#but I like voidburger I think is their name

[blazehedgehog]

5 years later, how do you feel about Konami screwing over Hideo Kojima and forcing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to release unfinished and also cancelling Silent Hills?

We don’t know the whole story of what went on there. We probably never will. I know it’s human nature to speculate, but I’m also slightly uncomfortable doing so, because there have been enough scenarios where I’ve been privy to other sides of stories and things are rarely as sensational as you expect. That’s how conspiracy theories start, and before you know it, you have some weirdo with an assault rifle storming a pizza parlor because internet trolls told him they were a sex trafficking ring. 

Sometimes, though, crazy stuff does actually happen. Conspiracy theories wouldn’t exist unless there was some basis for people to expect sensational events. So I guess I just don’t know.

Bobvids did a great video about P.T., though, and Bobvids seems pretty level-headed about things in general. It’s over on his Grate Debate channel, where he and Voidburger discuss Silent Hill:

The cliffnotes version: Konami’s console game success was flagging, so a new president was brought in from their ultra-profitable mobile game division to turn things around. He did not get along with Hideo Kojima, who was known for making deeply expensive games. Kojima was effectively put in probation, and P.T. was a cry for help, a call to arms, and an act of revenge all rolled in to one.

I don’t know how I feel about the two sides. It’s pretty clear that I think big budget game development is out of control. Games do not need Hollywood celebrity talent to be good, because games should be fun first and foremost. And Hideo Kojima in particular is known for being indulgent in things that are not gameplay. I would never describe the gameplay of a Hideo Kojima game as bad, for the most part, but I do think it can take a back seat to presentation and story. He carries himself like a big player, spending big money on big names. There are obvious, easy ways to reduce the budgets of his games, and it’s the same problems the film industry faces, particularly the animation industry: hiring big name actors just for their voice, even though there’s a whole industry of talented actors that toil on TV productions. Spending money for the sake of spending money, because that's what success looks like.

This is part of a larger problem where the worth of a piece of entertainment is judged exclusively on how expensive it feels. The idea of “they spent a lot of money on this, so it must be good.” This is how entertainment media of all kinds is slowly self-destructing. Warner Bros. already spent $300,000,000 on Justice League, and now they’re going to spend at least another $70,000,000 on the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League -- I say “at least” because at some point Warner went silent on Snyder Cut’s actual budget, suggesting it’s continuing to grow. It will easily be one of the most expensive movies ever made (for now).

That culture needs to end. I can see how someone would look at what Hideo Kojima does and think maybe he needs to be reigned in more than a little. You can make games without celebrities and they will be just as good.

On the other end of the spectrum, seeing things from mobile gaming’s perspective also sucks, too. Making barebones experiences full of deliberately tedious grinding in order to encourage your userbase to spend money on fake, manufactured convenience is also a destructive tendency.

Paying for convenience is a real, valid thing, but generally that means “paying a worker to do a job you don’t want to.” Like cooking food, right. Sometimes you’re really hungry and making food for yourself will take too long or you don’t have the right ingredients on hand or whatever, so you pay a restaurant to give you food for a fee. That’s a valid way to pay for convenience, and millions of people around the world do it regularly.

But mobile games manufacture fake inconvenience. It’s made to be inconvenient on purpose in order to entice you to spend money on the easier ways. It’s the old storytelling trope of a villain poisoning the hero in secret and then trying to sell them the cure. They created an entire market of their own by both making the poison and the cure, but that means they still created the poison. And somehow we’re supposed to be okay with this.

I’m sure Konami was making gobs of cash in their mobile games, but they were doing it by selling a cure to their special brand of poison. What is the real cost of saving a company? Does one extreme really cancel out the other?

Given the state of Konami’s console releases in the last five years, and the mixed reception to Kojima’s Death Stranding, probably not.

If you held my feet to the fire, and asked which one I’d pick, the Kojima way, or the Konami way, I don’t know what I’d pick. Assuming the current Konami way is the way of Metal Gear Survive -- a game that took the formula of Metal Gear Solid 5 and turned it in to a tedious, micro-transaction heavy zombie survival game in order to tick every box and cash in on a bunch of different fads, then I suppose I’d pick the Kojima way.

Death Stranding is a game I haven’t played, and it sounds like a weird, bloated, obtuse mess of bad ideas, but at least it’s from somebody who is saying something more than just “I want to make all of the money.” Even if it’s a ridiculous budgetary nightmare from an auteur high on the smell of his own farts, that has inherently more worth than greed in any format. That’s kind of reductive and broad, but this post is already long enough.

#questions #konami #death stranding #hideo kojima #kojima productions #metal gear solid #silent hills #p.t. #Anonymous

[phoradendron]

Thank you @nakanotamu and @postmodernismruinedme (I got tagged twice so I HAVE to do it ^.^)

favourite colour: Mmmm okay dusty pumpkin orange, warm pinky lilac, dark dark blue, soft gray, red.

last song i listened to: Polaris by Zero 7

favourite musicians: I Have So Many, but ummm Agnes Obel right now? Zoe Keating? Alela Diane? Yeah! Moody ladies that you might find barefoot in the woods, you know

last film i watched: When Marnie was There, I hadn’t seen it before and I liked it but also at the very ending just like a big ol’ Whyyyyyyyyyy????

last show i watched: Hmm okay so I’m watching these goofy playthroughs by bobvids and voidburger and tomatograndpa and damehasclass that are really fun, I’ll count that! Also my favorite podcast, Spooked presented by Snap Judgment, is back which makes me really happy so also listening to that which is even less related to the question but I still added it so

favourite characters: Oooooooh okay okay Constance and Merricat from We Have Always Lives in the Castle, Bushi and Hiromu and El Desperado from NJPW, Nadja and Nandor from What We Do in the Shadows, basically the silly goths in anything that has silly goths I guess

sweet, spicy or savoury: Savoury and sweet. Too much of either and I get sad and want to switch

sparkling water, tea or coffee: Tea mostly, but coffee does it’s own good thing. Sparkling water is water, which is nothing, only this time it hurts you.

pets: No pets but I’ve been basically petsitting for the past five months and their names are Spike, Pixel and Mister Wizard and I love all of them with all if my heart and I’m going to leave them in two days which is awful and I hate it, Mister Wizard is shy and needs extra care and attention or he’ll never feel comfortable enough to ask for pets, I used to think Pixel was really chill but I think she’s just always super baffled by everything, and Spike is a sweet spoiled baby demon boy and I would punch anyone for these sweeties

Mutuals, if you see this I Have Tagged You! I Mean It!