
The Cult of Hideo Kojima - danso
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-12-09-hideo-kojima-on-tour
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nottorp
Well, if Bethesda had allowed whoever was the lead on Morrowind to have his
name so proeminently figured, we'd have another "cult" on our hands now.

Maybe Kojima deserves credit for knowing how to market himself.

Say, that's the really interesting question. How did he get Konami/Sony to
feature his name everywhere?

~~~
thearn4
I remember Metal Gear Solid having movie-style credits at the beginning and
end of the game that feature his name, I wonder if that's the origin?

~~~
nottorp
That's where it started... but how did they allow him to do that?

There are like two well known names in the gaming industry... Hideo Kojima and
Sid Meier. How did they do it?

~~~
TremendousJudge
To me it was more prominent in the 90s, with names like John Romero, Peter
Molyneux, Will Wright, American McGee, Tim Schafer, and so on. I think that
after they failed to deliver in one way or another, their names faded into
obscurity from pop culture, and weren't replaced by new ones. There are two
possible reasons for this: either consumers realized that these creators were
never the geniuses they were propped up to be (I find this unlikely), or the
big companies realized that they didn't really like the idea of having these
rockstar designers doing whatever they wanted instead of what the shareholders
wanted.

The idea of the genius designer is therefore much more prevalent in smaller
indie studios, where somebody makes an innovative game basically single-
handedly, and then becomes known throughout the community

~~~
willis936
It has everything to do with the big-businessification of the industry. As
soon as people with money realized there was a growing market they dumped tons
of money into it. You can't just allow a risk such as having a person put
their name on art, since that person might one day give you the finger and do
something else. In reality you can't even tolerate the risk of making art.
That's the games industry today.

Kojima got away with it because his eccentric egotism meant that he could put
his name down hard and fast before that privilege was taken away. And while
Konami were trying to take it he made a point to put his name on everything
even more so that when they did show him the door he'd have an exit strategy.
He's one weird dude but at least his games are art and was the one person to
be able to tell a publisher to eat dirt.

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gallerdude
When you read a story about Death Stranding, I'd be willing to bet the plot of
Kojima getting fired from Konami would appear more than the actual plot the
game. Deep down, the tale of a renegade creator is a little more interesting
than whatever the hell Death Stranding is trying to say. I'm not sure to the
extent he realized it, but he became a symbol.

When Notch sold Minecraft, the reason he gave was that he didn't want to be a
symbol#. I think in our hyper-connected world, shared narratives can grow like
viruses spread. And people can easily lose control of how they are perceived,
and what they represent. Kojima and Notch both represented daring, avant-garde
creators, with vision and creativity strong enough to go head to head with
soulless corporations. But in reality, it just lead to really high
expectations for Death Stranding and major shocks to Notch's life.

I'm not sure how creators in the future can avoid things like this. The
internet sure as hell won't get anymore nuanced, and corporations won't get
any less soulless. A lot of people love the idea of fame, but I think in
reality it just means you have no control over the narrative of your life.

# [https://qz.com/265753/minecrafts-creator-sold-out-because-
he...](https://qz.com/265753/minecrafts-creator-sold-out-because-he-was-sick-
of-being-a-symbol/)

~~~
eropple
_> Kojima and Notch both represented daring, avant-garde creators, with vision
and creativity strong enough to go head to head with soulless corporations._

This is an interesting retelling of Minecraft if you'd ever seen or played
Infiniminer first.

There wasn't much "daring" or "avant-garde" about Minecraft. Right place,
right time for a toy side project, which mildly iterated on the last thing in
that genre, to blow up. That doesn't mean that Minecraft isn't good (it is,
and it works even better as a platform for mods on top of it) and it doesn't
take anything away from Notch (though his hot-garbage bad-human behavior over
the last few years certainly should), but comparing that kind of thing to
Kojima's output is pretty dang revisionist.

~~~
KirinDave
I don't think it's "wrong" inasmuch as folks continued to give Notch (and
really all of Mojang) credit despite the fact that they were essentially
completely incapable of pushing minecraft (or really any other games) past a
very basic stage, properly embrace their community (Minecon was, by the way, a
third party thing) with better engagement and a modding API, or monetizing
what they had. Mojang was in a position to turn the fact that everyone had
Minecraft into a central gamer identity service and their main argument
against it was "standards like OpenID are hard."

Notch's accidental status as a symbol by stumbling onto a refinement of a
Zachtronics game really drives home this phenomena.

Even though I love a lot of Kojima's work, I think that we see a similar
phenomenon there and that phenomenon is comparable. Kojima _certainly_
continues to have an outsized impact on the industry despite very limited
output. Death Stranding is outrageously well-funded and supported despite
being... well... I mean I'm playing it and I like it but I don't think it's a
game that'll have more than cult status.

It's ironic really, because there are so many heroic indie creators hanging on
by their fingernails in the industry pushing out amazing game after amazing
game while the industry and market as a whole glorifies this condition even as
it abuses workers with terrible working conditions (and worth noting: some of
the worst comp in the software world). Meanwhile the fandom and press seem
content funneling all those hopes and dreams for brilliant creators into a few
avatars.

~~~
eropple
All totally true, fantastic--and I mean _fantastic_ \--post.

It's funny, because Zachtronics might be doing some of the more "daring,
avant-garde" stuff in games now. Guy doesn't seem at all bitter that a
knockoff of his game took off and made somebody else a billionaire, either,
which is to his credit.

~~~
KirinDave
Zachtronics makes amazing games and most everyone who tries them finds at
least one they love.

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m3kw9
Looks like 90% of the people commenting here has never played the game.

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m3kw9
I loved the game and didn’t care much about what really happened at his work
place

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m3kw9
Sort of saying movies made by Spielberg automatically makes it great, but it
doesn’t

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sergiotapia
It's becoming more and more apparent that Konami fired kojima for not being
able to deliver a game on deadline and within budget.

His latest game death stranding was panned by most people, rightfully so since
it's just a walking simulator. The game before that, MGS V also clearly a game
cut short and made with the skeleton of whatever the real target was. We ended
up with a mission select repetitive playground, but not a real MGS game.

If anything I hope konami comes back to making games, they own a lot of
amazing IPs.

~~~
buttsu_
Just a reminder that Konami had delegated the director for Castlevania 1 2 and
3 to work at a retail store because they didn't perform comparably well to
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Also Kojima released mg 1&2, mgs 1,2,3,4, and
peace walker beforehand, is it really reasonable for a games company to fire a
director for a game that may not live up to hype yet meets sales goals and
gets named game of the year?

~~~
m10i
> is it really reasonable for a games company to fire a director for a game
> that may not live up to hype yet meets sales goals and gets named game of
> the year?

I'm curious; even if someone's last game was a bit of a dud sales-wise, is it
really reasonable to vehemently punish someone that has a proven stellar track
record that you've depended on for years?

Example: Hironobu Sakaguchi

Sakaguchi is the father of Final Fantasy; but after the movie "Final Fantasy:
The Spirits Within" was a complete flop, his career at Square-Enix (then
Squaresoft) was over, and he was relegated to the back office. The last FF he
created was FF9, and you can see how things progress from there.

It would be much more logical to have said "ok Sakaguchi, we have learned from
this mistake. Let's try and do better on the next one", and continue onwards.
But maybe I have the benefit of hindsight _shrug_

