Interviews// David Jaffe: Calling All Cars

At the recent European press event at Sony’s Three Rooms – much to SPOnG's (and Sony’s) surprise, we managed to sneak a quick ten-minute interview with David Jaffe, the man behind the God of War games and a burgeoning games industry hero.

Conditions weren’t ideal – the interview was conducted via a video-link operated over two PS3s hooked up to Eye Toys, and we were told that we couldn’t ask any questions about God of War. So the focus was on Jaffe’s PSN download game Calling All Cars – and how Jaffe is following that up with at least two further download games. At one point, he even held his notebook, in which his jottings for his next two PSN download games resided, to the camera – to a mock-serious chorus of “Put that down!” from surrounding Sony employees.

Jaffe, it seems, is very taken with the more leisurely demands of making download games, and says he will devote the next two years of his working life to just that (so don’t hold your breath for Jaffe on God of War III). Anyway, this is what he told us:

SPOnG: Was it a relief to embark on a smaller, cartoon-style download-only project after your usual epics?

David Jaffe: Relief may not be the right word – but it was a joy. It was so much fun to do a game that was really just about what I think makes games great: the interactivity. It wasn’t about storytelling, cut-scenes or ambience; it was about what you do with the controller, and what you do with your buddies when they have the controller. I loved getting into the purity of that. Because I got into games in 1992/93, and I never got to work on those kinds of games that I grew up playing and loving, like Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Asteroids and Battlezone.

Because of the technology, that’s all they could do. And now I love the fact that with the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC downloads, as designers, we now have the opportunity to go back to what I think was a great era of gameplay, and maybe even try to build on top of it.


SPOnG: Did you face any challenges in developing a first-generation PlayStation Network title?

David Jaffe: Well, there were some technical challenges that I can’t speak about because I’m not a technical guy.

As a game designer, I think the biggest challenge was the realisation that we couldn’t fall back on any of the tricks that we had used in the past, in terms of: “Maybe here, the gameplay’s not that great, but let’s show you a really cool camera-move,” as in God of War, or: “This room isn’t that exciting, but in the next room we can make up for that fact.” But in a game like Calling All Cars, or any arcade game, if your core gaming isn’t working, there’s nowhere for you to hide, because that thing that’s broken travels with you over every aspect of the game.

There’s only so much real-estate, and you’re always in the game. So that was the biggest challenge, and the biggest thing to learn and take forward with our future PlayStation Network games – you’re pretty much naked with these things, and you’d better bring your A-game, otherwise after a few minutes, you’re pretty bored.


SPOnG: Is Calling All Cars totally finished and ready to go?

David Jaffe: The American version is in format-checking; we’ve come in and out of format a couple of times, but bugs kept coming up, and I think we’ll clear the format for the American release today or tomorrow. I know we’re doing the Japanese submission in the next day or two; I don’t know about Europe. On the development end, we’re finished with it.

(Note: Since the interview the game has been released.)