God of War designer “Lost Interest in the Genre”

Certain SPOnG staffers were huge fan’s of David Jaffe’s PS2 epic, God of War. Indeed, arguments still simmer in the office over the relative merits of God of War compared with Shadow of the Colossus – suffice to say they are two of SPOnG's favourite PS2 titles of all time.

With this in mind we were shocked to hear that David Jaffe has seemingly lost all interest “in the genre of single player action/adventure games" after designing God of War. This from Jaffe’s personal blog.

He continues: "I've really lost interest in making any kind of game that does not fully and only embrace interactivity in the most purest sense… I don't want to tell stories with my games anymore."

Fairly surprising stuff, when you consider what a huge commercial and critical hit God of War was. Read on to find out why this lauded games designer has decided to eschew making epic stories in favour of what he refers to as ‘purer’ ‘rawer’ games.

Jaffe certainly hasn’t lost interest in the single-player story-driven epic as a genre, as he enthuses about playing recent epics such as Tomb Raider (PSP) and Oblivion (360), but, as he puts it bluntly: “as a guy who has DESIGNED one of these damn epic things, I can tell you that I no longer have any interest in making these kinds of games.”

He goes on to talk elliptically about the deep feelings “that the best pure games can always evoke. Feelings of tension and release, feelings of fear and anxiety, feelings of triumph and defeat, feelings of confusion followed- sometimes- by joy at having overcome the challenge.”

To try to explain his new thinking and position on games design, Jaffe introduces a rather strange trumpet analogy: “To me, most (all?) story based games are like taking a trumpet and playing it a little, but also using the brass exterior of the trumpet to carve a story onto a wall. Sure you can do it, and you may even have a nice story scratched onto the wall when you are done. But it’s not really what the trumpet is for and there are a hell of a lot easier ways to write a story. Plus, you’ve got this nice, shiny trumpet- which is now all scratched up- just sitting there, begging to be played, begging to be used as it was intended.”

Hmmm, perhaps Jaffe is a frustrated Miles Davis wannabe and not really a very good videogames designer after all?

He goes on to stress the fun he’s having working on his new PSP project, but provides annoyingly little detail, other than to say “I’m having a blast so far.” This he compares to ‘the slog’ of making a story-driven cinematic epic such as God of War.

Signing off he ruminates: “So is this a permanent change? I don’t know. It feels like it is but I’m just going to have to see. I mean, I certainly want to keep making commercial games and keep doing things that game players love... I've always gone with my gut on this kind of stuff and right now, my gut is having a ball.”

Well, surprising stuff, SPOnG is sure you’ll agree. But at the same time it’s nice to know that Jaffe, whatever the hell he is up to and whatever the hell’s going on in his mighty brain (trumpets?) clearly has a deep love for gaming and a willingness (not to mention commercial clout) to experiment a little.

SPOnG will be bringing you news on Jaffe’s forthcoming PSP project that he’s clearly very excited about as soon as we have it.