BY: Cory Donde
One of the most well-known names in the video game industry, Hideo Kojima, made his mark through both innovation and ground-breaking storylines. Best known for the Metal Gear franchise, Kojima first made his mark with the first game in the series, Metal Gear for the MSX 2, which was released on July 17, 1987. The game originally was set to be an action-adventure game, but due to the technological restraints of the console, only two to three enemies could appear on the screen at the same time, which slowed down the pacing that Konami wanted. To combat the constraint, Kojima proposed making the game stealth oriented instead, citing the 1963 film The Great Escape as a major influence, since in the film the protagonists concentrated on sneaking around and escaping confrontation. This idea received skepticism from his development team, and the concept didn’t really flourish until Kojima ran through the concept with the senior official for Konami, who helped Kojima better pitch the game to his colleagues.
After releasing a couple more games in Japan and America, Kojima fixed his eyes on developing games for Sony’s new Playstation. This gave rise to Metal Gear Solid, which Kojima wanted to be the best game on the new console. He conducted research on modern military tactics with California’s Huntington Beach SWAT department by participating in simulations that the department used for training. It became the first title to feature the ability to complete the game without killing any enemies besides the game’s bosses, as well as a title sequence at the beginning to give the player the feeling of cinematography that movies contain. The game was released to critical acclaim in September 1998 and has currently sold over 6 million copies. Kojima went on to create Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and what is considered to be one of the greatest games of all time: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. He played games with his son like Super Smash Brothers, and after his son asked why none of his characters were in the Smash games, he spoke with Smash series creator Masahiro Sakuri to make Snake the first third-party character in a Smash game with the release of Super Smash Brothers Brawl on the Nintendo Wii.
Problems unfortunately arose for Kojima when arguments began driving a stake into his relationship with Konami. While the arguments are still a mystery to the public, working conditions for Kojima and his development staff worsened during the development of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Following the release of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, which was a prequel and demo for the gameplay that would be in Phantom Pain, Konami release the infamous PT on the Playstation store. After a couple of hours in the release, players discovered that PT stood for “playable teaser,” and the teaser was an announcement for a Silent Hills reboot which would be directed by Kojima and Guillermo del Toro starring Norman Reedus.
Problems then arose when Konami began to restructure the company to a more “headquarters-controlled system” where almost every decision made by developers would need to be run through executives at Konami first. During the restructuring, Kojima Productions Los Angeles was renamed Konami Los Angeles Studio, Kojima lost his Executive Content Officer title, and Kojima’s name was taken off almost every game he had worked on for Konami. A few days after the obvious slight against Kojima, both Konami and Kojima issued a statement saying he was still working on MGSV:TPP, but said nothing about Kojima’s future in the company after the game’s release. It was also leaked that Kojima and his team were slowly deprived of their access to Konami’s emails and internet, and that Kojima was forced to work in a separate room from his staff, which only left the option of communication by proxy. MGSV:TPP released in September 2015 and was a hit.
In October 2015, Kojima and his studio had a farewell party, and Kojima’s contract with Konami expired in December 2015. After the inevitable split of Kojima from Konami, Kanami canceled the highly anticipated Silent Hill and released Metal Gear Survive, which was a commercial failure and was criticized by Kojima because the game focused on zombie survival instead of the political undertones the series was famous for. As a final slap in the face to Kojima, MGSV:TPP won an award for Action/Adventure game at the Game Awards, but protagonist voice actor Kiefer Sutherland was there to accept the award. It was announced after the award acceptance that Konami had a lawyer bar Kojima from the awards, which received resounding booing from the crowd. Luckily, Kojima was able to attend the award ceremony the next year and was awarded the Industry Icon Award from show host Geoff Keighley.
The year after his departure from Konami, Kojima kept silent. He worried that he had lost everything, but with the help of del Toro, Reedus, and Keighley, he was able to reform his Kojima Production Studio and partnered with Sony to make his next game, which has been teased since E3 2016 and was finally released on November 8. The game features del Toro, Reedus, and Mads Mikkelsen, and revolves around a delivery man attempting to reunite underground cities across America which have become split since the end of the world. The game has mixed reviews spanning the entire review scale, with some calling it boring and repetitive and others claiming it displays Kojima’s potential when not censored by an overseeing company. Personally, I look forward to the new title, and will have a review ready when I feel I have put a sufficient amount of time into the game to state an honest opinion.