David Jaffe Calls Out MSNBC Bias

Keane Ng

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David Jaffe Calls Out MSNBC Bias



God of War creator David Jaffe, never one to mince words, has called bias on a set of questions posed to him by an MSNBC reporter writing about the PS3, and, in typical Jaffe fashion, he dropped as many f-bombs as he could doing it.

David Jaffe, freshly returned from a vacation to Disneyland with his eldest daughter as he relates in his latest work blog [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnJTwZe_MuU], appear to have a wholly negative slant on the arguably far-from-spectacular lifespan of the console. One question poses that "a lot of people wonder what Sony was thinking when developing the PS3. So... what were they thinking?" Another suggests that the PS3 "has been cobbled together since its release" and the final query asks: "has hope faded for PS3 as the 'comeback player?'"

Jaffe, who says that he had a red flag go up the second he saw the "MS" in "MSNBC," had a typically outrageous response to what he perceives as a negative bias in the line of questioning. "This is absurd," he said on his video blog. "Either it is biased and you call it what it is, and it's like, dude, why are you writing to me? I've never made a game on a system other than a Sony system, why the f***k would you be asking me for my opinion, you think I'm going to sit there and validate these totally negative questions for your f****ing stupid article? No."

He then goes on to play the devil's advocate and assume that the journalist is in fact not biased, but then concludes that if he were, the questions about Microsoft's own mistakes as well as the fact that the PS3 isn't completely dead in the water are missing. He admits that a story about the PS3's missteps is completely valid and that he's not exactly an angel when it comes to defending the PS3 either, but in the end, tells the reporter to "look to someone else for help bashing your company's competition."

Of course, in the middle of all that, he readily admits that he could be wrong and that he might not be seeing the bigger picture of what the reporter's trying to get at. There is the distinct possibility that this anonymous reporter (if he's not just some random guy trying to goad Jaffe into being Jaffe) is simply trying to document what most would agree has gone wrong with the PS3 which would probably entail asking these kinds of questions. Still, the guy couldn't have been thinking straight asking Jaffe and not expecting something like this to come back at him.


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Jumplion

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After reading the questions the reporter sent, those do seem like extremely biased questions to ask to a developer who's only ever developed on the PS3.

I applaud Jaffe for calling him out, but also for admitting that he could be wrong and that he could be at fault here.

NoMoreSanity said:
David Jaffe: God of Insanity?
Pray to the Gods of Gaming that that will be the next title in the "God of _____" series!
 

edgeofblade

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I'm not criticizing the Escapist here, but this man is NOT news worthy. What makes him think he is? Get an edgy vocabulary and anyone will listen to you. Worked for Yhatzee, and he's not a professional developer on the same level as Jaffe.

PS3 fans are all over this story as proof of the Microsoft conspiracy to destroy Sony, which it's not. The "bigger picture" is that if he had turned the same questions around on Microsoft, Jaffe and every Sony fan would have seen it as an excellent line of questioning aimed at taking down the "evil" Microsoft. Yes, this is biased, but we shouldn't give him a cookie for noticing it. We should spurn him for promoting the conspiracy theories.
 

Jumplion

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NoMoreSanity said:
Jumplion said:
After reading the questions the reporter sent, those do seem like extremely biased questions to ask to a developer who's only ever developed on the PS3.

I applaud Jaffe for calling him out, but also for admitting that he could be wrong and that he could be at fault here.

NoMoreSanity said:
David Jaffe: God of Insanity?
Pray to the Gods of Gaming that that will be the next title in the "God of _____" series!
I can totally see that happening. God of Whores would be better though.
Your username is the icing on the cake.

edgeofblade said:
I'm not criticizing the Escapist here, but this man is NOT news worthy. What makes him think he is? Get an edgy vocabulary and anyone will listen to you. Worked for Yhatzee, and he's not a professional developer on the same level as Jaffe.

PS3 fans are all over this story as proof of the Microsoft conspiracy to destroy Sony, which it's not. The "bigger picture" is that if he had turned the same questions around on Microsoft, Jaffe and every Sony fan would have seen it as an excellent line of questioning aimed at taking down the "evil" Microsoft. Yes, this is biased, but we shouldn't give him a cookie for noticing it. We should spurn him for promoting the conspiracy theories.
Hey, if we can let Gabe Newell go on and on about things we already know yet still blindly agree with him like sheep, I think we can let David Jaffe point out something that we all knew anyway.

EDIT: And Jaffe admits that the PS3 has had mistakes, and that he could be wrong about the reporter. Besides, you don't ask Bungie questions like "why is Halo 3 so much like the rest?" and "is this the decline of the Halo series?", that's just bad journalism in general. You ask the negatives (state of PS3) and the positives (how do you think the company is doing right now?).
 

Skrapt

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The questions do seem very leading and although most could be considered valid concerns things like:

"It seems the PS3 has been cobbled together since its release: feature-cutting to help cut costs, patched with controller rumble, patched with Home, patched with trophy achievements -- like the console never had a specific plan"
should really have never been asked unless the reporter doesn't understand something like incremental fixes and upgrades, you know just like Xbox's NXE. And even if the questions were valid a good reporter would have given him a chance to comment/compare them to similar events from other consoles histories.
 

Aardvark

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edgeofblade said:
PS3 fans are all over this story as proof of the Microsoft conspiracy to destroy Sony, which it's not.
Yes they are. They've lost to Nintendo, who went after a market they'd only ever dreamed of cracking, so all they can do is keep treading on Sony's fingers as it tries to grip tightly to that cliff edge as possible. They're going to throw everything they have, from superior marketing to inferior journalism, until the PS3 is no more.

It's a cut-throat world out there, the PS3 is the underdog outside of Japan, so any shots, ripostes or bludgeoning blows in this pitch battle for second place are newsworthy to a game site.
 

level250geek

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I will say one thing about Sony: they have generated the most fanboys of any of the big three. Dedicated Sony fans are more disconnected with reality than any sports fan or political activist you will ever find. They even have the Cult of Mac beat at their own game. They refuse to admit that the PS3 has problems, they refuse to admit that Sony is in last place when it comes to sells, and they refuse to admit that Xbox Live really is worth the $50 a year.

Plus, they look for any reason to make Sony the victim and Microsoft (or Nintendo) the big, bad, evil corporate entity.

Thank you, David Jaffe, for dropping fresh bananas into the monkey pen.
 

CyberKnight

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While I think Jaffe may be drama-queening a bit, those interview questions were almost "Have you stopped beating your wife?" levels of bias and accusations. We can only guess on the motives of the reporter (which, to Jaffe's credit, after he does himself, he admits he's only guessing and could be wrong), but those questions are *really* out there.

I admit it, I'm a 360 fanboy, and even I think those questions are leading and unfair. *Maybe* if the reporter included some stats or context for each question (i.e. "The PS3 has been losing $x per quarter, do you think that's a result of their decision to do A, B, or C?") instead of just throwing out assumed generalizations ("lukewarm reception", "perceived low morale") and trying to get him to own up to them...

Even if the reporter wanted to talk about (real or perceived) missteps Sony took with the PS3, I don't see why Jaffe's crying foul about "missing questions about the 360", though; why would someone ask him about a console that he's never dealt with ("I've never made a game on a system other than a Sony system")? It wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to question him about the PS3 specifically, which he should have a lot of in-depth knowledge, and not about the 360, which he doesn't.

But besides that nit, I think he's right to question the reporter's motives.
 

Jumplion

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level250geek said:
I will say one thing about Sony: they have generated the most fanboys of any of the big three. Dedicated Sony fans are more disconnected with reality than any sports fan or political activist you will ever find. They even have the Cult of Mac beat at their own game. They refuse to admit that the PS3 has problems, they refuse to admit that Sony is in last place when it comes to sells, and they refuse to admit that Xbox Live really is worth the $50 a year.

Plus, they look for any reason to make Sony the victim and Microsoft (or Nintendo) the big, bad, evil corporate entity.

Thank you, David Jaffe, for dropping fresh bananas into the monkey pen.
How about you read Jaffe's actual response?

He admited himself, PS3 has problems, he could be wrong about the reporter, maybe he's flying off the handle a bit too quickly.

The questions the reporter wanted Jaffe to answer were pretty biased to ask someone who's only developed for one console.

And way to generalize anyone with a PS3. I'm PS3 Fanboy #2 in the UF (United Fanboys), and I can easily admit the PS3 has made some mistakes. It's just when people completely blow the mistakes out of proportion (partially shown by this reporter) is when it gets steamy.
 

Calax

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The reason he's crying foul about not asking the XB360 questions is because he's a developer, and while he's only developed on the PS3 he should still be paying attention to missteps and outright fuckups by Microsoft on the 360. Both systems have had problems, the PS3's stem primairly from the price tag, and the fact that there are so many models you can't figure out which you have. Microsoft's stem from hardware fuckups. Personally I think that PSN is better than XBOX live (I've not even used either so I'm hardly one to judge) because it doesn't require you to pay money to play with your friends. PSN will just let you jump in and play the game you bought, but XBLive forces you to pay that extra 50 bucks you could have purchased a game with to play anything online, which really means something if you've got online centric games being tossed out for the players to eat up.
 

cleverlymadeup

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i fully agree with him. there is a TON of negativity and bias towards sony and the ps3 and everyone is like "omg the 360 is teh best", the Escapist is even part of this bias as well.

the only reason i can honestly think of this is cause m$ is american and sony is japanese. if you look at quality control of the products, the 360 makes a fail pile that rivals mount everest and sony is a small hill in comparison, not to mention that the ps3 is outselling the 360.