David Jaffe — an industry veteran who made a name for himself as the creator of God of War and Twisted Metal — has never been afraid to honestly speak his mind, and the latest target of his honesty is the AAA games industry.
According to Jaffe, AAA games of yesteryear are pretty much the same games as modern AAA releases, just less pretty. In other words, they are riddled with repetitiveness, which is true.
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To illustrate his point, Jaffe called upon Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise. After praising the series and Naughty Dog for their excellent work over the years, he pointed out that beyond an uptick in production and advancement in graphical fidelity, 2016’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End plays basically the same way as 2007’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. And again, I have to agree. That’s not too take away from Uncharted 4 — it’s one of the best games of 2016 — but from a gameplay perspective it isn’t much different than its 9-year-older predecessor.
Current Triple A video games are dying.
You just don’t know it yet…//t.co/KplOT3mkZk
— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) November 23, 2018
The point of doing that is to say: what I did in 2001 with U1 PLAYS THE SAME (within most people’s minds) as what I did in U4. At a pure mechanics level, the game isn’t offering anything meaningfully new and FOR ME that is what I want in my games.
— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) November 23, 2018
No, I mean all of those sorts of games. Uncharted suffers from it as well: same gameplay, better production. If that works for you, I respect that. Truly. I do. For me, once I play a game, I need the next game I play to offer something meaningfully fresh or I’m out.
— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) November 23, 2018
It’s important to note, that Jaffe never once says the Uncharted series is bad. In fact, he believes Naughty Dog is one of the best in the business. It’s not a bad series, FAR from it. It just doesn’t offer much new in terms of gameplay, and the mileage of which that impacts your enjoyment of the series will vary depending on your preferences.
Who in the world said Uncharted is bad?!? I sure as fuck didn’t. Also, in that very video I talk about how Naughty Dog is second to MAYBE only Sony Santa Monica when it comes to execution. Do I think the AAA 3rd person action/adv genre is atrophying and that Uncharted is a great //t.co/5iPuaArdsp
— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) November 23, 2018
I think the job with sequels is to provide a blend of comfort food gameplay and news and surprising. I think most AAA games drop the ball on the new and surprising.
— David Jaffe (@davidscottjaffe) November 23, 2018
Jaffe concludes his case, by claiming that a majority of gamers will begin to be fed up with AAA games and their repetitiveness in a few years. Or in other words, be on the same page as him. Further, The God of War creator notes that something similar happened back in the 90’s when gamers and developers got sick of making mascot platformers, which is true, the market increasingly rejected mascot platformers for awhile.
However, while this is true, not every modern AAA game is limited to the same genre, in fact they span quite a few. Will gamers get sick of RPG progression systems being pigeonholed into every game? Maybe. Will they get sick of the games-as-a-service structure? Probably. Open-worlds? I think we’re already seeing that. But looking at the current state of the AAA market and how diverse it is across many genres, I don’t see mainstream gamers in mass rejecting AAA games anytime soon.
