Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe during his Sony days

In Part I of our three-part interview with Eat Sleep Play co-founder David Jaffe, conducted in July, he revealed the thought process that led to his departure from Sony. In Part II, he discussed his concerns about how people who create but do not own original IP are compensated by the publishers who employ. In today's third and final installment, Jaffe shares the lessons he learned while developing the Playstation Network download title Calling All Cars, his ambitions to create downloadable games that can compete with their $60 brethren, and explains why we shouldn't hold our collective breath waiting for him to make epic games again—even on the PSP. Read on.

What were the main lessons you learned from working on Calling All Cars that you're bringing to the new company?

Well, a couple of really good ones. I wouldn't say the biggest, but one of the biggest ones—I'm actually doing a post-mortem on my blog next week about this, because I've really been thinking about "What did I learn from that experience?" And one of the things I learned was that you have to design your game—and that includes mechanics and thematic—to speak to the audience that owns the system. I had made this assumption, which was an incorrect assumption, that because the game was $10 people would be like, "Ah, it's cartoony. I usually buy military hardcore stuff, but you know what? I'm going to give it a try. It's just ten bucks." It would be an impulse buy.

The reality of it is—and I know that this happened with a number of people who bought the game—but nowhere near as many people were able to get over the thematic hump being unappealing to them, because they're looking for games that are testosterone-fueled. The number of people who got over the hump because the price was so low was significantly lower than the number of people who responded to that game in exact same way they would if it had been a $60 game, which was "Thematically this just doesn't appeal to me."

That was a really big lesson that we're carrying forward. Even though we're in the less expensive game space from a development and a selling standpoint, we have to continue to be very respectful of who our main audience just like we've been on the $60 titles. We did that from a gameplay standpoint on Calling All Cars, but from a thematic standpoint we definitely did not. The other lesson from a gameplay standpoint was that $10 is still a lot of money. You're not forgiven for the fact that it's only $10. There are expectations even if you do a lot of things really right. Anything you put out there, even though it's $10, gets judged like it's $60.

Got it.

We got dinged all over the place on, "The single player game wasn't as rich as the multiplayer game." Well, I thought it was incredibly obvious that this game was designed to be a multiplayer game. Now that's not saying the multiplayer game was perfect, because there were definitely some flaws there that we learned from as well. But I assumed people would be like "Okay, the single player game is there train me, but it's really about going online." I assumed anybody who got the game would have been able to get online because that's how they got the game.

Absolutely.

But it turned out that we got dinged in reviews. We got dinged online in forums because people were like "The single player game is really kind of boring." It's like a sports game—the single player game was never meant to be anything other than training. It's really about the multiplayer game. So don't put anything out there assuming because it's $10 that you're going to be forgiven a little bit. If I were to make Calling All Cars again, I would have ripped out the single player entirely and just said "Look, it's a multiplayer game. That's what you get." I would have made sure people knew it before they bought it and then it would have been judged on the merits that we shipped. It wouldn't have been judged like I assumed it was going to be judged, which was "Oh, it's ten bucks. The single player is kind of okay but really all about the multiplayer."

I'm rambling, but that's—

Not at all.

I'm percolating all of this right now because I'm actually in the process of writing something about it, but there were a good five to ten things that I learned from it. I think in a lot of ways I learned more from this game, because while it was successful and got some pretty good reviews, it was not as big as God of War. It was not as big as Twisted Metal. So that really made us go, "All right, let's figure out why, so next time we step up to the plate we can apply those lessons to what we're doing."

Just a few more questions.

Sure.

So it's a three game deal with Sony?

We're doing the port [of Twisted Metal Head-On] which is not part of the three game deal, then we're going to go and do console and handheld exclusives with Sony for these first three games.

You mentioned PC as well. What's the plan for how you guys want to approach PCs? Is that going to be browser-based, Flash games, download—what are you thinking?

We're not really prepared to talk about our PC plan at the moment. We're definitely excited about the casual space, but right now all of our energy and focus is going towards making sure that fans of Sony and fans of the Playstation really get good stuff. I would definitely love to share with you down the road our PC ideas and plans, but right now we're really focused on getting Twisted Metal done and starting on the first game.

How many people are at the company? How much do you think you'll want to do in-house versus how much you'll want to outsource and do elsewhere?

It depends. On day one I think the number is about 25 or 26. We don't really want to grow more than about 35 to 40 if that, and I don't know if we'll ever get that big. So outsourcing certain things down the road is definitely something we're looking at. Certainly not to the level of like a—what are those guys who did Stubbs the Zombie called? Heavy Load?

Wideload.

Wideload. Yeah, we definitely don't have a model like that. We are a one-stop shop development house. But certainly—as is becoming the case more and more even if you don't have a Wideload structure—we may be outsourcing, be it music, be it cut scenes or be it actual in-game assets like know textures and models and animation. It's something that's becoming more and more prevalent, and I think we'll probably jump on that bandwagon from time to time. But it's not a major aspect of our structure.

In terms of the promotion of small games, I've had this conversation with people at Sony-—both execs and PR—and I've talked to people who've been dealing with challenges in terms of dealing with Xbox Live. In both cases it seems like the games—the PSN games, Xbox Live Arcade games—really don't get that much of a PR push.

Right.

In your case, because you're Dave Jaffe, you had done God War and PSN downloads were new enough, there was a lot of attention paid to Calling All Cars. But in general, a game like Super Stardust HD—

Yes.

—which is getting a strong grassroots following, there was little attention. It showed up at a few events, but there just wasn't anything really sustained behind it. In the case of Xbox Live arcade, I've talked to people making games for it who are basically being told by Microsoft, "Don't do any PR for this—we'll take care of it." But it seems like Microsoft is pretty much using these games to promote the Xbox Live Arcade Service. So there's a week of PR the game that comes out and that's it. It goes away and then the next game comes out. So when you look at that structure, what do you think needs to happen on the PR front and the marketing front to elevate these smaller games?

Well, I don't know if that's an accurate assessment, if I may say. Because if you look at something like Warhawk, I mean Warhawk has been promoted all over the place and will continue to be. Yes, it's coming out on Blu-Ray, but it's also a PSN title. Same thing with SOCOM. A lot of it has to do with "Is the game worth the time?" There's two ways you can promote it, right? You can promote the service—which you're right, they are doing—or you can promote the individual game. I think up until this point—and including Calling All Cars—they've been doing it this way.

You know, these smaller games are interesting. They sort of merit an appreciative nod at worst and like you said, a grassroots fan base at best. But there hasn't been a game on either system yet that I think has really been able to compete with the noise of big games like say Grand Turismo or Heavenly Sword or God of War or whatever. And so I think until that happens, until we as the makers and creators of smaller games are able to find a way to bust through the noise of the bigger games, then that will continue to happen. Looking at the movies, you rarely hear about an independent film over the roar of the big summer movies. But every now and then an indie film is so good and so compelling and so interesting that it does become what people are talking about, and that is the thing that gets the push and the cover of Entertainment Weekly, when "Blair Witch" gets on there or something like that.

The other thing is when you say, "What did you learn from Calling All Cars?" that's exactly what we learned. Whether we succeed or fail, I guarantee you we're going into our first original PSP title or PS3 title for Sony with that intent, in the DNA of the design which is, "Okay, the appreciative nods are not good enough for us. We want a hit. We want a lot of people to play and love our game. We want to be able to stand toe to toe with the big $60 Blu-Ray titles." It's not going to come from doing really cool, nice-looking arcade games that are appreciated and people pat us on the head and say, "Hey, that's really cool you're keeping that alive." It's going to come from being able to go toe to toe with these bigger titles on certain levels.

Obviously we can't go toe to toe when it comes to scope, because we're not spending that kind of money. So we have to kind of outdo them in other realms and we have definitely applied that thinking to our first title. And hopefully when you see it in six, eight, ten months down the line, you'll agree that its thematic and design will be something that has people talking about it as much as they're talking about the next big game from one of these huge developers.

Lastly, a personal interest of mine that we've talked about before is what you were trying to do with Homeland. In terms of the PSP titles you'll be working on, are those also going to be primarily intended for download? Or will those be full spec PSP games on the scope of, say, God of War PSP?

Well first of all, we haven't announced if we're on Blu-Ray, if we're on PSN, if we're on handheld. All we've really announced is that we are exclusive to Sony in those areas for three titles. So where we end up landing has not been announced yet. That's the first thing. The second thing is that the team that we have built and the company that we've put together, we really are more about sort of mechanics-driven gameplay. If you look at the things that we've done—Twisted Metal, Warhawk, Jet Moto—that's the kind of stuff you can expect to see from us.

One of the things I learned from Heartland is that while the team that I'm working with technically and creatively is more than capable of doing a game like Heartland, it really comes down to: what is your team really passionate about? What do they like to play? What do they like to make? And the biggest lesson I learned was you can't fit a square peg into a round hole, and that's what I was trying to do with this team. It wasn't a good fit. So I don't think you'll see anything from this company that is going to try to compete with the God of Wars and the Gears of Wars and things like that. We're really more about fun, pick up and play, arcade, multiplayer, just having a really good time, at least on the Sony end. Now on the PC end, I can't really speak to that yet, but that's what I would say to that.

Great. Well David, you've given me plenty of time. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Well it's my last day. Nobody's got me doing anything. So I'm kind of just trying to get my f---ing computers from IT and get out of here.

Are you going to make it to Comic-Con or are you done?

No, I went for the first day. I had so much fun but it was so, so crowded. It was insanely crowded and Thursday's usually kind of like the low point. I'm like, "There's no way I'm going back for that thing." It's just absolutely a mad house. It was like E3 on Thursdays, so I don't want to think about what it's going to be like tomorrow. But it was awesome. It was a blast. You've been before, yeah?

No, I've actually never been.

Oh, you should totally go. You can't make it this year, obviously, but you should go next year. It's awesome.

Maybe next time.

So this is going to be on your blog or what?

Absolutely.

Awesome. Very cool man. I'm looking forward to it.

To read Part I of our Q&A click here. To read Part II, click here.