Tag Archives: interview

Kojima TIME interview: Motive and motivation

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Hideo KojimaIn a new interview with TIME, Kojima answers questions about the psychology of his game design, what motivates him to continue making Metal Gear, and how to make players empathize with the moral questions his characters are in.

For example, when asked about technology allowing increasing realism of violence on screen, Kojima shifts the focus away from the visuals, and back to the meaning behind the violence:

There are so many games where you fight aliens or zombies, and they have very high-fidelity graphics, but they don’t ask the question of why the events are happening. In Metal Gear, I’m trying to get at why all these violent things happened in the first place. My intention is to get the player to question why these things are happening.

He’s been answering this next question in many interviews recently, but once again we see the real motivation for continuing the Metal Gear series includes the fact that he gets a huge budget to work with:

Originally I wanted to hand the series off to younger staff and let them carry on with it. And so we did, and that resulted in the game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.  But after Rising, we found that for my younger staff, the numbered games were just too heavy for them. So that’s why I decided to come back and work on them myself. Ideally I’d want them to handle this, and for myself to be focused on creating a different IP. That said, Metal Gear is a huge title, it usually has a massive budget, and that wouldn’t happen for any game.

However, that doesn’t stop him from promising that this is truly the last Metal Gear game that he’ll be working on:

And this time — I’ll say it again — this is the last one. Not the last Metal Gear, but the last one I’ll work on. This is my focus when I go into working on a game. Every game I make, I create thinking it’s really, really going to be the last game I create. So I put as much as I can in and make sure I have no regrets.

Perhaps one of the most pointed answers Kojima gives is on the things that “haven’t changed” since the old days of gaming:

And the content of the game, what is really the essence of the game, hasn’t moved much beyond Space Invaders. It’s the same old thing, that the bad guy comes and without further ado the player has to defeat him. The content hasn’t changed — it’s kind of a void.

It’s interesting how Kojima doesn’t recognize the moral depth of big hits like The Last of Us, or even the latest Grand Theft Auto, when giving this answer.  Either he hasn’t been playing a lot of new games, or he isn’t satisfied with how far they go in dealing with the themes and moral situations presented to players.

Big Boss, 70s, Africa and more: MGS5 speculation from CVG

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CVG, reporting on the upcoming PSM3 issue, is predicting that Metal Gear Solid 5 will follow Big Boss in Africa during the 1970’s, and that Solid Snake will be seen as a baby.  That’s not hard to believe, considering the Fox Engine screenshots of jungle environments, the artwork of Big Boss with the “Diamond Dogs” arm patch, and the way Peace Walker ended.  Here’s an excerpt of their analysis:

The Kojima Productions site itself ‘hides’ another image of Big Boss with a ‘Diamond Dogs’ logo on his shoulder, which Dawkins claims is a reference to both the 1974 David Bowie album Diamond Dogs (Kojima being a confirmed Bowie fan), but, more importantly, the diamond mines of Angola, against which some of the action could be set.

It adds up.  There’s still plenty of material left to explore in the career of Big Boss, and we know that there will be a real Metal Gear Solid 5.  Solid Snake’s saga is finished and Raiden has his own wacky spinoff, which leaves only Big Boss left.

OPM interview reveals two sides of Kojima

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Oh, I love this.

As relayed by Snake Soup, the new OPM interview with Kojima talks about the dual nature of Kojima while creating games:

“In Guns Of The Patriots [Snake] was supposed to die” he continues but admits he was brought around. “Everyone on the staff really wanted to keep him alive, so I caved a little.” In the interview Kojima touches several times on the conflict between being a creator and a producer – being an artist and a businessman don’t always mix. “I’m a creator at heart, but at the same time I also have to manage the business aspect of it, figure out how to sell the game. I’m still trying to find that balance – it’s very delicate. How do you put in enough to make sure it sells, while remaining true to your vision?”

Without delving too deeply, I have discussed this same thing before, especially as it relates to the allegory of Kojima in the Metal Gear series.  Particularly, I believe that Kojima is absolutely expressing this same thing with Naked Snake during the events of Metal Gear Solid 3.

Gabe Newell contradicts Kojima

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In a new interview with Gamasutra, Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson talk about their business strategy — or rather, their complete lack of business strategy, at Valve:

Gabe Newell: … our focus is really much on building something that’s cool, and then we’ll worry about monetization.  So we’re not going to worry about that until later.  Premature monetization is the root of all evil.

The entire 4-page interview is pretty much about how Valve refuses to give its employees titles, responsibilities, and how they generally don’t care about market research, but rather focus on simply recruiting people they want to work with and make stuff they think is cool.  This stands in contrast to what Hideo Kojima said previously about his experience with pitching ideas and creating projects, which was this:

Hideo Kojima:  Right now, it’s very similar to movies: You need a lot of money. So rather than doing what you want, doing what you like, you must have a clear idea of marketing and sales. That’s what’s happening to us with FOX Engine; you do not need be an expert in programming to develop a game, but if you have a question, you still need an expert on-hand to provide an answer.

Isn’t it sad that while Kojima — who already has his own production company — talks about how he needs marketing research and sales pitches, instead of being able to do what he wants, Valve is boasting about their “do-what-you-want” strategy and making millions of dollars of profit as a result?  This is exactly the kind of thing I examined in my Metal Gear Online vs Team Fortress 2 series, which I suggest you take a look at after you’re finished with the Newell interview [here].

I’ll conclude with another choice quote from Valve’s leader:

GN: Well, I think, at the end of the day, the challenge is to find exciting, worthwhile projects for smart people to do.  And then whether you’re doing it as an individual, whether you’re doing it as a small indie developer, or you’re doing it as a larger group, if you can answer that question you’re probably going to be successful.

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