14 DAY TRIAL // The rise of smartphones has been acknowledged as having a great impact on handheld gaming, but at least one veteran developer believes that even home consoles developers and publishers need to take into account mobile and social gaming.
David Jaffe, best known for his work on the God of War and Twisted Metal, told Gamasutra that, “You have a lot of traditional publishers who want to be in these new spaces, as they should.”
“You have a number of companies that would never have thought of being video game publishers who are now trying to get into the space, whether it’s mobile or social or tablets. The landscape is definitely different than the last time I did this.”
The developer says that one problem with the mobile space is that companies need to secure funding more frequently.
He added, “You have that in consoles every two to three years, and now it’s like your game’s coming to an end every five months or eight months, so there’s always pressure. As with anything that you want to do well, there’s going to be pressure.”
Jaffe’s most recent project was a reboot of Twisted Metal for the PlayStation 3 that failed to impress critics or the audience.
Since then the developer has formed a new studio and is working on a free-to-play third-person shooter that he says will be more of a service than a traditional game.
Jaffe says that he had ten ideas lined up since moving to the social and mobile space and that all of them are designed to give players freedom to enjoy the experience at their own pace.
At the moment, Sony is working on a new God of War video game, called Ascension, which is set to be launched during 2013 on the PS3 and has no input from Jaffe.