In a brief new video about his upcoming game, Drawn to Death, developer David Jaffe has told the game's haters what they can go do with themselves. His response isn't what one might call diplomatic.
#ControversyYourself
Drawn to Death was a revealed over the weekend at the PlayStation Experience and appears to be a four player free-for-all shooter that takes place in a high school student’s notebook. The concept is pretty quirky as the idea seems to be that the sketches in some kid's notebook are coming to life on the page and then having an epic and bloody battle to the death. I'll admit I find the concept nostalgically appealing.
Unfortunately, it seems I'm in the minority in finding this game interesting because the criticism of the game seen in the comment sections from some websites, specifically Giant Bomb and Polygon, have been less than enthusiastic. Not taking the critique lying down Jaffe, whose best known for developing God of War, has seen fit to reply in a very unique fashion. Jaffe released a video on his personal YouTube channel that features one of the characters from Drawn to Death reading the critical comments and then responding. If you can't watch the video embedded above it goes like this:
"It looks like Splatoon. Minus Everything I love about Splatoon."
"Four player maximum arena shooter? Nah, son."
"The art sure takes me back…I don’t know if I like being taken back."
"Why in god’s name would I play a 4-player shooter."
"I think David Jaffe’s entire life is set inside a high school notebook."
"Who keeps letting Jaffe make games?"
"I bet this would be great…back in 1998."
It then wraps with Jonny, and by extensio one would assume Jaffe, saying:
"Thanks for the comments! #GoFuckYourself"
Um, is this OK?
Having a developer just outright tell his critics off in that manner is, at the very least, ballsy. Now the video is on Jaffe's personal YouTube account, but it does smack a bit of officialdom. It's not simply a vlog-style video of Jaffe talking to camera and then saying what his saying.
It uses official game assets and has the look of an official, professionally made advert, for lack of a better word. Now there's no way to know if this is video is officially endorsed by Sony, but it sure has look of it. So the question then is, is it OK to just tell someone to #GoFuckYourself?
David Jaffe is a noted potty mouth. If you follow him on twitter, listened to him in interviews or podcast, then you already know that this isn't a totally unexpected path for him to take. If any game developer was going to do this, then David Jaffe would be the obvious choice. He's just that kind of guy.
The question is probably a bit of deeper than what we're used to dealing with on a video game site, but in this context, under these specific circumstances the answer is: I dunno.
My gut reaction is that this is a wrong and irresponsible way to deal with criticism, most especially if it's officially endorsed. Yet, and I know this is a double-standard and hypocritical on my part, I don't seem to mind it since it is coming David Jaffe. And there is a part of me that's kind of in support of him. I've wanted to tell off my own critics in a similar fashion a few times, but would never, because of professional integrity.
So coming back to the question, is it OK? Probably not. In fact definitely not. But David Jaffe is the kind of guy that can say stuff like that and get away with it, just because he's David Jaffe, so I reckon in the long run all it will do is generate some free publicity for his game.
What's your take? Is it OK for a professional game developer to talk that way to the public?
My opinion? Fuck yea it's ok
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