Acclaimed game designer David Jaffe is currently hard at work at putting the finishing touches on the PlayStation 3 release of Twisted Metal for later this year. Jaffe, who co-founded a new independent game studio Eat Sleep Play in 2007, helped produce several successful Sony titles over the years, including Twisted Metal 1 and 2, Twisted Metal: Black, and God of War.

We caught up with Jaffe during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this month to get his thoughts on the used games market, what he likes about games media, and the future of gaming consoles.

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The gut answer is: I don't care. We think Twisted Metal is really cool and fun. We know we have an audience out there but we don't know how big that audience is. Whenever you make a game it's a huge investment of money and time, and you have to make something that you are passionate about. You've got to find something that at least the key people, or most of the people, on the team are excited about.Maybe the reason I don't care is because I don't agree with the statement. If I agreed that it's irrelevant I'd care very much. I want to make a hit; we all want to make a hit. Look, I love cars; [Eat Sleep Play Co-Founder] Scott Campbell loves cars. The idea of guns with flamethrowers, guys with grenades and Uzis leaning out the window, and helicopters crashing through suburbs; I think that's always fun. What we've done with this one, because we're online now, is built a lot more cool, deep team modes into it.I would agree with you if what you were saying or suggesting is that basically it's the same game we made back in 2001 or 1996 in terms if it hadn't evolved. Our vehicles are almost class-based in terms of the different functionalities they bring that are designed specifically for the game modes, like Nuke and Team-Deathmatch.I don't know, I'm struggling to answer your question because the things you're implying by saying first-person shooters are relevant, I don't really like as much as other people do. I've said this before to the press, and I don't want to bore your readers. I like first-person shooter multiplayer a lot, but at the same time I don't like the real fast deaths, or the fact I can't form relationships with my teammates or with my enemies where it's like a couple steps out of a bunker you get shot in the head and you're dead. I miss the days of gameplay sitting on the couch with your friends where you can actually have a tug-of-war and a back-and-fourth where I'm about to die but I get the health at the last minute and I turn the tables on you.For me it's almost like bringing back what we loved about multiplayer shooters that we feel has gotten lost in today's sort of massive-mega-online-shooters that feel exciting and visceral, but also feel very chaotic. It's a really good question because I know where it's coming from, but I guess I just don't really agree with it. To me [Twisted Metal] is like Chess and Uno mixed with Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena. I think it's very relevant, deep and exciting. I'm a big fan; I wouldn't be making it if I wasn't.There's no shooting, we'll be out this year. I mean, you never know, but no one has come to me and said we need to extend. And Sony hasn't said they wanted to extend. So the plan is 2011 unless you know something I don't.Let's dance around the question only because I'm not at liberty to give you numbers. I know what they are but I'm not allowed to say.Absolutely, Twisted Metal 1 was $800,000 to make and sold well over 1 million copies. So it's very different now.This Twisted Metal started as a PSN game. Sony is the one that came to us and said they wanted more; they liked what they were seeing and wanted to make it into a full retail product. We actually went from PSN-only, and then we were going to be like Warhawk and SOCOM Confrontation in terms of it was going to be a $39 product that was multi-player only, and then Sony's like "No no, they want the stories" and Marketing's like "Yeah, you guys don't realize how many fans love the Twisted Metal universe, you gotta give us the stories." We weren't going back to Sony begging for more money to make this bigger. They wanted it bigger and of course we wanted to do that. Sony is a very smart company; they've done their market research to see if there are enough Twisted Metal fans to merit rolling the dice. It has a great legacy for Sony and SCEA, and I think everybody was on board.But we're not delusional, we understand the market has shifted and we understand that if you're going to greenlight a first-party game, there's a difference between what you would spend and get on making say God of War 3 or God of War 4 or 5 or whatever and making Twisted Metal. You gauge the risk accordingly and you budget appropriately based on those risks.In terms of a bigger team, making games is always hard. Scott Campbell is the guy who's actually in the trenches every day up in Utah with the team managing. We're still a small team of guys and women who have been on this title from the very first one. We're like 36 people. Every game's a challenge. But it hasn't been a super hard thing for Sony to get behind. They were behind it before we were.