Revenge of Kojima, the Kojimanning

[Brian]

Actually, I found the most rage-inducing thing to be Kojima continuing his policy of marketing bad game design.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-22-kojima-says-mgs-ground-zeroes-may-be-too-risky-to-be-publish-sell

Highlight: 'While he's aware that this approach may not be commercially viable, Kojima, honey badger-like, doesn't give a s***. "I'm approaching the project as a creator and prioritising creativity over sales," he stated.'

OH, REALLY?  I DID NOT SEE THAT--

* Brian dies of sarcasm poisoning before being able to finish being snide.

[Grahf]

Bad game design as in "I wrote this specifically to be controversial!"? I thought that Kojima would be above that, guess not though.

Granted, even if he says that, he acts like anything with Metal Gear in the title doesn't basically grant a license to print money.

On that same note, Metal Gear Rising, what little I've played of it, is fun. But that's a topic for another day and another thread.

[Dracos]

Well, apparently people like villains possessed by someone's chopped off hand in their ass?

Personally, I feel a disconnect with the picture of Kojima as really an incredible designer.  Miyamoto all the way.

[Brian]

Yeah, a lot of what Kojima does comes across (to me) as a very disconnected and trying-way-too-hard attempt to be clever.

I don't think there's anything good about a game that requires you to yank the controller from port one and reconnect it to port two to finish a scene, and the 'fission mailed' aspect....

Edit: No longer digressing!  Hooray!

[Grahf]

Funny, I've always found the gameplay to be quite good for most Metal Gear Solid games, it's the writing that drives me up the wall.

I'm saying this as a fan of the series who has enjoyed one through four: the story in four was fucking-coocoo-bonkers-horseshit. I enjoyed it, in part because it was sheer madness given form, but to anyone that looks at it and goes "no, seriously, what the hell is this and what's going on?" the reply would have to be "this is what happens when no one can edit your thought processes, and when I figure out what's going on I'll let you know. Don't hold your breath."

[Carthrat]

I've liked the gameplay quite a lot, generally liked the writing up until MGS4. Never had a problem with the overall design of the gameplay. I like a bit of meta-ness!

It seems to me that Kojima thinks his previous approaches haven't really worked so well, so he's planning to try out new things? And really, the game industry needs more AAA-budget producers trying to do weird things. Pretty keen to see it come out, overall.

[Brian]

Actually, after thinking about this a bit more....

I might be extremely jaded, but having worked for Sony and having some insight into what all Kojima has done that gleefully curbstomps Sony's regulations and requirements (TRCs, basically), I realized something.  I don't think there's any validity to the statement that the game might not be released; Konami will let Kojima do pretty much anything, and Sony would not pass on a new MG as a launch title candidate.

In short, I believe that this is all a ploy to generate more buzz for the game.  Kojima's most hardcore fans will buy anything he puts the MG label on anyway, and I think that someone with clout in the marketing division has to know this, or they wouldn't have let him pull some of the things they already have.  But now that he's gone on record and said what he has, I expect a 'viral' campaign supporting whatever he wants and drawing attention to how 'edgy' the PS4 is.

[Grahf]

having worked for Sony
[/quoteblock]

Just a small aside, but I still can't believe how serendipitous it is that I found a bunch of people that work inside the game industry on a site that I came to mainly comment on fanfics. Strange, but true. Also fairly neat.

Moving on though.

all Kojima has done that gleefully curbstomps Sony's regulations and requirements (TRCs, basically), I realized something.  I don't think there's any validity to the statement that the game might not be released; Konami will let Kojima do pretty much anything, and Sony would not pass on a new MG as a launch title candidate.

I'm rather curious as to how past games from Kojima have broken TRCs, that is assuming you can freely speak of the details without lawyers breaking down your door and threatening to litigate you into next century.

Also, I have to agree with your assessment, Ground Zeroes and whatever exactly Phantom Pain turns out to be (they tried to be a little coy about it, but it's pretty obvious it's Metal Gear related) may be games poised for the next generation.

Honestly, it's either that or the much more difficult to accept but also much funnier idea that somehow, someway, Hideo Kojima has massively underestimated his clout to an almost comical extreme. His thought process regarding even the notion that the game might not be published either means that when he says controversial he means things so potentially offensive that even with his protection from editors people would have taken one look at it and said "No" or he really believes that because he might be adding in some mildly contentious things that he might not get published, which kind of makes you want to pinch his cheeks and go "Awww, that's adorable! You think that it wouldn't be picked up in an instant!"

[Grahf]

having worked for Sony

Just a small aside, but I still can't believe how serendipitous it is that I found a bunch of people that work inside the game industry on a site that I came to mainly comment on fanfics. Strange, but true. Also fairly neat.

Moving on though.

all Kojima has done that gleefully curbstomps Sony's regulations and requirements (TRCs, basically), I realized something.  I don't think there's any validity to the statement that the game might not be released; Konami will let Kojima do pretty much anything, and Sony would not pass on a new MG as a launch title candidate.

I'm rather curious as to how past games from Kojima have broken TRCs, that is assuming you can freely speak of the details without lawyers breaking down your door and threatening to litigate you into next century.

Also, I have to agree with your assessment, Ground Zeroes and whatever exactly Phantom Pain turns out to be (they tried to be a little coy about it, but it's pretty obvious it's Metal Gear related) may be games poised for the next generation.

Honestly, it's either that or the much more difficult to accept but also much funnier idea that somehow, someway, Hideo Kojima has massively underestimated his clout to an almost comical extreme. His thought process regarding even the notion that the game might not be published either means that when he says controversial he means things so potentially offensive that even with his protection from editors people would have taken one look at it and said "No" or he really believes that because he might be adding in some mildly contentious things that he might not get published, which kind of makes you want to pinch his cheeks and go "Awww, that's adorable! You think that it wouldn't be picked up in an instant!"

[Brian]

As far as I know the information is available, just not publicized.  While MGS was released and then re-released, what most people don't know is that there were small software revisions of the game released after the initial publishing.  I forget the exact numbers, but if you can read the code on the interior ring of the disk, you can find ostensibly identical copies of the game that will have different product codes.

Now ... looking back, I may have been misinformed by someone else in the format/QA department; I can't find anything to substantiate this.  I do remember pretty clearly being told that there were multiple versions that had been through format/QA that were supposedly the same release, which to the best of my knowledge is not something that's often done.

The other thing that sticks out isn't technically illegal or anything like that -- it's just that the way the memory card is accessed for ... Psycho Mantis, I think?  The character that reads your memory card for other game saves.  In order for that bit of cleverness to work, according to the Sony guidelines at the time, the player had to be notified on screen about the access.  It's primarily there so you don't yank your card mid read/write, so....  It's only Sony's rule, of course, so they can waive it if they want to, and in that case, they did.

But I can guarantee you that almost anyone else trying that would get their title rejected by Sony.

To be fair, there are other occasions where games have gone against console manufacturer's guidelines, the most specific one I can think of being the lovecraftian Gamecube game, where you would get visual effects onscreen if your character had taken a lot of sanity damage.   One of them was to claim your memory card was being formatted.

In any case, my point is more that Sony's not going to balk, so....

[Dracos]

Edit does work on the boards.  Just sayin' :)

A creative director on a AAA game project has at most 10ish people that can meaningfully push for an edit.

And like 8-9 of them see it once every few months in a bombastic review.  If that.  It varies from company to company.  I wouldn't be surprised if it's even lighter on the japanese side.  Square certainly seemed to think the concept of regularly reviewable results was wacky.

The others are lead programmer, exec producer types, studio lead types (probably not with Konami).  E.g. the folks handling the code and the folks handling the direct budget.

Certainly, everyone can talk, but with a guy of kojima's calibur?  There isn't really much editing above him at all.  Here Creative Directors and there main producers, basically are both the primary direction and the editor force in most cases.  The reverse of that of course is that he's not the hands doing the actual writing of his vision in a lot of places, but in a japanese shop, that's not a huge difference.  In most of the rest of the world, it very much is.