David Jaffe

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This article is about the video game designer. For the composer of contemporary classical music, see David A. Jaffe.
David Jaffe
Born (1971-04-13) April 13, 1971 (age 50)
Birmingham, Alabama, United States
OccupationVideo game designer, journalist
Known forTwisted Metal series
God of War series
Height1.68 m (5 ft 6 in)
WebsiteBlog

David Scott Jaffe (born April 13, 1971) is an American video game designer; best known for his contribution to the Twisted Metal and God of War franchises.[1][2]

Biography[]

Jaffe is originally from Birmingham, Alabama and currently resides in San Diego, California.[3] He was born to a Jewish family. Jaffe graduated from Alabama's Mountain Brook High School, located in Mountain Brook, AL, a suburb of Birmingham. Jaffe then attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He applied to the USC School of Cinematic Arts, but was never admitted. After a few years pursuing his dream of directing movies, he turned to game design.

Jaffe is well known for directing the Twisted Metal series and God of War. Jaffe's Twisted Metal: Black and God of War have both ranked into IGN's "Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time", with Twisted Metal: Black in ninth place and God of War winning first place as IGN's best PS2 game of all time.[4] In 2007, Jaffe left SCEA to found Eat Sleep Play. The studio signed a multi-year deal with Sony to create games exclusively for PlayStation platforms. He left Eat Sleep Play in February 2012 due to creative differences.[5][6]

In 2014, he announced his first project on his new studio The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency called Drawn to Death as a PlayStation 4 exclusive.[7] The game received mixed reviews, and due to the cancellation of an unannounced title, his newfound company shut down a year later. Jaffe heavily expressed disdain to the mixed critical reception and insists the reception from players who played the game were more positive.[8]

Since leaving his previous company, Jaffe now primarily live streams his show, Gabbin' + Games, formerly The Jaffe Stream, via Twitch and YouTube. Here, he openly converses with his audience via live chat and Discord about the past and current state of the video game industry, world events, pop culture, politics, metaphysics, the paranormal and existentialism, among other topics.

He has served as a creative consultant for Polish developer Movie Games.

In 2021, Jaffe went viral due to his criticisms of Metroid Dread's design, after he was stuck in an early-game section where hidden blocks needed to be destroyed to progress, despite a tutorial already teaching players that such destruction would be necessary for progress. Despite being mocked from fans of the Metroid series, Jaffe defended his comments by arguing that other Metroidvanias—games with a play-style similar to the series—had more intuitive methods of onboarding players to game mechanics, and after speaking to a journalist who was a fan of the series, stated his openness to re-visit the game with more notice given to the series' legacy.[9]

Works[]

References[]

  1. ^ "Twisted Metal Studio Hit With Massive Layoffs". CINEMABLEND. 2018-01-27. Retrieved 2018-05-11.
  2. ^ "Spider-Man PS4 and Why We're in a Golden Age of Licensed Games - GameRevolution". GameRevolution. 2018-05-02. Retrieved 2018-05-11.
  3. ^ "David Jaffe Opens Up," GamePro 235 (April 2008): 23.
  4. ^ IGN PlayStation Team (2007-03-16). "The Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time". IGN.com. Archived from the original on 2007-06-05. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
  5. ^ Sliwinski, Alexander. "David Jaffe leaves Eat Sleep Play, layoffs hit developer [Update]". Joystiq. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
  6. ^ Jaffe, David. "Why I Left Eat Sleep Play". DavidJaffe.biz. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
  7. ^ Matulef, Jeffrey (2014-12-06). "David Jaffe reveals arena shooter Drawn to Death". Eurogamer. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
  8. ^ "David Jaffe's The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency closes down". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
  9. ^ "'Metroid Dread' struggles to communicate the series's true, lasting appeal. Let us help". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2021-10-26.
  10. ^ Jaffe's Blog with Project Listing Archived 2010-06-09 at the Wayback Machine

External links[]

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