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[Alienous]

Its fine if you dont feel this is worth the money but to think Kojima has betrayed you cause he went this route is so weird to me. He is not forcing you to buy this game. He has been clear that this is a prologue to a main game.

If he listened to you people I would not have a new Metal Gear game to play this year and that would piss me off. I am sick of waiting, its been over 5 years GIVE ME CONSOLE METAL GEAR. MGS gameplay is worth far more than most any other games, I am sure I will get more out of my $40 of this game than almost all full releases this year.

This is for the fans. Yes I will pay the money. Give it to me now.

This is for the fans, sure. The prices comparative to the content (as I perceive it) is a test of the fans. Consider the release of Ground Zeroes a milking, and we, the fans, as cash cows. What is our series loyalty worth?

At $15 for a physical next-gen version, I'd be all over this. Again, judging from what I've perceived, disregarding the "but there's a lot of content" spiel, I can't see it justifying its price. And I don't blame Kojima. I think ensuring that a V is in the title was a Konami ploy to fool people into thinking they are buying something substantial. And, for the long term health of the franchise, I don't think I'll be getting Ground Zeroes until I can find it in a bargain bin.

What would change my mind? Give me quantitative data. Average main campaign playthrough time, for instance. Number of Special and Extra Ops. Something that justifies its purchase beyond my adoration for the franchise, or my mistaking it being The Phantom Pain. And I hope that all parties involved understand that if Ground Zeroes bombs, particularly for not providing value, it'll be at the cost of the franchise's longer term viability. But it seems like Konami is willing to cash in on a lot of people's good will, regardless.

I hope the game is fantastic, but I really don't see that happening.

 

[MiamiWesker]

This is for the fans, sure. The prices comparative to the content (as I perceive it) is a test of the fans. Consider the release of Ground Zeroes a milking, and we, the fans, as cash cows. What is our series loyalty worth?

At $15 for a physical next-gen version, I'd be all over this. Again, judging from what I've perceived, disregarding the "but there's a lot of content" spiel, I can't see it justifying its price. And I don't blame Kojima. I think ensuring that a V is in the title was a Konami ploy to fool people into thinking they are buying something substantial. And, for the long term health of the franchise, I don't think I'll be getting Ground Zeroes until I can find it in a bargain bin.

What would change my mind? Give me quantitative data. Average main campaign playthrough time, for instance. Number of Special and Extra Ops. Something that justifies its purchase beyond my adoration for the franchise, or my mistaking it being The Phantom Pain. And I hope that all parties involved understand that if Ground Zeroes bombs, particularly for not providing value, it'll be at the cost of the franchise's longer term viability. But it seems like Konami is willing to cash in on a lot of people's good will, regardless.

I hope the game is fantastic, but I really don't see that happening.

Well that is why we need fans like you to keep the balance so maybe this doesn't sell a ton and give more ideas on how to exploit people.

I agree the price is way too high but I think the idea of giving us an early piece of a game is pretty cool. I have no self control, you do so thank you.

 

[Spaghetti]

I really hate that the word we've had to use so far is 'prologue', mostly because it makes more sense as a translation from Japanese. American consumers aren't sure what to do with it as a term. If it were up to me, I'd start promoting it as the first chapter of MGSV. But that's semantics and marketing speak and all sorts of boring stuff so I'd rather not get hung up on that.

it's a shame you don't get much personal agency to explain what's actually going on and what the product actually is

the unfortunate part of big japanese games targeting western markets is that the public relations end seems particularly stilted because of having to often wait for the go-ahead from japan to disclose this, or make a statement about that, etc

unless of course there's an english speaker within the development team/studio in japan willing to talk with fans

 

[Batzi]

Well that is why we need fans like you to keep the balance so maybe this doesn't sell a ton and give more ideas on how to exploit people.

I agree the price is way too high but I think the idea of giving us an early piece of a game is pretty cool. I have no self control, you do so thank you.

Many fans still don't understand why Kojima took this direction in releasing episodes of the full experience. I am going to devote some of my time to explain that to whoever feels confused or clueless about this whole "episodic releases" as Kojima puts it.

Kojima sees "Episodic Releases" as the future in the gaming industry and he would like other developers to start embracing the same concept too.

According to Kojima-san, episodic releases is much cheaper in terms of game development since it won't require a lot of resources at the beginning of the game development cycle. Why? Because they won't be developing the whole thing at once. They will be focusing on the first episode, release it to the fans and have fans give their feedback so that the next episode would be adjusted based on the feedback KP receives from the fans.

Kojima is making a lot of changes and he is putting his changes to the test. Ground Zeroes is a full game and the first episode of the MGSV experience. He wants people to buy it, play it and try to explore every possibilities and all the challenges that episode has to offer. Then he expects people to start sending their feedbacks and that's when the team will kick back in and work on what can be referred to as the alpha stage of the next episode. In this way, they will be saving a lot of money, time and ensure a better episode with the least amount of flaws.

Game development has been following somewhat the Waterfall model. The following is a diagram of that model which has been adopted by many software developers in the past and something that video game developers still suffer from:

Kojima's new strategy solves the problem of the Waterfall model. The problem with the Waterfall model is that at some point during some of the stages, a developer might find a flaw in the design that affects the game overall, unfortunately extensive amount of time and work was put in that project that changing the main requirements and design would be almost impossible or costly to say the least so most developers move forward while being forced to ignore the flaw and hope that consumers (gamers) won't mind the flaw or that they won't take it too seriously or simply try to cope with it.

Kojima is kind of doing us and the development team a big favour.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Jesus Christ, the kool aid is strong there, Kojima is doing me a favour by charging me an extra $40 over the rest of the PP.

And I don't even buy that argument at all, cos MGS 5 isn't episodic. It's one game with a stand alone prologue. There's a big difference between the 2.

 

[Batzi]

Jesus Christ, the kool aid is strong there, Kojima is doing me a favour by charging me an extra $40 over the rest of the PP.

And I don't even buy that argument at all, cos MGS 5 isn't episodic. It's one game with a stand alone prologue. There's a big difference between the 2.

It is a game composed of two episodes. The "Prologue" is a major aspect of the story. It sets the stage for the bigger event, without people would simply be clueless.

 

[Rogue Agent]

The idea of creating a "Pilot" episode which Kojima suggested in an interview sounds promising (at a more reasonable price), but I don't get Ground Zeroes serving as that if the rest of MGSV is already well under development.

 

[Batzi]

The idea of creating a "Pilot" episode which Kojima suggested in an interview sounds promising (at a more reasonable price), but I don't get Ground Zeroes serving as that if the rest of MGSV is already well under development.

Well he is testing the waters with Ground Zeroes. We haven't seen much of The Phantom Pain anyway. In fact, we haven't seen anything yet mark my words. Ground Zeroes is not the open world that Kojima was talking about, The Phantom Pain however is. I'm sure you know that but just wanted to clarify anyway.

 

[Danny 117]

Seems current and next gen will have different achievements. This one wasn't on the original leaked list:

(From Kojima's twitter)