Was Konami right about Kojima?

Alright, so hear me out. Death Stranding was my GOTY of 2019. Not because it was an excellent game, but because it was a pretty empty year and it just seemed to me the most unique of the bunch. I loved it, even if it was divisive - divisive. The game is reported to have failed commercially and seems like most of the blame can be brought upon Kojima having basically full liberty to create the game. It's flawed, and simply doesn't appeal to a mass audience.

So can we blame Konami? I feel like at the end of the day, they're a business and need their products to have a good turn around. Hell, I thought MGS5 was my most disappointing game of the past generation, so I kind of agree with Konami, here.

Of course, I still love Kojima, but I also feel like he's a bit way into himself and needs to be controlled in order to come back to reality. For his sake, actually because I can't imagine another commercial flop how it will hurt his reputation, I mean Sony isn't even that interested in his studio anymore.

The thing is Kojima needs someone over him to oversea the project. Giving him free rein over everything is a huge risk in today's market.

2019 was an empty year...

We really don't know if it failed. I doubt it cost a lot to make compared to big budget games. If anything it just didn't sell God of War numbers. But what did you expect for a new IP that isn't Fortnite?

It's a really weird game. He wanted to make it. Konami wouldn't have let him. If anything, Kojima was right about Konami.

I'm sure both were right, to a point. DS was divisive, and I couldn't play more than a couple of hours... It was literally too barren.

I'm pretty sure it cost a helluva lot more than comparable big budget games. And everyone about Kojima is right apart from Kojima fanboys. Konami's profit soared after firing him.

Death Stranding was a big budget game, though. With big marketing expenses. I saw some TV ads for the game. I did a bit of research and it appears it broke 1 million, but no sources if it reached 2 million.

I did find an article where it states Sony was not satisfied with the sales of Death Stranding Link. This is rare, considering they usually aren't too vocal about game not meeting expectations.

But yes, this is not necessarily expected. Horizon sold 10 million units, and that's a new IP from a developer that doesn't have the reputation of Kojima.

What did the money go to? Paying off the actor's salaries? Lol. This game is 85% rocks and dirt. I enjoyed it but it doesn't really scream big budget to me. They completed the game in 3 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony is not happy, but I'm not going to go off speculation/rumors. But they probably did have high expectations. It was way overhyped and was marketed in a way that didn't really explain what the game was or what's fun about it. They just relied on empty hype.

Kojima’s got mad talent as a game maker, but he’s bought a bit too much into his own legend as a storyteller. MGS 1 and 3 were dope.

Game was brilliant tbh, however it is very flawed

I am happy that the game happened tho, I got it with PS4 pro purchase and put like 150 hours into.

But it could have been better

@virusvaccine21: I always laugh at people saying Death Stranding is a GOTY. You do nothing in that game. Your a glorified UPS man in that game.

That would be like me claiming Quantum Break was GOTY. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game. But it’s not GOTY and to even suggest it is just stupidity. You like because of the hype and you were told it’s good. So you defend it. Just like people defending Duke Nukem Forever. You can enjoy average games. But don’t say they’re games of the year.

I think Kojima (and the industry as a whole) was right about Konami.

Konami's development and publishing issues are well documented.

Sure, Kojima is probably a handful, but his games have been great.

Death Stranding seems like it was meant to be so much more but rushed out for some reason. Maybe to hit a deadline, fill a void or to prove his independence, I dunno but the little I played kind of felt like MGS V where you know he wanted to include more content and add his famous cutscenes but didn't have time or budget

Maybe his next game will have the usual Kojima development cycle and actually get completed

I don't know. I'm leaning towards "yes" but also "no".

The video game industry is pretty volatile as far as employment goes; people either leave studios or studios close down all the time. The fact that Kojima left shouldn't really surprise anyone when taking the industry into account.

I think this about a lot of "artist" types. Brilliant ideas, really poor work ethic and/or execution.

@mrbojangles25: I’ve seen this opinion from you twice now. What makes you believe artists lack work ethic? I think artists hold some of the greatest work ethic out there.

No, I don’t think so. I don’t really care what others think of the game though, just what I think of it and to me it looks like it’s absolutely fantastic and I’m glad that he got the opportunity to make something like that.

Konami believes the best use of their Castlevania license is pachinko machines... their opinion on anything is all but moot.

Your opinion = fact. Some people like whisky, others vodka. Tomatoes tomatos.

It was my favourite game of 2019. I played it for 300 hours and got the platinum trophy.

This is sarcasm at its best lol.

Komami was like, 'get your pretentious ass outta here':

Nah, Konami are the bad guys and Kojima is a legend. Death Stranding was my GOTY 2019, but 2019 was a pretty bad year. Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain is GOTG tho. Let's hope they can make friends and make MGS6 ;(

I mean what was the goal? It was a good game. And it was finished. So, Konami were wrong. Unconstrained Kojima can make a good game and finish it within a certain amount of time and budget. Without someone telling him what to do he (and his team) successfully created something close to a AAA level. And it's a very unique game, so it is a noteworthy contribution to this industry.

Sure, if Kojima or Konami were only interested in the money then they are chasing League of Legends numbers. Then it was a total failure. Then pretty much all these game companies are total failures. Then Konami is a total failure with or without Kojima. I don't think that is the only ambition. There is still more to it than just the money.

I guess another goal could be that it had to be profitable like the average AAA game? I don't know if it is but it sounds like the general opinion is that it isn't? I would like to compare its numbers to a successful AAA game like Horizon Zero Dawn or to Control. It may be a failure in that sense, but even then it's not that big a failure. Especially critically. It's not like the start of Fallout 76, Anthem, and it didn't get suck in development forever like the super ambitious Star Citizen.

I personally think that for a new studio this first project is promising.

Konami hasn’t been right in a while.

Huh, first I've heard of this. Got a link?

Anyways, this topic always gets so twisted on this board. Everyone has crazy strong opinions about it, while most don't even understand what was happening at Konami.

Konami had a corporate restructuring. Hideki Hayakawa became president and wanted a focus on mobile games, said they're the future. At the same time, pachinko was raking in the money for them.

Simple as that. They saw AAA gaming as a waste. How Kojima, a guy who always delivered quality and profitable AAA games, somehow comes out the bad guy in peoples eyes is pretty warped. He was just doing what he does well, but the company had other plans.

The typical narrative here is that Kojima was just burning their money away. Yet MGSV, estimated at a cost of roughly 80 million to develop and market, pulled in roughly 180 million day 1. Not only that, but a large part of MGSVs development was creating a flexible engine for the studio, which the studio continued to utilize for its games after his departure.

Won't say Konami was wrong for parting ways with the guy. They didn't want to make AAA games anymore, why keep him around?

But acting like Kojima was fucking up is a weird way to look at it.

Hell, I thought MGS5 was my most disappointing game of the past generation, so I kind of agree with Konami, here.

.... you do realize they were forcing the guy out while making working conditions for the team a nightmare, and making communication between him and his team nearly impossible, correct? It's amazing that the game even launched lol.

You agree with Konami because you were disappointed even though Konami is probably the reason you were disappointed.

A big portion to actors and celebrities, yes but also a substantial portion has been spend in R&D, marketing and sucking up to Kojima during preproduction.

@ConanTheStoner:

Ummm...just looking at MGS V alone and thinking that he didn't lose them money is not 100% true. Kojima also had a MGS: Rising failure, not to mention the long dev cycles for each of his games. The guy was anything but efficient. Also pretty sure that 80M was just dev cost not marketing, wasn't the budget of MGS 4 alone was 50-60M? The 180M figure also had costs of printing and distribution included in.

You're right that the company was going in a different direction but to say the guy him self wasn't a big spender isn't true either.

Yeah, never understood this take either.

The guys track record was typically releasing a big game every 3 to 4 years, sometimes with smaller games in between, while also overseeing and advising on other games at Konami, or for Konami IPs that were licensed out to other devs. All while handling duties in executive roles at Konami, including being their VP for a while.

For most AAA game directors, simply putting out a big title every 3 to 4 years is more than enough lol.

Longest gap between two Kojima directed games was 5 years, the stretch leading up to MGSV. Which isn't some crazy unheard of cycle these days.

Even so, the reason for that stretch being longer than usual was Konami tasking Kojima Productions with creating an engine that would not only function as the engine for all of their in-house titles, but would also be licensed out to other studios ala UE4/Unity, etc. A first for Konami as they previously would create specific engines per game.

So in that 5 year stretch: Created a flexible engine for Konami internal use and to license out, directed MGSV, started development on PT, worked a producer role on (licensed to Platinum) Revengence, and was VP of the company for part of that time.

Yup, not a Kojima directed game. And when he saw that it wasn't working out, he axed the project at Konami and handed it off to Platinum. That's a good thing, guy was doing his job and we ended up with a good game because of it.

Can't find anything concrete. Only a snip of the producer basically saying lol no, would've been multiplat if that were the case. Edit: Oh and the other producer saying that rumor came from a misquote.

Link.

Though I highly doubt Konami would've expanded Kojimas roles and given him promotions if he shit the bed with MGS4 lol.

I mean sure, that's any game.

Still that's just day 1 online sales.

Obviously it sold after day one, and obviously there were physical sales in stores lol.

But even assuming for a moment that that's it. The game never sold a copy in stores and never sold a copy after day 1. Still turned a healthy profit.

And Konami still profited off of Fox Engine after the fact.

-

Anyways man, I get it. A lot of people don't like Kojima either as a dev, a person, or both. It's whatever.

But to act like the dude was dragging things out and losing money at Konami is demonstrably false.

He was keeping them on the map as a gaming company and they were definitely rewarding him for it.

It wasn't until they got a mobile focused president who was obsessed after their one hit mobile wonder, that they changed their tune.

Just to expand on that first point. Don't want my "big game every 3 to 4 years, sometimes with smaller games in between" to be taken as some nonsense.

It's a fuckton really. Probably up there with the most productive game designers/directors in the biz.

No, not even from a business standpoint. The Konami execs fired him because they have the attention span of goldfish. For comparison, they also fired the lead producers for other legendary series, such as Castlevania, Silent Hill, and Gradius (a cultural icon), and some of them can be quoted saying that no one wants these games anymore. Hilariously, Netflix Castlevania along with the many games that take the same setting/gameplay are very popular.

The lies that keep getting repeated, particularly on this forum, about MGSV in particular are the supposed justification on Konami's part; those lies being that he cost them too much and did not complete the game fast enough. In reality, despite the game being released unfinished, MGSV made the entire development budget back on the first day it released - and then it kept selling. Konami just wanted to satisfy their idiot, know-nothing board of directors with quick money, and decided to make everything into a pachinko machine.

@mazuiface:

Right, it wasn't just Kojima lol. They burned it all down.

The lies that keep getting repeated, particularly on this forum

It's funny. It all started with that nonsense article from that Forbes contributor. A random nobody. Was based on absolutely nothing, yet people still run with those talking points as if they're gospel.

Weird shit.

@ConanTheStoner: Par for the course on these forums I suppose! Something about fanboy vitriol...

Additionally on the topic of Kojima hate, the points about MGS in general having no gameplay are stunning - especially when a certain poster here who has a passionate hate boner for MGS in general has praised the Resident Evil 2 remake, a game that is also a cutscene heavy third person action game with about 3 hours of gameplay (About the same as a MGS4 Big Boss speedrun) in a single run. I loved Resident Evil 2 remake, and the game is a triumph, but the juxtaposition really highlights how much hating Kojima is really just a tradition on the internet, usually begotten by ignorance of his works.

@mazuiface:

Yeah, seems when the whole "movie game" criticism became a big thing, some people (who obviously don't play his games) decided to lump Kojima in with the rest of the pack.

Of course Kojimas games are very cinematic in their presentation, and yes, cutscenes for days. Sometimes to the point of absurdity, no argument there.

But they're also mechanically dense games that have some really cool interplay to their systems, plenty of gameplay content, and insane replay value.

And in the case of MGSV in particular, that game has a monstrous amount of gameplay content (arguably too much) and is pretty light on the story (a big complaint from many fans).

If you're talking about Cup on the RE2 bit, dudes just having fun with it.

2019 was not an empty year. It had way more gameplay quality than 2018. The likes of RE2, DMC5 and Sekiro in 2019 wiped the floor with 2018 games like GOW and RDR2 in the gameplay department. 2018 was an over-hyped year that under-performed in the gameplay department. Whereas 2019 was an under-hyped year that delivered the gameplay goods. Critics don't know shit about gameplay and care more about cinematic production values, hence why they rated 2018 games higher than 2019 games.

On topic: Death Stranding was not my GOTY, but it was definitely a good game with originality, something the industry is lacking these days. While I'm a Kojima fan, I've always understood why Konami let him go from a business perspective. Mobile games and card games are more lucrative for them than AAA games. It wasn't because they dislike Kojima, but that AAA games just weren't very profitable for them anymore.

Kojima absolutely is a maniac and not all of his work is good. However- his games are VERY interesting and he at least gives us a fresh taste of something every time he puts a game out. Sometimes I think he needs a project manager- But the double-edged sword to this is that MGSV completely sucked in the final 1/3rd of the game because Konami cut off the project. He absolutely needed the time and money to complete his vision and the game would have been a masterpiece. It now exists as an unfinished, strange game.

Ummm...It's high compared to the average development time of most AAAs during the last gen. You your self has stated that he took at least 3 years between each sequel while the industry average was ~2 years. Also' he's not the only designer/producer that was handling multiple roles or projects. Many were doing the same thing and most probably with a smaller budget. Though that's not to say that he was losing money because none of his games were a commercial flop.

Looking at DS alone can see that guy is getting out of hand with his spending spree. There was no need to have all that crazy celebrity cast to waste the budget. The guy's obsession with hollywood and films is not healthy as a game designer.

As for the Engine part. It wasn't designed by Kojima or even Kojima Productions in house. Didn't they set a satellite western studio as well as brought on board the western talent to oversee the engine development? Pretty sure, Konami could have also done it without KPro because their role was pretty much stricted to delegating work.

Yup, not a Kojima directed game. And when he saw that it wasn't working out, he axed the project at Konami and handed it off to Platinum. That's a good thing, guy was doing his job and we ended up with a good game because of it.

Ummm...I never said he was the director but being in charge of Kpro, it was his responsibility as well. He's also the producer of the game, wasn't he? A number of man years were on the project. Are we pretending that only credit can be given to Kojima is case of success but he should have not share the burden of the failure?

Can't find anything concrete. Only a snip of the producer basically saying lol no, would've been multiplat if that were the case. Edit: Oh and the other producer saying that rumor came from a misquote.

I'll take your word for it because I just vaguely remember the 50-60M figure against the Crysis budget of 12-18M. Even still I'm pretty sure it's quite high in comparison to other AAA games. Isn't he openly stated during the course of MGS V dev that Japanese are lagging behind west in technology and production? Nevertheless, just because the game was exclusive doesn't mean it won't have this much budget. Who knows the details of exclusivity deal with Sony and Konami!

I never said that he was losing them money or had commercial flops. I was just merely pointing out his inefficiencies. Of course, you can tolerate all those until you have an alternative but it seems like Konami just found the perfect strategy to profit without him.

P.S. I hate Kojima, his games and his fanboys with a passion but have no bad things to say about MGS V. It's a solid game through and through. Only idiots criticizing it are those who likes to watch and listen to Kojima's nonsense rather than playing the game.

Hey, was only able to skim over your post. Working right now, will come back with a proper response later.

But yeah, so that LA studio was strictly for the online multiplayer portion of the game. Which tbh, sucked lol. (Polygon link, sorry)

But nah, the engine was Kojima Productions in-house in Tokyo. His team isn't strictly game development, they've always created their own engines. Difference this time is that (under Konamis direction) instead of creating an engine solely focused on a single title, this engine had to have the range of any other major licensed engine. Which naturally increased development time.

I know they designed their past engines in house. But I'm pretty sure western talent was brought on to design and oversee Fox Engine. Let me see if I can find the source.

Here it is, though I was wrong about it being developed outside but nonetheless the entire premise stands corrected. Kojima was pretty much just delegating the job to this person. Konami would have done it either way.

For sure, guess I'm just not seeing your (counter) point here? Bringing in specialized talent to oversee specific tasks is commonplace in any big studio. I've overseen character/creature and hard surface artists on many games. Doesn't take away from the fact that they're putting in the work.

It's not like I'm saying that Kojima is god and Konami couldn't do anything without him lol.

- You mentioned Kojima taking a long time to put out games.

- I showed his largely standard track record for releasing games, while pointing out that his longest gap involved Fox Engines creation.

Konami could've have created an engine without Kojima and team, not disputing that. It's just that... that's not what happened lol.

That part in bold is an incredibly over simplified take.

"Under Merceron's watch, Konami developed Fox Engine in-house"

While he definitely played an extremely important role in the engines development, not like he's some one man army. The point is, it's still time that Kojima Productions had to invest in the engines creation.

The way they kicked him out and treated the rest of the staff? NO, absolutely that shit should not be seen as okay. Even if you think he is an egomaniac hack, I don't see how you think that validates how his team was treated.

Even the artsy, inventive, makes you feel shit had Outer Wilds. The coolest groundhog's day game. Big Carl Sagan energy.

I remember having a debate like this about Fox Engine around two years ago, when that same article was posted, and it turned out to be fake news from a journalist who couldn't bother to do some basic fact-checking (typical of the gaming media). I debunked that article with the actual Fox Engine credits from MGS5:

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Credits (PlayStation 4)

Fox Engine's technical director was Junji Tago of Kojima Productions, not this Julien Merceron guy. Merceron had a relatively limited role in the engine's development, that of a technical supervisor. Nearly all the other Fox Engine credits are Japanese names, with very few Western names among them. Fox Engine was developed under Tago's watch, directing a predominantly Japanese in-house team at Kojima Productions and Konami.

WOW some heavy Kojima kool aid getting drunk up in here lol.

From your own link:

He's the guy responsible for Fox Engine. That's why he was brought on board and left once it was done. The rest of the lower tier people stayed. Kojima was on record saying Japanese devs are falling behind western devs in technology. He was there to make sure Fox Engine can be a competent general purpose modern engine.

Saying he had a limited role is like saying Kojima has a limited role in MGS V or DS. He is the one who had a key role.

EDIT: Junji Tago has mostly worked as a lead system programmer for MGS V until Dec 2015 and was promoted after that to the director's role. While Julien has held CTO or similar position since 2006 at various companies. Pretty easy to see Junji was given more responsibility once Julien decided to leave.

No where did I say he was a one man army or did everything on his own. I took issue with giving Kojima the credit for Fox Engine when it was clearly this guy's. My point is further compounded by the fact that his position was Konami's WW Technical Director not TD at KP. He was just using the resources of KP to get the work done most probably because that's the the team who usually gets the bulk of the budget or are competent enough.

@pc_rocks:

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Credits (PlayStation 4)

Japanese staff - 52 staff (13 lead roles, 39 supporting roles)

Non-Japanese staff - 2 supporting staff (1 Western, 1 Asian)

Conclusion: Fox Engine is a Japanese-made game engine, produced in-house at Kojima Productions and Konami. Fact.

Facts speak louder than opinions. No amount of mental gymnastics or stereotyping can change this fact. Deal with it, bruv.

P.S. Look bruv, I get where you're coming from. You believe in stereotypes of Japanese excelling in gameplay but sucking at graphics, and Westerners excelling in graphics but sucking at gameplay. But that's all they are, stereotypes. There are Japanese who are competent in graphics (e.g. Capcom and Kojima Productions) as well as Westerners who are competent in gameplay (e.g. Valve and id Software). They're in the minority for sure, but exceptions always exist.

I don't know what you're trying to argue anymore. I don't believe in stereotypes. I believe in what I see. If KP's games credit has always been given to Kojima then it's just fair to give the credit of Fox Engine to that guy we are talking about. He's the one who oversaw the development not Junji regardless of the fact how many people worked under him. He was the captain of the ship.

There are companies whose entire development houses are in third world countries but always follow the architecture, processes and design established by the supervisors in western or other 1st world countries. That's how it works.

And Junji has been working as lead systems programmer until Dec 2015 so it's painfully obvious that the architect behind the engine was that other guy. The only person who's doing mental gymnastics here is you.

@pc_rocks:

Facts: Fox Engine's development was led by Daizaburo Nakamura, Junji Tago, Akio Sakamoto, and Kunio Takabe, who are Japanese dudes employed by Kojima Productions and/or Konami. The Western dude you're referring to is just a technical supervisor. Nothing more and nothing less. It says it right there in the MGS5 credits. The credits speak for themselves.

Your post is a fine example of mental gymnastics. Even when presented with the hard, cold, factual evidence, you deny the obvious and instead peddle fake news, with no reliable sources to back up your claims, in order to push some nonsensical conspiracy theory. That's just Trump 101 behaviour. No point continuing this debate any further.

I'm not the one who's disputing the news sources and the designation of the guy. Yes, the credits speak for themselves. Worldwide Technology Director. That's who he was. If he has a limited role then does Kojima also had a limited role in MGS V and DS?

Junji's own Linkedin page says that he worked as a lead systems programmer on MGS V until Dec 2015. What you're arguing is akin to saying John Carmack had a limited role in the creation of all Id engines and Oculus VR or Cevat Yerli had a limited role in Cryengine's development. Do you know what all these guys have in common, their designation.

You do know that false reporting like what you're claiming is this case can be corrected afterwards and Konami could have disputed it? It's not like it's just one instance, it was widely reported. Why would a company let a wrong news circulate that puts them in bad PR. Konami was quick to denounce all the reports of Kojima leaving until Dec 2015 so why didn't they contested this?

Lastly, prefixing sentences with 'fact', doesn't make it so. :)

P.S. I'm not a trump fan, supporter or anything remotely close to it. He's a polar opposite of my views and I hate everything he stands for but I did want him to win. ;)

I'm going to say ... Yes, at least a little bit.

Konami are no saints and the company is willing to destroy every single one of their IPs for a quick profit, we all have seen this, but with that being said ... Kojima Is extremely overrated.

First of all ... He failed at making MGSV ... Period. And yes, we know about the drama ... But Kojima for the longest time was bleeding money for the company and jumping projects ... It wasn't until Konami truly made him miserable that he just barely put together something reassembling of a game and rushed it out, and it's a shame that he couldn't even finish it because it was going great ... Sadly when you don't meet ends ... Everyone loses, specially the final product.

Anyway, so Kojima Is finally out and it becomes an Internet darling ... so Sony literally throws at him a bag of money for him to truly delivers ... And what does he do ??? He makes the most pretentious, boring, nonsensical game ever ... He wastes money by getting a bunch of his Hollywood friends into the game and once again he fails, no excuses this time around. He just fails once again.

The Kojima that made MGS3 is long gone, all is left is the wannabe filmaker that can't make a film and is stuck at making videogames.

He clearly needs someone who keeps him focused. That's why I got excited at that rumor about Konami bringing back Silent Hills with Kojima involved because that's where he could shine again ... Under actual supervision by higher ups.

The game made back the entire development budget in the first day of its release, and then kept selling more. You need to read this whole thread - that lie about Kojima costing Konami a ton of money was based on a Forbes article from a guy who literally speculated on the entire situation, which somehow passed as journalism when it was clearly not. Konami moved to making pachinko machines because they don't require them to hire development teams for different series, which is why Castlevania, Suikoden, Gradius, etc all disappeared. They have shot themselves in the foot by firing the teams behind many beloved series.

Konami was wrong, they f***ed up big time, not just with Kojima, but with all of the iconic video game series they have created.