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Kojima was too expensive apparently
- Thread starter Jindrax
- Start date
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Very agreeable
, but I cannot look at how Konami has been handling anything Kojima has not been involved in and think that his bosses are not making a mistake (smart business people can make mistakes ). Even if their big plans are to get out of console AAA games beside one or two IP's...Sorry only read the first few pages of this but it was a lot of he's worth the money arguments . Some have since pointed out it's not if he's profitable but rather the return in investment . Some ppl don't understand sometimes how small certain budgets are nd from what we've heard till uc 2/3 even works on 30mill dev budgets so it's not like every aaa enterprise has super bloated budgets and often it's a simple business decision on I put in 20 mill I'm okay with 5 mill if I have to put in 100 mill and get 10 mill out no does not make sense . Do we have any concrete numbers comparing mgs games over the years with repect to their approx budgets and sales ? Because I'm not sure Kojima is insanely profitable or something . Profitable yes roi being off the books dunno . Any numbers ??.
Edit : and from an artistic point of view mgs yes was seminal . Pt may have been others haven't been on the completely game changing levels that you would completely ignore budgets and ROIs . Kojima is amazing yes . Is he the Mozart of games that we ignore all budgetary concerns? Very debatable .
Edit : and from an artistic point of view mgs yes was seminal . Pt may have been others haven't been on the completely game changing levels that you would completely ignore budgets and ROIs . Kojima is amazing yes . Is he the Mozart of games that we ignore all budgetary concerns? Very debatable .
I think it was the Konami president's idea that he should make a Silent Hill game. I don't think low confidence adequately describes the situation here. Konami has one really strong brand, maybe two with that PES stuff, after that, Silent Hill and Castlevania is pretty much what you're looking at. With that kind of portfolio you're not necessarily in a position to have low confidence cause that's about as good as it's gonna get, which is why they've been so desperately pushing those franchises.
With Silent Hill they must have figured that their best bet to strike it big would be to put their one golden goose on the project, and considering the response to P.T that seems to have been a pretty decent decision, I mean people were actually talking about a Silent Hill game for the first time in a very long time, mainstream people.
Say what you want about Kojima's business acumen, but he clearly does understand one thing that the rest of Konami doesn't, and that's marketing.
Simple, because it stars Naked Snake rather than Solid Snake....
The Naked Snake timeline storyline is mostly about Nuclear Deterrence and 'finding a place for soldiers in the world'.
The Solid Snake timeline storyline is all about Nanomachines.
Nanomachines make everything bad shit crazy.
Kojima is unlikely to ever have the same budget or level of freedom he had with Konami. He may end up as a indie developer on low budget games or even kickstarter. This is not a good outcome for Konami, Kojima or gamers. We all lose out. What a shame.
Death Metalist
Member
It's supposed to be the other way around, lol. When one proves himself time and time again that he can bring the money, he should have free reign and help to do whatever. I'm sure he'll be better off without them in the long run, it's clear that Konami just wants to spend less and gain more instead of spending more and gaining more.
cripterion
Member
Oh yeah, in light of all this GZ sure makes more sense.
Still, how do you expect to make money if you're not going to spend some yourself. They cancelled Silent Hill, shit would have been a sure hit considering the thirst out there and the hype it was riding.
Still, how do you expect to make money if you're not going to spend some yourself. They cancelled Silent Hill, shit would have been a sure hit considering the thirst out there and the hype it was riding.
Honestly no one should ever be free of all constraints imo.
Death Metalist
Member
I think it depends on the person. If we look at Christopher Nolan and George Lucas it's clear to see who did better with all the free reign they had with making any type of film they wanted because the studio always allowed it.
We don't know who stood firmer. For all we know Kojima was on the verge of sinking Konami financially and they had to draw the line that Kojima was too lost in his own world to reign himself within. Im not saying that is the case but too many people who are clueless about money can say 'fuck konami' when they don't appreciate finance. Sometimes its not just about milking every drop of profit, sometimes its making sure you're still financially viable as a business and you don't go bankrupt Konami may have just have saved themselves by cutting Kojima loose. Obviously now they need to make their own way without his magic touch.
Weird, i always thought that everyone should.
Majukun
Member
being a good director goes way over "just" being a good game designer
no one should have free reign,especially if they are not really good at managing the budget
the videogame director job is a strange job,where you need many talents,one of the more important ones,is making good use of the budget...
funkystudent
Member
After the Keifer stuff I hope some bosses at Konami stepped in and game Kojima a talking to.
What a waste that was.
MGS5 just seems so unnecessary anyway from just about every point of view I think Kojima was just messing around the entire project seeing what he could get away with.
What a waste that was.
MGS5 just seems so unnecessary anyway from just about every point of view I think Kojima was just messing around the entire project seeing what he could get away with.
Gun Animal
Member
So who is?
I agree that Konami doesn't benefit from auteur bullshit tho. IIRC The only publisher that historically has benefited from fostering these slow, perfectionist developers is Sony, and that's only because they help sell consoles. People have said Kojima should go to Platinum but that's a HORRIBLE IDEA. Platinum's biggest skill is getting very artistically passionate and original games made QUICKLY. Kojima needs to be somewhere where he could work on the same game for years... sort of like the kind of gig Fumito Ueda has going.
QUOTE=funkystudent;173200593]After the Keifer stuff I hope some bosses at Konami stepped in and game Kojima a talking to.
What a waste that was.
MGS5 just seems so unnecessary anyway from just about every point of view I think Kojima was just messing around the entire project seeing what he could get away with.[/QUOTE]
David Hayter was ok in MGS1 and has been exponentially worse ever since. Go play the Japanese version of any game in the series and try to tell me that Hayter can hold a candle to Otsuka. Keifer's nowhere near Otsuka either, but it's an improvement.
Technically, all games are unnecessary. But MGSV is definately doing things that no game has ever done before and seems to be blazing a trail for a bold new genre of stealth action games. (see: ghost recon wildlands, hitman reboot.)
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
How is the game, by the way?
This makes a lot more sense now and I can understand Konami's point of view finally. I suppose they couldn't just come right out and say it, that would have been really disrespectful towards Kojima and could have really impacted projected performance of MGSV. But then why did they decide to try and scrub his name from the title and from previous games? They were dickish enough to do that but not enough to do this, then again maybe they knew that doing this might have pushed people on the fence even further to support the game (because people are stupid and hypocrites). Well I take back what I said about it all simply being Konami being assholes, looks like the same can't be said for many people here though.
Maaaaaardy
Member
Can't say I blame them, perfectionist or not he's wasting a crap load of money, that probably explains GZ...trying to gain some money back that he used?
Chaos2Frozen
Member
I'm pretty sure respecting Kojima was not on the agenda.
ArtHands
Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
That doesn't mean overspending the budget though.
The constraints of the MSX hardware is why we have Metal Gear to begin with.
oh yea. Hello Ubi and Unity 30fps experience
Death Metalist
Member
I think things will be much more clearer when we get a new MGS that's not done by Kojima. All I know is that he's bringing them all the money they wanted. Infact, for a while Konami was and probably is still known as "that MGS company" because those were the only worthwhile games that they made.
Console constraints ≠ budget constraints.
That's why I mentioned afterwards that they didn't really care about that and that it was probably more to do with the effect announcing the reasoning for sacking Kojima could have had on sales for the game.
memecomplex
Member
Well on his way to becoming videogaming's Kurosawa then!
ricardo_sousa11
Member
I dont think this is the true reason, from what I gather, he was spending his own salary, and not game budget for personal reasons. Im pretty sure that was some sort of work contract agreed upon, so they knew from the start how much he was getting payed monthly (or weekly). What he does with his money is irrelevant. Adding features to the game with the budget isnt a bad thing, specially when the whole industry is cutting features to make huge profits. I support his ideals.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
While reading this, I couldn't help but be reminded of Game Informer's story on the collaboration with Logan for the MGS4 intro sequence, which required creating twelve minutes and thirty seconds of slick live-action television, only a fifth of which could be seen by the player on a given playthrough.
What they did was really cool, but I can't imagine it was worth the expense, even with how they under-budgeted it.
MGS4 sold very well, especially considering its exclusivity. But it was released in a world where the biggest games broke into eight figures and beyond, often on very routine release schedules. The Housers can spend as much time and money as they want on a GTA game because they can guarantee 20 million sales or more. But can Kojima be expected to get and keep the kind of blank-check policy that led to the Logan collaboration, using hundreds of team members over five years or more, if his ceiling is eight to ten million in sales?
It's exactly the same thing as what happened to Irrational, and Take Two is one of the most willing publishers to throw millions of dollars and years of time at a creative development studio. With budgets for games what they are now, it was inevitable.
What they did was really cool, but I can't imagine it was worth the expense, even with how they under-budgeted it.
MGS4 sold very well, especially considering its exclusivity. But it was released in a world where the biggest games broke into eight figures and beyond, often on very routine release schedules. The Housers can spend as much time and money as they want on a GTA game because they can guarantee 20 million sales or more. But can Kojima be expected to get and keep the kind of blank-check policy that led to the Logan collaboration, using hundreds of team members over five years or more, if his ceiling is eight to ten million in sales?
It's exactly the same thing as what happened to Irrational, and Take Two is one of the most willing publishers to throw millions of dollars and years of time at a creative development studio. With budgets for games what they are now, it was inevitable.
Constraints can foster or stifle creativity, but I don't see the value in a complete absence of constraints.
SuperAngelo64
Banned
Well if he's gonna go full "westaboo" he's got it nailed. Stubborn greed, self importance, and disloyalty. Someone give this man a burger.
The Jackdog
Member
there is still a line, games arent getting cheaper.
making the best game ever does not mean making the best game ever that turns a profit
Schrödinger's cat
Banned
Finally. The truth.
R_thanatos
Member
Pretty much .
Then we'll get a statement in 5 years like " we don't know how to make metal gear anymore , so we're not trying"
Salute for those who recognised the reference.
This mindset is kind of misguided. MGSV doesn't seem unnecessary at all and I haven't seen Kojima this thrilled to work on and MGS game since MGS2. This game is without a doubt his most passionate and fills an important gap in the Big Boss and MGS story. Don't see how it's unnecessary.
While it is very possible and likely that Kojima needed to be cut loose, the question here is what else does Konami have right now from the perspective of a console gamer other than Kojima? Konami may let Kojima go because of his cost, but will that lead to Konami investing in a variety of smaller console games with the money they would've otherwise funneled to Kojima? Is the budget that would have been spent on a Kojima-made Metal Gear going to instead be spent on bringing Konami up to the level of Namco Bandai, Square Enix, or Tecmo Koei in terms of console titles? Most likely that money is going to funneled into their gambling and mobile divisions, and if people aren't a fan of either of those business like most on NeoGAF, then Konami would effectively be dead to them.
Absolutely. They could have given him a contractual ultimatum rather than straight-up severance, no doubt. 'Start being business savvy and taking a stock in the company, or you're more liability than asset to us'.
Well, this isn't true. If anything it's the only 'necessary' story left to be told in the universe. After this they'd have to remake MG1 and MG2: Solid Snake if they wanted to keep telling 'relevant' stories.
More importantly, though, MGSV will potentially be the ultimate incarnation of the 'infiltration and escape' simulator Kojima always wanted to make.
He's on record saying that his end goal, the dream game he always wanted to make, was a game that would capture the infiltrations of Escape from New York/LA, and the escapes from The Great Escape. He wanted to, by the end of his career, make a game which captures the exciting and liberating experience of both of these films. Judging by Ground Zeroes x 100, MGSV is going to match that dream, giving us a true 'infiltration and escape' simulator, where the backup crew, intelligence, scenarios and player abilities perfectly orchestrate these kinds of experiences dynamically and realistically.
That argument is fine but this thread is filled with armchair business analysts calling Konami morons for letting Kojima go. NeoGAF as a whole is often both unaware and indifferent to what actually sells well in gaming but often think they know better and espouse that catering to their niche tastes is the sure path to success.
lazer_bean
Member
this question is not biased at all
Gun Animal
Member
Hey Som
What if they did give that ultimatum? What if they gave it multiple times? What if he refused, feeling he had better things to spend money on? He was the goddamn Vice President of Konami for christ's sake. What Vice President doesn't own stock in their own company? Honestly, it's kind of insulting of him at that point not to. Of course, Konami is deserving of insult and has been for almost a decade. Maybe that's the whole point.
Threads like this are so upsetting. Not because of the news about kojima or konami, but because you can actually see what will, in the future be repeated talking points from detractors, form entirely out of jumps to conclusions throughout the topic. It's literally agenda setting.
What I mean is, over the course of this thread, the narrative has morphed from "konami wasnt getting the return out of their investment they desired" to "metal gear solid loses money." That is an enormous leap of logic. Sometimes businesses cut ties because the profit they make isnt worth the risk they assume. I.e. I pour 100 million into a project, but it pulls in $110 million, thr $10 million return isnt worth the risk going forward. That is entirely different than a series being flat out unprofitable. But people seemingly cant understand that nuance.
I hate it when narratives like this springs it up. It reminds me of when, as an example, someone said maybe earthbound wasnt rereleased because some music in the game sounded like copyrighted music, then a month later that was the definite, absolute answer. "They CAN'T rerelease earthbound for legal reasons!" Repeated over and over again. Until they did, and it turns out "legal reasons" was never the case. Another example - "nintendo cant release more vc games because they care too much about perfect emulation!"
Hunches becoming the story itself. Not a single person in this thread knows if metal gear is profitable or not, but thousands of posts assuming its losing money.
How aggravating.
What I mean is, over the course of this thread, the narrative has morphed from "konami wasnt getting the return out of their investment they desired" to "metal gear solid loses money." That is an enormous leap of logic. Sometimes businesses cut ties because the profit they make isnt worth the risk they assume. I.e. I pour 100 million into a project, but it pulls in $110 million, thr $10 million return isnt worth the risk going forward. That is entirely different than a series being flat out unprofitable. But people seemingly cant understand that nuance.
I hate it when narratives like this springs it up. It reminds me of when, as an example, someone said maybe earthbound wasnt rereleased because some music in the game sounded like copyrighted music, then a month later that was the definite, absolute answer. "They CAN'T rerelease earthbound for legal reasons!" Repeated over and over again. Until they did, and it turns out "legal reasons" was never the case. Another example - "nintendo cant release more vc games because they care too much about perfect emulation!"
Hunches becoming the story itself. Not a single person in this thread knows if metal gear is profitable or not, but thousands of posts assuming its losing money.
How aggravating.
cripterion
Member
Everyone should be able to go balls out once in a while!
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I am calling them irresponsible because of how almost all of their IP's, the ones Kojima did not shield/work on, have gone downhill. Castlevania, Silent Hill, PES, etc... A company who takes a cult brand like SH and releases such a shitty HD collection without bothering to fix it does not deserve praise.
well that's yonyea for you - a sensationalist hit grabber.
SuperInuit
Member
Wow... this is shockingly accurate.
No not really. Especially if the return on investment can't justify it, at that point you reign in in the costs.