David Jaffe Working On Free-To-Play Third-Person Shooter

Twisted Metal designer David Jaffe announced his departure from Eat, Sleep, Play, the development studio that he co-founded, last week, and yet he’s already getting started on an all-new project.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, the famously outspoken developer revealed that he’s working on a browser-based third-person shooter that, interesting enough, will be supported by a free-to-play model, as is all the rage with just about every genre nowadays.

“I hate free-to-play but I love aspects of it,” Jaffe explained. “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****** machine and go through legal screens and load screens and load the game.”

Jaffe added: “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.”

Jaffe reiterated that he loves some aspects of the free-to-play model, but there’s one thing in particular he hates: the all too common “pay to win” microtransactions.

“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],” Jaffe said. “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 s*****.”

Free-to-play or not, consider me interested to see what Jaffe can come up with.