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Heartland: all the things Jaffe didn't like about the Bush administration
David Jaffe's canceled PSP-exclusive FPS game Heartland was supposed to be more than just "the definitive shooter for the PlayStation Portable." It was supposed to have a message, one that echoed the sentiments of the always-opinionated God of War creator. Jaffe told The Escapist in a revealing feature: "It wasn't supposed to make you hate the Bush Administration so much as, as a layperson political junkie, it was supposed to put into light - using games as a medium - all the things I didn't like about the Bush Administration."Unfortunately, a number of factors led to the cancellation of this project. It appeared that developer Incognito (team behind PS3's Warhawk) simply wasn't interested in working on the game. "They weren't really impressed with A) my politics, and B) story-based games to begin with."Heartland may have been too ambitious and too graphic for the handheld. "The one thing Sony seemed uncomfortable about was naming the enemy," says Jaffe. "We were going to do some pretty intense stuff." Intense stuff indeed: players would see decapitations, and would face brutal choices: "The player chases after the teenage son, beating him and dragging him down the stairs, and throwing him into the living room. The commanding officer orders the player to douse the family and the house with gasoline, and set it on fire."
Slippery Rock University intros RFID payment system for mobiles
And you thought going away to college was the first step to freedom. Au contraire, students (and faculty, no less) entering Pennsylvania's Slippery Rock University will actually be faced with an RFID tag made for their handset, which will "allow them to pay for everything from laundry and copier services to movies and groceries in the surrounding town of Slippery Rock." The 13.56MHz tags were developed by Heartland Payment Systems and utilize NFC to make spending their parents' cash all the more simple. Of course, high rollers should be aware that their guardians can log in at any time and view their purchasing habits, so we'd be careful before pulling out the long face and car trouble story. The cards will reportedly cost around $1 apiece, but will be "available for free" to all of the SU students.[Via Textually]
HDTV Listings for June 18, 2007
What we're watching: Our summer HDTV schedule gets a boost tonight with the return of The Closer on TNT, followed by the series premiere of Heartland.Our traditional high-def listings continue below.
Shed a tear for Jaffe's Heartland
Newsweek's latest exchange with designer David Jaffe dredges up memory of Heartland, one of the industry's recent missed opportunities. In October 2005, when Heartland was known as 'Project HL', Jaffe went public with his goal to make gamers cry, describing his PSP epic as an examination of "what's happening with America and the military". A year later, Heartland was shelved and forgotten, until Jaffe squeaked out a few details in an interview with Entertainment Weekly last month. "Hearing myself talk about it now makes me a bit sad," lamented Jaffe, who was re-realizing that the would-be allegory that depicted a fictional Chinese invasion of the US would have been an important effort for the games industry -- and perhaps Western culture at-large.Our perception of what Heartland could have been has been damaged by Jaffe's often-manic outbursts. The designer essentially snuffed out all curiosity in the title when he spastically proclaimed last September that the future of the industry was in (in all caps) "SHORTER, LESS EXPENSIVE" games, beginning with his PSN launch pad Calling All Cars. Though the Calling All Cars delays will apparently cease by mid-May, the untimely delivery has led many of us to tune out Jaffe's banter. So, just as we've yet to join Jaffe's "pop songs" crusade (a belief that small-time games will pwn the market), we have little faith in the notion of his PSP tearjerker. Shame on us then for feeling a pang of sorrow -- that sudden urge to pour one out -- over Heartland, as Jaffe confesses to Newsweek's N'Gai Croal his reasons for abandoning the project:
"Heartland should do for the PSP what Halo did for the Xbox"
In a revealing chat with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, opinionated God of War and Calling All Cars developer David Jaffe spoke about his ambitious (but canceled) PSP game, Heartland. He revealed the political motivations behind the title, and why the game might have been too ambitious for its own good:"The game was very much a liberal person's response to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq ... [have players] feel what it must be like to have their own homeland occupied by another country. SCEA and I went back and forth over if we would ever say it was CHINA vs. AMERICA as they were a bit worried about being so literal ... As for Phil, his biggest issue was thinking a game so epic should be on PS3. But I was always pushing for PSP, saying that Heartland should do for the PSP what Halo did for the Xbox."Ultimately, Sony didn't provide the support that Jaffe needed to complete the game. Instead, Sony pulled resources from the title to place into the PS3 title, WarHawk: "If the team would have been the right size, we would still be in production with Heartland today. That was the main reason we killed it, not enough folks to make the game ... the main issue that made it clear that we could not continue was that WarHawk kept taking our team members as they were further along in production and were the top priority."Sony's admitted to focusing too much on PS3 at the cost of PSP development, and they've promised to change. With WarHawk nearing completion, could Heartland make a comeback?[Via 1UP]
Has a PSP game ever made you cry?
A few days ago we found out about the story of David Jaffe's Heartland. The aim of the title was to have a game that would make a gamer cry. Since that game is dead in the water, it made me wonder if there already were games on the PSP that could make me cry. I haven't yet had it happen with a PSP title, but unfortuantely for me, I don't play every game that comes out. Until they release Klonoa PS1 as a PSP download, I'm not sure there's a PSP game out there that can make me cry. Am I wrong? Is there a PSP game that's made you cry? Do you admire a game that can achieve that emotion or do you only want the emotion of joy from playing games?
The truth behind David Jaffe's HL
David Jaffe wanted to make gamers cry with his PSP game Heartland. Well when the game was cancelled he accomplished that goal as many gamers faced incredible disappointment at its loss. Just as that wound was starting to heal, 1UP re-opens the wound and pours salt in it by getting details on the game. Of course, no matter how much it hurts, the curiousity factor makes it so we can't ignore the info David Jaffe cleared the air by saying "Heartland was the story of China invading America. It was a first-person-shooter where you played a soldier debating whether to stay and fight for America or go AWOL to meet up with your family. We were trying to put in a lot of gameplay that would evoke emotion. You had sequences where you'd go into homes and your commanding officer would tell you to shoot innocent Chinese-Americans. It was very dark and was meant to cause players to consider what it's like to live in America and be an American today." Sounds like it could be a deeply meaningful game, so why did Jaffe step away from the project? "Hearing myself talk about it now makes me a bit sad (that we didn't finish it). But I wasn't incentivized to make it, in a way I could go to my family and say 'You're not going to see me for 90% of the time, but there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.' There isn't a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, at least the current way the industry is set up." Maybe Cory Barlog can continue this project too?.
The name of Jaffe's "sucky" game revealed
Project HL, David Jaffe's canceled PSP game was supposed to make you cry. And with a name like Heartland, it might have succeeded. Jaffe's gone off to bigger and badder things. Like God of War III. Too bad we'll never see what Heartland could've been ... if it didn't suck so much.[Via IGN]
