David Jaffe
David Jaffe is a video game designer originally from Birmingham and currently resides in San Diego, California. Jaffe is a Mountain Brook High School graduate. Jaffe attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He applied to their prestigious film school, but was never admitted. After a few years pursuing his dream of directing movies, he turned to game design.
He is best known for directing theTwisted Metal series and, more recently, God of War. Jaffe's Twisted Metal: Black and God of War have both ranked into IGN's "Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time", with Twisted Metal: Black in ninth place and God of War winning first place as IGN's choice for best PS2 game of all time. In 2007, Jaffe left SCEA to found Eat Sleep Play, however the studio has signed a multi-year deal with Sony to create games exclusively for PlayStation platforms.
Jaffe is also somewhat unique amongst game developers in how directly he interfaces with the public, known for conducting plenty of interviews, regularly posting developer blogs, and communicating regularly through his own personal blog - where he also discusses things outside of the game industry, such as his personal politics. As such he has also gained a reputation for exercising little restraint in airing his views, which while drawing the ire of some has made him more personable to others.
Works
- Twisted Metal Head On: Extra Twisted Edition (2008) (PlayStation 2)
- Calling All Cars! (2007) (PlayStation 3)
- God of War (2005) (PS2)
- Kinetica (2001) (PS2)
- Twisted Metal: Black (2001) (PS2)
- Twisted Metal 2 (1996) (PlayStation)
- Twisted Metal (1995) (PlayStation)
- Mickey Mania (1994) (Super NES/Sega Mega Drive/Genesis/Sega CD)
Controversy
After some negative press over Calling All Cars, Jaffe proceeded to post a vulgarity-laced tirade on his blog against a review author. The action caused Jaffe to stop blogging for over a month[1], and called into question whether or not it was appropriate for someone from the game industry to put pressure on reviewers.[2][3][4]
References
- David Jaffe. (2008, December 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 06:16, December 19, 2008 [5]