The Playstation and Me: David Jaffe, Part 1

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Last week marked the 15th anniversary of the Playstation brand. It’s hard to see it now, but in 1995, Sony’s surprising entry into the world of video game hardware constituted a huge gamble that many thought wouldn’t pay off. Of course, the Playstation’s fortunes turned out far better than anyone could have expected. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the success of the Playstation changed the future of video games. Along the way, the new game machine gave rise to a new breed of game designers, some of whom have become superstars in their own right. To celebrate the lifespan of the console that put them on the map, I’ve talked to several game designers whose careers exploded thanks to Playstation.

In my conversations with them, I wanted to explore how the history of the games medium and the timeline of the Playstation brand intersected and their own personal and professional biographies. Among those I spoke to was David Jaffe, the man best known for creating the Twisted Metal and God of War franchises. Talking with Jaffe illustrates just how much possibility there was at the beginning of Sony’s console efforts. Read on to find out how Kratos’ daddy and the Playstation both ascended to godhood.

So, basically what we are talking about is the history of the medium, through kind of a Playstation-centric angle. And I just want to talk to you about your career and development. For me, the interesting thing with you, as a creator, you’ve been so closely tied to Playstation for I think it’s fair to say the bulk of your career. I want to talk a little bit about what the console means to you personally, and professionally. Let’s start with your first couple jobs in the industry. What was your career path like?

Well, my career path has always been totally tied to Sony. I started as a tester for Sony Imagesoft, which was the Sony video game arm before there was a Playstation division. Terrible, terrible games for the most part. There were a couple gems in there. But for the most part, they were awful. And I was a tester. That’s how I started. Just kind of needing a job out of college.

But it was very apparent early on–almost from the moment that I walked in the door, really–that Sony was the kind of company that really gave you a lot of opportunity to really express yourself and shine. I mean, I can’t speak to Sony globally, but certainly the video game group was that kind of place.

And if you were willing to do the work, there was a lot of opportunity to sort of play in this really amazing playground that Sony was creating for us. So it was very quick to go from being a tester to saying, hey, I want to design. And even though I was still having my testing duties and my assistant producer duties, I was constantly doing designs and pitches.

Our first game, we found out Disney wanted to do a game that was celebrating Mickey Mouse’s 65th anniversary. So me and a design partner at the time, kind of said, hey, yeah, we’re just testers, but let’s put something together. And we pitched Disney, and we got the game for Sony. That pitch/approval process repeated itself and it was kind of like working up through the ranks, even though there were never any actual designers at Sony. That was never a position at Sony for many, many years.

But that was the work we did as we kind of worked up through this sort of parallel path of sort of the producing path. It really was testing, to assistant producing, to producing, and ultimately by that time, the Playstation had come into production. The idea that, hey, designers are actually something games need had begun to permeate the industry. And so eventually, we just became designers, and directors, and things like that. So it was just sort of a very organic process. We started doing game design and creation probably the first week I started at Sony. But it was never like someone came to us and said, hey, we want you to be a designer. You just had that opportunity. Because, my bosses, and they’re still the same bosses I had back then, have always been really good about letting you come in and giving you enough rope to either hang yourself or climb a tree.

Let’s backtrack a little bit to your pre-professional life. What was the first console you remember getting? And can you walk us through the various consoles you owned and highlight the games that you loved on them?

I have such nostalgic memories for my gaming youth. I’d love to go back sometimes and visit. The first one we had was I think it was called a Telstar, which was this triangular device. The device was a triangle, and on one side there was a steering wheel, on one side of the triangle there was a gun, and on the other side were little knobs. And they released these triangle shaped cartridges. And sort of all the carts were built on using those three various [inaudible] the wheel. And that was the first one. It was very rudimentary. I don’t know where my dad thought to pick it up. I never asked for it. That was the first console I had. The first video game I remember playing was kind of a black and white gunslinger game that I found in Florida by the swimming pool when we went on vacation.

So, those are my two earliest gaming memories. Obviously the minute I got that gunslinger game, all the great things about Florida went away. I didn’t care about going in the pool or going to the beach. I just wanted to play that game the entire vacation. And from there my dad for my birthday brought home an Atari 2600 which I have vivid memories of that night, and the party we had. My sister got me this amazing game that I still love called Flag Capture, which was kind of an early Mine Sweeper game. And I got Superman, and I got Combat, and I got Space Invaders. I’m looking at them right now. I got them off Amazon a few years ago. And those wonderful old Atari 2600 catalogs that shipped with every game! They showed what games were coming soon and what games were available and I absolutely hate that our industry has its back on that promo.

I remember about five years ago, Sony–for some reason, it must have been a convention or something–released kind of a similar catalog of their first-party and a few third-party offerings. God of War was in there and it just meant so much to me that I was in sort of a coming soon catalog, because I have such fond memories of the 2600 catalogs with that just great cartoony art and stuff. I mean, I’ll ramble for hours my friend, because those days were so formative for me, even to the box art of the Atari 2600 carts. I have the most influential Atari 2600 games hanging in my office: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Yar’s Revenge, Dodge ‘em, and Adventure, which is still one of my all time favorite games, and Combat. And obviously then moving on to ColecoVision and the Apple II E, and the TRS-80 from Radio Shack and then NES. From there, it was just every system that came out. The one I didn’t have was I didn’t get a SNES.

And I remember in my interview to be a tester at Sony, I got made fun of by the other testers because I was intimidated by the number of buttons on the SNES controller. Because I only had a Genesis in my apartment. And they were like, don’t hire this guy. He’s intimated by a freakin’ video game controller. But, I didn’t have that one. But, pretty much barring that one and the Odyssey, I pretty much had every system.

When you talk about gamers and owning consoles, we all have gaps, right? But it sounds like your gaps are not terribly significant.

No, no, they weren’t. The biggest gap was when the industry crashed. Everybody was playing their 2600s around ‘81, ‘82. And it wasn’t until I guess, ‘86 that another relevant console was on the market. I just remember around 84 or ‘85 going, man, what’s going to replace the Atari? There was the ColecoVision gap, but it didn’t really fit the need. Although Coleco was pretty awesome, there weren’t  that many games for it. it never hit the popular consciousness. It was kind of like, yeah-yeah, you have a Coleco, Donkey Kong works really great on it, but it wasn’t like the Atari, and it wasn’t like the NES, that really kind of became sort of a geek touchstone. I was on the Apple II, by then. And I had kind of forgotten, oh yeah, you could hook these up to your TV. Because after the 2600, I immediately migrated on to my Apple.

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