, I wish him all the best. You’re absolutely right that we need people to innovate. What it indicates is that devs from the 360/PS3 space are looking beyond to platforms like iOS, browser games, etc. Things are changing very quickly now.

Jaffe is full of shit. He bangs on about indie development and doing his own thing… bla bla bla,

He then works for almost three years on a game that quite frankly doesn’t look very good, does things he supposedly loathes like adding day 1 patches (and then tries desperately to justify it), and then quits before the game is even released, presumably to absolve himself of any responsibility for how half baked it will inevitably be.

I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t come out on the back of poor reviews to make excuses for why the game isn’t up to his own high standards – publisher interference etc.

#11 Oh, if that’s what you meant then fair enough indeed.

@6 – yeah and right after your mobile games feature. The gulf is becoming wider and wider with each passing day in games between indie/mobile and AAA blockbusters.

There really isn’t any in between any more; anything still lying inbetween tends to suffer for it: not big enough to be a blockbuster, but still too big to recoup costs and make money easily. Your target audience is all away either on iOS/indie affairs or AAA CoD type games.

Sort of thing makes me worried about games like the darkness II.

Jaffe has been on a “fuck you 140 character limit! I’ma write an essay” ramble where he talks about this matter. It seems he’s quitting ESP to start his own studio in San Diego because he wants to be part of the internal game development process.

Why on earth is it that people talk about this guy as if he re-invented the wheel? He just happened to be working with the right team at the right time when God of War happened and suddenly he’s talked about as some sort of game-developing genius….what about all the creative directors of other fantastic games like Uncharted, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Dark Souls…etc

^ …Could you actually point to these praising comments?

To be fair Pat, people have always migrated to the latest new thing. It says more for the present than it does for the future.

Ken Levine pretty much spoke like a prophet when he said that once people realize what the new thing is, it’s pretty much over, and some of those late comers are going to be fighting for scraps.

The same thing happened when consoles got serious in the late 80′s/early 90′s. People were crossing over left and right, and while some experienced great succes, others just crashed and burned.

It’s just what happens when something new comes along.

@14 Whoa, where did the negativity train come from?

How can that possibly be your angle? If anything the last decade has been all about the rebirth of indie, hardly the fall of it.

In the mid 90′s you were looking at tonnes of indies that were able to flourish, and then that got killed in the technology rush of the late 90′s, only to resurface once people got fed up with publishers in the mid-odds.

Now publishers are actually having to compromise with things like the EA Partners model, and I don’t see indies going anywhere but up.

To me that’s like a minor landslide, and I’m pretty impressed that developers are actually able to influence the industry, rather than passively leaving it to the vultures.

I wasn’t talking about indies, indies are definitely here to stay!

I was talking about the sustainability of big budget games that don’t reach that 4-5 million units window. Games like darkness II, vanquish, bayonetta, rayman origins etc.

NOt necessarily as expensive to make as a game like BF3 or skyrim perhaps but still don’t seem to be able to recoup their investment on them.

@19 Oh! Totally went over my head

I think losing the “middle” market would be one of the dumbest possible things that publishers could do. That’s where you find the new blockbusters. Turning 50 cents into a dollar isn’t bad, but turning 25 into a hundred is a lot better.

If anything, I think they should actually risk more. At least part of the reason why so many newer IPs flop, is because they don’t really dare to be new. We’ve seen stuff like Syndicate already. That’s never going to cause a stir.

I think you’ll get further exploring creativity rather than focus groups.

@19 You can’t really include the Darkness 2 as an example considering A) It’s only just released. B) There’s no sales figures.

call it an educated guess =/

actually i’d like to hear Pat’s thoughts on this sort of thing given his recent trip to Finland.

I look forward to the vision he could bring to the casual games market. Though personally, I hope he makes an indie titles for XBLA, PSN, PC, Android, and iOS.

I’m so confused… isn’t Jaffe one of the founders of Eat, Sleep, Play? Surely he had as much freedom as he wanted to do whatever he wanted?

@24: Not if he’s under contract from some publisher.

I wish him the best. I love the games he directed, the God of War series really suffered without his influence. Think i’m gonna revisit his blog now.

Wow I totally read that wrong at first I though Jaffe left to make casual games, thank god thats not the case hopefully he makes another company for Sony! I wonder how there are going to support Twisted Metal after moving mobile?
Lol and just by reading these comments looks like almost everyone had my same assumption on what he was leaving for!

David Jaffe isn’t leaving Eat Sleep Play to make casual games, he is leaving because Eat Sleep Play wants to make casual games! Jaffe will probably form another company for Sony developing some new core games probably with the eight people that were laid off!

Looks like he’s either a hate him or love him kind of guy, only really seen 2 extremes here, I for one don’t hate him I’ve enjoyed a couple of his games but those such as GoW seem too generic for me. I dislike when people keep bitching about lack of innovation, there’s multiple reasons why a game is like it is, financial concerns being a recurring factor but some of you guys bitch as if you expect them to reinvent the damn wheel over & over again, there’s a reason why standards are set, instead of trying to customize it every time, I’d be happy with improvements. As much as some of you may hate it, we need our CoDs & the likes, although I’d agree that it doesn’t deserve nearly as much success as it has.