Support NeoGAF

[Neiteio]

Kojima's expensive? Well here's an offer he can't refuse: I'm willing to pay Kojima $20 USD (Twenty and 0/100 Dollars), to hire an editor and keep cutscenes to a minimum. And no characters who shit their pants. And no shaved monkeys.

Spoiler

Well, OK, we can have shaved monkeys if there aren't PowerPoint presentations to go with them.

 

[Johndoey]

Konami is going to be dissapointed when they find out that is exactly why people liked to buy his games.

I don't think they care at this point, the only thing really left for everyone involved is release.

Spoiler

Hot sweet gurgling release

 

[Crossing Eden]

Kojima's expensive? Well here's an offer he can't refuse: I'm willing to pay Kojima $20 USD (Twenty and 0/100 Dollars), to hire an editor and keep cutscenes to a minimum. And no characters who shit their pants. And no shaved monkeys.

Spoiler

Well, OK, we can have shaved monkeys if there aren't PowerPoint presentations to go with them.

At least we have less cutscenes, hope you like audio logs.

 

[protomouse]

Konami needed Kojima. Kojima doesn't need Konami.

Konami doesn't need Kojima. Heck, they don't need their (AAA) video games business.

 

[rhandino]

Konami needed Kojima. Kojima doesn't need Konami.

LMFAO... of course they don't

This thread has been entertaining so far just for the sheer amount of delusions =D

 

[Matt]

to the outsider, a creator like Kojima's mind may seem jumbled and unorganized, but the ends justify the means.

...also, comments like these can be thought as sort of offensive to those who are creative, but also have self control. It's just as possible to make a great game without the excesses Kojima goes to.

 

[Lernaean]

Depends in how you see it. In my eyes Konami was just too cheap.

 

[Fathom]

Konami is going to be dissapointed when they find out that is exactly why people liked to buy his games.

They don't care. They're not a video game company anymore.

 

[GrayChild]

I would blame Kojima if he was the only creator going through this. However, what has happened in Konami during the past few years makes me think otherwise.

While indeed his games can be quite expensive to make, didn't all MGS games (at least the numbered ones) turned out to be profitable? Even Ground Zeroes, with all the initial backlash sold more than expected.

Even if MGSV's budget goes way beyond what was initially expected, KojiPro managed to create a technology that Konami can use for all its projects during this generation. And still, firing Kojima for only one game that became more expensive is.. kind of a stretch.

This is why I believe why Kojima may have gone overboard with the money he spent on this game, in the end it's still just Konami not wanting to make a longer term investment. Considering their (mis)handling of Silent Hill, Suikoden, Castlevania and all Hudson properties show that they are simply after the quick and dirty buck. The biggest proof is the fact most of their higher budget output during the last 2 console generations being cheap outsourced jank like Homecoming, Neverdead or Lords of Shadow 2.

 

[Neiteio]

At least we have less cutscenes, hope you like audio logs.

I am 110% happy with this change!

 

[Vex_]

Anyone else feel like kojima did this on purpose?

Like, he knew they'd let him go? He always said he wanted this mgs to be his last, or this mgs to be his last... Maybe he just wanted them to fire him?

 

[Sabercrusader]

Not really surprising if true. You can tell just by looking at it that MGSV had cost a lot of money. There were probably better ways to go about this though. Firing him(I mean, basically anyways), and subsequently removing everything alluding to him from the boxart of not just MGSV, but previous games as well, seems like a bit of a bad move, given how well known and love Kojima is as well as the simple fact that he's good at what he does.

Kojima was really the only thing Konami had to it's name nowadays, and now they're doing their damnedest to distance themselves from it.

 

[Rajang]

Depends in how you see it. In my eyes Konami was just too cheap.

.

 

[Lethe82]

Look, I don't know how much Konami has spent on MGSV...but it's clearly a lot, and the idea that it will easily sell enough copies to cover its cost, let alone be a huge profit generator is, I think, premature.

When was the last MGS title that sold great? MGS2 14 years ago?

Part of the invested expense with MGSV was suppose to be offset by Konami being able to leverage the Fox engine across all of their games to save money, also don't forget that MGS4 and the brand in general sells a LOT semi consistently through re-release editions and legacy collections.

 

[hateradio]

Konami doesn't need Kojima. Heck, they don't need their (AAA) video games business.

I wonder if they would sell of the MG franchise.

Of course they wouldn't.

 

[Wynnebeck]

Part of me wants to see Konami as a company sink into the water, but that would mean the end of Bemani and my favorite rhythm games so I'm in a pickle.

 

[Valkyri von Thanatos]

He's worth all the money, IMO.

Thanks for not sparing any expense for your final MGS, Kojima.

This. I'm glad he didn't compromise, let's see the fruits of his team's labor.

 

[Lethe82]

Konami doesn't need Kojima. Heck, they don't need their (AAA) video games business.

You say that and yet Metal Gear is it's own entry in the financials.

 

[Roshin]

Well no shit. Guy's a perfectionist.

Yes, quality isn't free.

 

[Spaghetti]

konami's decision on this is not a long time coming. they wouldn't have greenlighted the fox engine, mgsv, or silent hills for that matter if they had any intention of canning kojima in the last five years. this all seems to have just sprung out of the ground this year.

business oriented or not. kojima was the goose that laid the golden egg for konami's video game department. so much so that they were pinning his name on the castlevania reboot to get some shine on it, and then years later placed silent hills into his hands and had his studio breathe new life into it through a teaser alone that got huge exposure.

i think at some point, konami will realise this was a long-term mistake. metal gear will hit a decline, sales will drop off and merchandise won't sell as much. silent hill will stay dead, and so will the rest of their franchises. they can pump out as many pachinko machines with the branding out as they want. sooner or later those franchises will lose appeal and they'll devalue. they'll have cut themselves out of a revenue stream. doesn't matter if they make bank on gambling, they'll decrease their worldwide presence and reduce the amount of other ventures they can rely on.

just something about this whole thing feels more personal than professional. i'm not willing to discount a lot of this was decided very quickly though.

 

[ArtHands]

I would blame Kojima if he was the only creator going through this. However, what has happened in Konami during the past few years makes me think otherwise.

While indeed his games can be quite expensive to make, didn't all MGS games (at least the numbered ones) turned out to be profitable? Even Ground Zeroes, with all the initial backlash sold more than expected.

Even if MGSV's budget goes way beyond what was initially expected, KojiPro managed to create a technology that Konami can use for all its projects during this generation. And still, firing Kojima for only one game that became more expensive is.. kind of a stretch.

This is why I believe why Kojima may have gone overboard with the money he spent on this game, in the end it's still just Konami not wanting to make a longer term investment. Considering their (mis)handling of Silent Hill, Suikoden, Castlevania and all Hudson properties show that they are simply after the quick and dirty buck. The biggest proof is the fact most of their higher budget output during the last 2 console generations being cheap outsourced jank like Homecoming, Neverdead or Lords of Shadow 2.

There's nothing that suggest its one game that became more expensive though.

 

[vpance]

This. I'm glad he didn't compromise, let's see the fruits of his team's labor.

The thing about that is, he was so uncompromising to the point that he'll never work on MGS again. Bittersweet for sure.

 

[GravityMan]

I appreciate Kojima's incredible attention to detail and unwillingness to settle for less, but he and others like him are simply not good fits for any company, whether it's Konami, Nintendo, Rockstar or any other. The guy is a creative artist in the purest sense. In a business, deadlines need to be met, products need to get done, returns on investments need to occur in order for the company to survive. Sometimes, corners need to be cut here and there in order for milestones to be reached. There are average Joes and Janes at Konami that collect paychecks. So, despite the poor handling of this situation by Konami, I can understand their position. Especially considering how expensive AAA games are to produce these days.

Even if Kojima started his own gaming studio, he's likely going to run into some of the same business-y issues that he had at Konami. If he wants to continue being viable in the videogame industry, then he's going to have to keep his ambitions on a leash. But I don't see him tempering his ambitions, thus he may be best served moving to a different medium.

 

[Iced Arcade]

another thing from this is... Kojima doesn't benefit if people buy MGSV or not? so basically only Konami does right?

 

[dinosaur_hunter2]

Yes, quality isn't free.

This.

another thing from this is... Kojima doesn't benefit if people buy MGSV or not? so basically only Konami does right?

In my eyes, it makes Kojima even more amazing. It means he cares about the game not because of the profits, but for the love of making them and for the fans.

Or it could mean he doesn't care if it flops or not, but I honestly don't think that's the case.

 

[Aselith]

He's their loss leader. He's worth the money because he elevates the whole publisher.

But they don't publish games anymore other than what he makes so that doesn't make financial sense for them anymore.

 

[Skilletor]

At least we have less cutscenes, hope you like audio logs.

Praise be to Kojima.

 

[kevm3]

If, or maybe shall I say WHEN, Konami loses Kojima and goes into mobile or whatever else they are doing, it's going to be very difficult for them to get back into console gaming. They'll have to cultivate new talent and reestablish their brand.

 

[Aselith]

If, or maybe shall I say WHEN, Konami loses Kojima and goes into mobile or whatever else they are doing, it's going to be very difficult for them to get back into console gaming. They'll have to cultivate new talent and reestablish their brand.

They already lost Kojima tho

 

[Grizzlyjin]

I get where they're coming from. If this was 5 or 10 years ago, they obviously would have given him free reign. But I don't think Konami has an interest in making these type of games anymore when smaller companies are making truckloads of cash on mobile games.

Konami knows that Metal Gear is their highest profile game. Hell, their website has a game section and then a totally separate Metal Gear section next to it. I doubt the company is trying to be evil for the sake of being evil. They're always in it for the money. At a certain point, the investment doesn't make sense for them.

 

[rhandino]

another thing from this is... Kojima doesn't benefit if people buy MGSV or not? so basically only Konami does right?

This is like asking if, idk, Sakurai benefits from the sales of SSB4 like if maybe they could get a nice bonus if they reach certain sales thresholds?

idgi

 

[Sn4ke_911]

I get where they're coming from. If this was 5 or 10 years ago, they obviously would have given him free reign. But I don't think Konami has an interest in making these type of games anymore when smaller companies are making truckloads of cash on mobile games.

Konami knows that Metal Gear is their highest profile game. Hell, their website has a game section and then a totally separate Metal Gear section next to it. I doubt the company is trying to be evil for the sake of being evil. They're always in it for the money. At a certain point, the investment doesn't make sense for them.

We get all that but the "damage" is already done so why erase Kojima and Kojima Productions now from everything MGSV? because something personal happened, this isn't about money.

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

This.


In my eyes, it makes Kojima even more amazing. It means he cares about the game not because of the profits, but for the love of making them and for the fans.

It's really easy to follow the "quality isn't free" mantra if you are paid fixed salary anyway and your income isn't affected by the budget you spend in excess.

 

[Salaadin]

We get all that but the "damage" is already done so why erase Kojima and Kojima Productions now from everything MGSV? because something personal happened, this isn't about money.

I think it is about money and that the name scrubbing is just them trying to preemptively create some distance between Metal Gear/Konami and Kojima. They just went about it in the worst way possible.

 

[Valkyri von Thanatos]

The thing about that is, he was so uncompromising to the point that he'll never work on MGS again. Bittersweet for sure.

It's what he has wanted for years, I can't see much gaps being left in the timeline, so it is a swan song a long time coming. Most sad is that Platinum probably won't want to make any more Metal Gear Rising games, and more importantly, Konami won't want to pursue the license or their development skills anyways.

I think it is about money and that the name scrubbing is just them trying to preemptively create some distance between Metal Gear/Konami and Kojima. They just went about it in the worst way possible.

Yeah, they want to make sure as little people as possible who are introduced to this do not know who Kojima is, which is a damn shame given his dedication to the series despite his wishes. He made it what it is and Konami are shunning him, not just removing him and his team because they may not make a profit return they deem worthy, but actively attempting at excising his legacy. Its sick.

 

[dinosaur_hunter2]

It's really easy to follow the "quality isn't free" mantra if you are paid fixed salary anyway and your income isn't affected by the budget you spend in excess.

Ok, but have you ever seen any game made by Kojima that lacked quality? I haven't. Even if he spent in excess, his games quality's been always over the top. I think thats's money well spent.

 

[Sn4ke_911]

I think it is about money and that the name scrubbing is just them trying to preemptively create some distance between Metal Gear/Konami and Kojima. They just went about it in the worst way possible.

Previously they even erased Kojima from The Legacy Collection and after the backlash they put it back in, how has this anything to do with money?

 

[OrochiJR]

From a business and financial standpoint this makes Konami's point of view understandable. It's a clash between a company that wants to make money and an "artist" so to speak that wants to put out the best possible product as possible. The whole situation was handled pretty badly though on Konami's part.

 

[Valkyri von Thanatos]

And what of PT? I guess Konami just had to not only remove the game from PSN for new users, but they had to prevent previous users from ever downloading it again. Now the game is inimitable art, only a relative few will play it, and all because Konami couldn't bear his name being associated with a project they will now ruin.

They can't bear to have consumers be confused when the next Silent Hill game comes out and looks, plays, and feels completely different than PT, so they killed this unique horror game in the most effective way possible with modern technology. Literally no one can transfer the license or sell the game, so its effectively locked into a person's console now. Its like a dead switch that breaks a disc as soon as it is ejected from the slot. I can't believe they went so far to screw over everyone, now so few new people can experience PT as it is.

But hey, its "just a teaser".

 

[CuckFupertino]

We get all that but the "damage" is already done so why erase Kojima and Kojima Productions now from everything MGSV? because something personal happened, this isn't about money.

Isn't Konami run by the Yakuza? Kojima should be lucky he's still alive, never mind having his name taken off the box!

On that note, it's clear Kojima is an artist whose heart and soul go into making a project transform into exactly what he's envisioned in his mind's eye. Whether or not MGS was a blockbuster franchise doesn't matter to him (except in the sense that it gives him more resources to create his vision).

At the end of the day, Kojima is making the game he wants to see. I honestly believe he wouldn't be upset if sales bombed, so long as the final product was as close to his vision as possible. Of course Kojima knows people hate 2 hour cut scenes - the truth is he doesn't care. It's his story, and he's gonna tell it.

Now, looking down the road, it seems almost a given at this point that within a year or two we'll see Kojima heading to Kickstarter for something. Given this information - that he has trouble adhering to a budget because of a desire to produce his ideal game - is he destined to fail on Kickstarter?

Inafune, Igarashi, Yu Suzuki... Kickstarter seems to be the place to go if you're a Japanese "auteur" whose fallen out of graces with the big publisher you helped put on the map. Let's hope Kojima has enough sense to sit back and study how well or poorly these projects turn out before launching his own.

 

[Vinterbird]

Better question is: Will Konami use the Fox Engine for anything past MGS5. They're obviously getting out of the games business in bits and pieces and Kojima's major problem for Ground Zeroes AND Phantom Pain was making a sandbox engine (in addition to his attention for details/perfectionism, but mostly building a new engine).

Konami already announced a new Metal Gear game is coming, so I imagine Konami is going to get what they can out of the investment in Fox Engine with new installments in the franchise for the foreseeable future. With a new team and a new direction they can probably keep the budget smaller then previous entries and use the current engine as a foundation to get things going faster then normal.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

Better question is: Will Konami use the Fox Engine for anything past MGS5. They're obviously getting out of the games business in bits and pieces and Kojima's major problem for Ground Zeroes AND Phantom Pain was making a sandbox engine (in addition to his attention for details/perfectionism, but mostly building a new engine).

PES already uses is. In fact, PES was the first game released to use it when it was on PS3/360. PES 14?

I have no doubt they'll continue to use it for PES and Metal Gear and whatever franchise they decide to resurrect for nostalgia.

 

[KojiKnight]

It's what he has wanted for years, I can't see much gaps being left in the timeline, so it is a swan song a long time coming. Most sad is that Platinum probably won't want to make any more Metal Gear Rising games, and more importantly, Konami won't want to pursue the license or the development skills anyways.

Honestly I expect the opposite to be true. I expect konami will be all for licensing out its properties in the future. That's essentially free money, instead of developing it in house. I expect more platinum-esque licensing deals in the future.

 

[TheLegendOfMart]

And yeah, sometimes you create work during development that just doesn't come together and then you ditch it, that's a natural part of the process.

I design websites, the sites I design go through lots of "this sucks I don't like it it's not good enough" along with redesigns and changes in direction countless times.

The problem with this is nothing is ever good enough in your eyes while it might be exactly what the customer wants, if time and money weren't a thing a project could go on for a LONG time.

This isn't too much of an issue with a single person or a small team but imagine on a team of hundreds how much time and money that would cost.

 

[terrier]

Not sure if true, but Kojima has been acting like a dive for a while so it wouldn't surprise me. I used to be a fan of him but not anymore (still buying MGS V at some point though)

 

[machemachete]

Cant wait for Kojimas kickstarter "Plastic Engine Solified"

 

[Love Deterrence]

Cant wait for Kojimas kickstarter "Plastic Engine Solified"

Day one. He's chained to the stealth genre. <3

 

[BBboy20]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LY3ftiLqmE

He does everything, Kojima is the one who makes his team work, without him there probably wouldn't be a MGSV or at least not as revolutionary as TPP looks because as we all have seen as talented as his team is they can't do anything without their leader, just look at Metal Gear Rising and therefore it's his game and he deserves all the credit he gets.

What happened to KP? They used to be able to make games on their own but after 4, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Though it is a bit strange that they wouldn't wait and see how successful MGS5 will be before kicking him out.

That's the million dollar question here, isn't it? Why now?

How dare they stop the bleeding.

To be fair, looking back, they do seem to be kind-of morons.

I feel Konami were sliding into irrelevancy long before Kojima became VP and definitely long before 2011.

Things like Bomberman Act Zero in 2006 and Silent Hill Homecoming in 2008 were milestones of that decline.

That was probably the beginning of the end, just that Snake Eater blinded us.

This post makes a ton of sense, I'm a artist and I know. You get payed on contract, no one ever gets paid by performance because it's impossible to judge, the company or person hiring you needs to judge from what you have to show and offer to amount to the cost that is being asked for hiring you.



Fault to this post: Konami (or it's board) approved of all of this.

- Actor was a selling point for the game, which usage of the person's likeness did induce people to wanting to buy the game.
- The engine was needed for Kojima to move forward with making his games, he could had used Unreal Engine or some program like that, which is they only valid argument against this. But for Konami approved this, so they probably had a lot of plans to use the engine for many games to come.
- Konami approved of the studio. Enuff said.
- I don't know anything about the whole shift to a different Metal Gear game. :/ So nothing to say here.
- You can't say they wasted time, you don't know what workload they might had been handling at the time, or what was going on. The game shifted because it couldn't be completed at the time by the team. Again Konami approved.

At the end of the day it's Konami's fault for approving of all this money spending activity, not Kojima. It's the companies fault for not being able to say no, or consider it wasn't a good move to spend that money in that way.

There is still a lot more of this story we don't know, but to me the problem is more on Konami then it was Kojima. Kojima offer his ideas, they approved. What Konami has been doing soon after has been unprofessional and highly disgraceful in so many ways. But at the end of the day, Kojima is leaving and will most likely be picked up right away with some of his team, parts of the team will join other companies or start their own projects, and we will move on from this topic as Konami will be dead to our gaming community. :/

konami's decision on this is not a long time coming. they wouldn't have greenlighted the fox engine, mgsv, or silent hills for that matter if they had any intention of canning kojima in the last five years. this all seems to have just sprung out of the ground this year.

business oriented or not. kojima was the goose that laid the golden egg for konami's video game department. so much so that they were pinning his name on the castlevania reboot to get some shine on it, and then years later placed silent hills into his hands and had his studio breathe new life into it through a teaser alone that got huge exposure.

i think at some point, konami will realise this was a long-term mistake. metal gear will hit a decline, sales will drop off and merchandise won't sell as much. silent hill will stay dead, and so will the rest of their franchises. they can pump out as many pachinko machines with the branding out as they want. sooner or later those franchises will lose appeal and they'll devalue. they'll have cut themselves out of a revenue stream. doesn't matter if they make bank on gambling, they'll decrease their worldwide presence and reduce the amount of other ventures they can rely on.

just something about this whole thing feels more personal than professional. i'm not willing to discount a lot of this was decided very quickly though.

This is the crux about Konami that plenty here seem to have either forgot, don't know or care: Konami doesn't give a fuck.
We don't know what has been going on behind the scenes in the last decade but it is quiet apparent their tribulations is not only being caused by outside forces. Whatever eroded their console pillar that would make the production of MGS5 tremble does not seem like a singularity made up by one Hideo Kojima when you look at the publisher's output and decisions: shit investments, poor choices in external developer hirings, lack of oversight or vision on any product that isn't Metal Gear or PES, alleged rudeness towards journalists, weird to disastrous gaming presentations, half-baked ventures...they, in a certain perspective, had it coming and they're going to take their ball and go home rather then sit and actually think on what they've been doing all this time. If this came down to budget, all of this may not have happened if they were simply a smarter company and perhaps one that still gave a damn about AAA gaming but it's quiet apparent taking half-measure approaches (putting their minds and passion into gambling only is rather sad) is what they have been striving at for so long so maybe that's where we are right now.

tl;dr: Just because Konami is a business does not make them smart or wise.

 

[Emedan]

Another reason why they should've kept Hayter </3

Seriously though I love kojima and metal gear solid is my favourite game franchise in the world but some people in here are such apologist - If kojima had no regards for cost then he's a bad employee, the company exists to make money not to satisfy Kojima. If this really was the case then it's perfectly understandable he was let go. What isn't though is removing his name from the game and such - that shit comes across like something an angry child would do to punish someone, not a multi million dollar company

 

[Dash Kappei]

GateGate.

lol, this is just perfect