Suda51, American Mcgee, Sid Meyer, Tom Clancy etc etc... Konami put his name on there because his name had value. Tom Clancy and Clive Barker have their names on even if they've done fuck all with development. Besides, how many game devs have had as much control over their work as Kojima? Characters, story/script, gameplay, cinematics...He edits his own trailers. If you've played Policenauts/Snatcher and compared it to Rising/Portable Ops you can see the distinct style of his games and obsession with detail. MGS is very much his baby and wouldn't have been half as successful without him.
Portable Ops is very much a MGS game. In gameplay, tone, themes and story.
Next you'll say ZOE 1&2 is very Kojima! When he only produced the game in the same capacity as in PO and Rising. He didn't write ZOE. He didn't direct ZOE. He didn't do game design on ZOE.
He is credited only as "Opening Movie Creation" and "Producer" in ZOE1
https://youtu.be/Il3-sU2XT3U?t=3m51s
And only as "Planner" and "Producer" in ZOE2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-lgZ49imdc
People swoon over ZOE and talk oodles of praise for Kojima for it, when in reality his capacity of involvement was no more than those of the same games people deride for him simply having the same level of involvement.
The bigger irony is that even though he was only a Producer on games like The Twin Snakes or Portable Ops it was HIS choices and decisions that affected large things involved with those games.
In the case of TTS, a lot of people hate it because of the unrealistic and changed cutscenes. Which KOJIMA is solely responsible for this happening. There are several instances in an interview where Kojima mentions that Ryuhei Kitamura had originally made them very faithful to the original until he (Kojima) told him to change them.
The interview in question seems to have disappeared from the web unfortunately so I can't reference it.
He claimed in several interviews that they (Key word being *Plural* because he has never been the sole writer of the story in MGS) couldn't finalize or finish writing the story to MGS4 without Portable Ops FIRST. (Not to mention several mechanics and ideas in PW forward are iterated from Portable Ops. Even maps in MGO2 were from PO).
Kojima said about the PSP MGS Portable Ops, "If you change the Ops story, you have to change 4. If you change 4, it also becomes necessary to change Ops. Until Ops is finished, 4's story can't be finalized."
http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/09/25/portable-ops-tied-to-mgs4
Honestly the only person i've ever seen who ever backpedals MORE on the things they say and do is Yoshiyuki Tomino. It's embarrassing.
And Rising was NEVER being directed by Kojima anyway. (Which makes it all the more hilarious when people with Kojima complexes talk trash about Revengeance and start spewing stuff about Rising based on assumptions)
http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid:_Rising
Even if it had been, no doubt i'm sure he would've come up with some way to disown it anyway since he wasn't directing.
Don't get me wrong, I *Hate* seeing Kojima and his' company's name removed from the box art Because it's disrespectful to the hundreds of people involved and himself. If anything Konami should only be a tiny footnote on the box or not at all on the front and only on the back.
There is a key difference too between something like "Tom Clancy's" and "A Hideo Kojima game". Tom Clancy is nothing more than a brand name in the straightest sense. The man had essentially 0 involvement and input on any of the games with his name on it beyond from what I understand the initial Red Storm days.
