David Jaffe Comments on Twisted Metal Online Status, Skins

Twisted Metal, the longest running PlayStation franchise, returned to the PlayStation 3 on February 14th (Valentine’s Day) with more destruction, mayhem, and deeper gameplay then ever before. The vehicle shooter game, which can best be described as Street Fighter converted into cars with guns, has been posting some great sales numbers, despite its long absence from the PlayStation. Since the game’s launch, Sony and creator David Jaffe have been doing their best to advertise the game and raise further awareness for the title with events like #ShootMyTruck where users could enter and get a chance to literally shoot Sweet Tooth’s ice cream truck with a machine gun via their computer.

While the game is off to a good start with positive reviews and fun promotions, many owners of the title are beginning to notice errors with the game’s online component and rightfully complain. Promising to pit 16 players against each in different game modes like team death match and nuke, online play was designed to be a core component of Twisted Metal. Two days into the game’s launch, David Jaffe took to his YouTube page to address the game’s online errors and soon-to-be-released Skins feature:

In short, David. like the fans, seems to be frustrated and upset by the game’s online component. However, with nearly 100 Sony engineers working on the problem, he is quite confident that things should be improving soon, if not better for some already. Another error that users seem to encounter is when entering a room which is full. The game, in this instance, gives you a “network error” message when this is actually a script error and should instead be notifying you that the game room is full. Finally, the recent ‘Skins’ feature for Twisted Metal, which allows players to log online and create unique designs for the game’s vehicles, should be launching later today (though that is still subject to change).

In a day and age where games tend to shift with patches in the pipes, while more are released in the future to address the game’s errors and bugs, it’s nice to see David address the fans directly (as opposed to waiting for corporate press releases) and genuinely care about their wants and frustrations.