Jaffe admits he actually ‘hates’ free-to-play but loves ”aspects of it.” The instant-on, low entry barrier and casual nature of it appeals to him. He loathes the ‘pay to win’ nature of it.
In fact Jaffe doesn’t really believe studios who claim their F2P title isn’t pay to win. He also talks the ‘meta desire’ of shooters featuring level ups and that you ‘pay with time’.
The veteran game designer had 10 concepts on his plate once for what he wanted to do next.
”From that spectrum of games I had, 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,” David Jaffe told GamesIndustry.biz.
“I hate free-to-play but I love aspects of it. I love the instant-on, I love the low to no barrier of entry to get all kinds of people to jump in and play, I love the fact that you’re sitting there at lunch and can play for five minutes or you can get sucked in and play for three hours.”
Jaffe also went into detail over what ‘sucks’ about the free-to-play model.
”I hate how it’s like the tail wagging the dog and it’s the business model and all about getting people to pay. 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,” he said.
“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.”
Many shooters today employ a rank and unlock system where more kills means more XP toward the next power up. These are just as bad though, argues Jaffe. Call of Duty and Battlefield use ‘meta desire’.
“Let’s take a shooter – if you think about what’s happened with shooters, so much of what makes shooters today work (and it’s unfortunate that sometimes it’s the only thing that makes them work besides graphics and spectacle) is sort of the morphine drip of powering up and levelling up.”
“So if you’re saying pay with your time, you’re saying have sort of a crappy time because we’re stretching out those morphine drips really long because we want to motivate you to pay,” he explained.
”And if you pay immediately and get the really cool stuff, then suddenly you don’t have that meta desire for a while to go back to it and to want to keep playing.”
David Jaffe - a man not afraid to speak his mind.
”…while there are people who love the stuff I’ve worked on and I love that they love that, but there are probably an equal number of people who just think I’m an asshole.”
”And I’m not but because of the way I present myself… I don’t make a conscious choice to be outspoken but I do think a lot of people walk around being too buttoned up and I think it’s not healthy. I think there’s a balance - I’m not saying just say anything that comes to your mind but I think as a society we should let ourselves shine through a bit more.”