David Jaffe is one outspoken individual who isn’t afraid to lay it all out on the line. From his over-the-top praise of the God of War series he helped pioneer to his insight into the industry, Jaffe rarely holds his punches. This behavior is what makes Jaffe such a great choice for The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ feature of Ten Questions. In case you haven’t figured it out, this is a feature that involves taking a prominent industry figure and asking them ten questions.
When questioned about which game Jaffe is most jealous of, the answer that followed isn’t all that shocking considering the numerous Game of the Year awards it has garnered in 2008. Jaffe’s answer, Metal Gear Solid 4.
According to Jaffe, MGS 4 is "an amazing achievement of both gameplay and mastering the process of game production. To make a game of that scale and at that level of quality clearly took a whole hell of a lot of tenacity and vision."
One of the other more interesting questions posed in the interview relates to a problem within the industry. When questioned about which problem was hurting the industry the most, Jaffe cited Engine building.
"I hate the constant engine creation that goes on in the business. I would like us to only compete via our creative skills. It’s a pain-in-the-ass knowing that we could have the coolest ideas in the world and they could get sabotaged because our engine is not up to snuff. I hate that a game can often live or die by graphics and the graphics often live or die by how good your engine is. I understand it, but in a perfect world we’d all be using the same game engine and the competition would be about creative ideas, art quality, and how well a team can execute on those ideas, not quality of engines. This happens sometimes in our industry but not as much as I would like."
This is great insight to what may be going on in certain development houses, but those are the breaks that this line of work comes with. If you want to check out the full interview, feel free to click here.