If there was ever any doubt that free-to-play games are here to stay, let it now be put to rest. Famed game designer David Jaffe has announced that his next project is a free-to-play third-person shooter.
The announcement comes just a few months after Jaffe finished work on the reboot of the Twisted Metal series he had been headlining with his former company Eat Sleep Play. Jaffe gained fame in the gaming industry for his early work in the 1990s on the Twisted Metal series, and for his work in creating the original God of War.
"I had people saying, ‘Hey Jaffe, we want you to come work on this big triple- or quadruple-A next-gen thing’ and the kind of team you need for that is very different from what we’re ultimately doing, which is a free-to-play, browser-based, third-person shooter,” he told Games Industry International.
Jaffe was his usual, quotable self in the interview and revealed much of what was on his mind regarding the F2P shooter genre. “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]," said Jaffe. "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 shitty.”
Hopefully now that one of big-budget gaming's most vaunted developers has made the switch to F2P we can finally put to bed the long-since ridiculous notion that F2P games are low quality. The world is changing, and F2P is here to stay. Let's hope Jaffe can push the genre to even greater heights.
