6 ms·

The Cult of Hideo Kojima

41 points by danso 7y ago

nottorp 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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?
    - WilliamEdward 7y ago
      There are way more than 2 well known names in the gaming industry. I think this is just a common thing that happens when technical directors produce high quality cult favourites.
      - mikepurvis 7y ago
        Yeah, but those are the two whose names are literally part of the title of their games. It's not Alpha Centauri, it's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I think in the SM case, it eventually became a name-licensing deal kind of like Clancy, where the person attached to the name didn't actually have anything to do with the games. But still, it's a significant difference from other gaming celebrities where it's only really those following the industry who are aware of them.
        eropple 7y ago
        As I understand it, Meier is still pretty involved with any game that has his name on it even though he hasn't been the lead developer on them for years. Seems as though he keeps an eye on the whole "but is it fun?" thing.
      - defen 7y ago
        Kojima is the only game designer who has been referred to as "God" in a Thomas Pynchon novel, so he wins.
    - jressey 7y ago
      Hard work, intentionality, and most importantly luck. There are many famous game devs including Shigeru Miyamoto, Todd Howard (I'm not sure if you were joking in your first comment because he definitely used to have a cult following), Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Carmack and Romero, Will Wright.
      - willis936 7y ago
        I'd argue John Romero is the most influential among those. He is the architect of the grand daddy of 3D game engines.
        Slartie 7y ago
        Isn't that more applicable to John Carmack? If I remember it correctly, Romero was the game designer type, while Carmack was clearly the technician at id.
        RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
        He was the "architect" in a literal sense of the word. Romero was the lead level designer for Doom and contributed prominently to the level design of Quake.
        willis936 7y ago
        I probably should have left out "engines" from that sentence for it to be the most literally accurate. One could argue that Quake's tone set the tone for half-life, which was a big advance for narrative storytelling in the medium, which means half-life in turn heavily influence the tone of the medium in future generations. There is a bit of a void in this thread that things run into after ~2010 where things like tone and storytelling are washed away in most games. Romero's influences were games of the time, but also HP Lovecraft. A lot of what is in Quake and Doom feels pretty original and influential. I'd be happy to be corrected though.
        bitwize 7y ago
    - mempko 7y ago
      Shigeru Miyamoto is pretty well known, possibly more than both Kojima and Sid Meier. I mean, look at this gold https://youtu.be/DiUeuc7eOh0 https://youtu.be/DiUeuc7eOh0
    - cromantic 7y ago
      There's more than two. I'd throw in Todd Howard and John Carmack. Usually it's done like becoming notable in any other field: innovation.
    - whateversclever 7y ago
      What about Miyamoto? or to a lesser extent Suda51? There's also John Carmack/Romero, Gabe Newell - maybe the trick is being associated with a long string of successful and unique games with a common thread between them.
      - DHPersonal 7y ago
        Roberta and Ken Williams were big PC adventure game celebrities, too — and eventually their company, Sierra (at the time owned by Vivendi), published Gabe Newell’s Half-Life.
      - fhood 7y ago
        Don't forget Miyazaki (Dark Souls not Ghibli) or Sakurai.
    - TremendousJudge 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        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.
      - mikepurvis 7y ago
        Even with indie, it's often the studio that has the reputation more than the individual— thinking like Klei, Supergiant, Drinkbox. Unless you watch GDC talks or Noclip docs, you wouldn't really know who the people are who are involved in those companies. That said, there are of course exceptions— thinking Jonathan Blow and Edmund McMillen. But even in those cases, their name recognition is probably more about them having been featured in widely-watched documentaries than because their names are front-and-centre in their creations.
      - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    - kick 7y ago
      In 1987, the company released Sid Meier's Pirates!, which began a trend of placing Meier's name in the titles of his games.[9] He later explained that the inclusion of his name was because of the dramatic departure in the design of Pirates! compared to the company's earlier titles. Stealey decided that it would improve the company's branding, believing that it would make those who purchased the flight simulators more likely to play the game. Stealey recalled: "We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says 'Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.' And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization."[5][10]
  - nsxwolf 7y ago
    Metal Gear Solid 5 shows his name constantly. I don't know if anyone's counted but I bet it's over 100 times.
    - m10i 7y ago
      Perhaps because information was leaked that Konami was planning on removing his name entirely from the game; fans revolted, so they put it back - in excess. The excess part is my hypothesis.
    - NelsonMinar 7y ago
      The constant credits in MGS V are a sort of joke / reaction to the disastrous relationship he had with the studio. They threatened to take his name off the box, so he made sure his name was all over the game.
    - PetitPrince 7y ago
      IIRC its his way to protest having his name removed from the boxart by Konami.
- relativeadv 7y ago
  Ken Rolston is the name you're seeking! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMCEssAfhWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMCEssAfhWI
sergiotapia 7y ago
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.
- fhood 7y ago
  I agree that Kojima is probably a pain in the ass to work with, but Konami's last few efforts have been far more poorly received than death stranding.
- buttsu_ 7y ago
  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?
  - themikesanto 7y ago
    Do you have a source for the story about the Castlevania director? That sounds wild, and I haven't been able to find anything about it.
  - m10i 7y ago
    > 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
gallerdude 7y ago
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-was-sick-of-being-a-symbol/ https://qz.com/265753/minecrafts-creator-sold-out-because-he...
- eropple 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    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.
m3kw9 7y ago
I loved the game and didn’t care much about what really happened at his work place
m3kw9 7y ago
Sort of saying movies made by Spielberg automatically makes it great, but it doesn’t
m3kw9 7y ago
Looks like 90% of the people commenting here has never played the game.

41 points by danso 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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?
  - WilliamEdward 7y ago
    There are way more than 2 well known names in the gaming industry. I think this is just a common thing that happens when technical directors produce high quality cult favourites.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Yeah, but those are the two whose names are literally part of the title of their games. It's not Alpha Centauri, it's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I think in the SM case, it eventually became a name-licensing deal kind of like Clancy, where the person attached to the name didn't actually have anything to do with the games. But still, it's a significant difference from other gaming celebrities where it's only really those following the industry who are aware of them.
      - eropple 7y ago
        As I understand it, Meier is still pretty involved with any game that has his name on it even though he hasn't been the lead developer on them for years. Seems as though he keeps an eye on the whole "but is it fun?" thing.
    - defen 7y ago
      Kojima is the only game designer who has been referred to as "God" in a Thomas Pynchon novel, so he wins.
  - jressey 7y ago
    Hard work, intentionality, and most importantly luck. There are many famous game devs including Shigeru Miyamoto, Todd Howard (I'm not sure if you were joking in your first comment because he definitely used to have a cult following), Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Carmack and Romero, Will Wright.
    - willis936 7y ago
      I'd argue John Romero is the most influential among those. He is the architect of the grand daddy of 3D game engines.
      - Slartie 7y ago
        Isn't that more applicable to John Carmack? If I remember it correctly, Romero was the game designer type, while Carmack was clearly the technician at id.
        RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
        He was the "architect" in a literal sense of the word. Romero was the lead level designer for Doom and contributed prominently to the level design of Quake.
        willis936 7y ago
        I probably should have left out "engines" from that sentence for it to be the most literally accurate. One could argue that Quake's tone set the tone for half-life, which was a big advance for narrative storytelling in the medium, which means half-life in turn heavily influence the tone of the medium in future generations. There is a bit of a void in this thread that things run into after ~2010 where things like tone and storytelling are washed away in most games. Romero's influences were games of the time, but also HP Lovecraft. A lot of what is in Quake and Doom feels pretty original and influential. I'd be happy to be corrected though.
      - bitwize 7y ago
  - mempko 7y ago
    Shigeru Miyamoto is pretty well known, possibly more than both Kojima and Sid Meier. I mean, look at this gold https://youtu.be/DiUeuc7eOh0 https://youtu.be/DiUeuc7eOh0
  - cromantic 7y ago
    There's more than two. I'd throw in Todd Howard and John Carmack. Usually it's done like becoming notable in any other field: innovation.
  - whateversclever 7y ago
    What about Miyamoto? or to a lesser extent Suda51? There's also John Carmack/Romero, Gabe Newell - maybe the trick is being associated with a long string of successful and unique games with a common thread between them.
    - DHPersonal 7y ago
      Roberta and Ken Williams were big PC adventure game celebrities, too — and eventually their company, Sierra (at the time owned by Vivendi), published Gabe Newell’s Half-Life.
    - fhood 7y ago
      Don't forget Miyazaki (Dark Souls not Ghibli) or Sakurai.
  - TremendousJudge 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Even with indie, it's often the studio that has the reputation more than the individual— thinking like Klei, Supergiant, Drinkbox. Unless you watch GDC talks or Noclip docs, you wouldn't really know who the people are who are involved in those companies. That said, there are of course exceptions— thinking Jonathan Blow and Edmund McMillen. But even in those cases, their name recognition is probably more about them having been featured in widely-watched documentaries than because their names are front-and-centre in their creations.
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
  - kick 7y ago
    In 1987, the company released Sid Meier's Pirates!, which began a trend of placing Meier's name in the titles of his games.[9] He later explained that the inclusion of his name was because of the dramatic departure in the design of Pirates! compared to the company's earlier titles. Stealey decided that it would improve the company's branding, believing that it would make those who purchased the flight simulators more likely to play the game. Stealey recalled: "We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says 'Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.' And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization."[5][10]
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  Metal Gear Solid 5 shows his name constantly. I don't know if anyone's counted but I bet it's over 100 times.
  - m10i 7y ago
    Perhaps because information was leaked that Konami was planning on removing his name entirely from the game; fans revolted, so they put it back - in excess. The excess part is my hypothesis.
  - NelsonMinar 7y ago
    The constant credits in MGS V are a sort of joke / reaction to the disastrous relationship he had with the studio. They threatened to take his name off the box, so he made sure his name was all over the game.
  - PetitPrince 7y ago
    IIRC its his way to protest having his name removed from the boxart by Konami.
relativeadv 7y ago
Ken Rolston is the name you're seeking! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMCEssAfhWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMCEssAfhWI

sergiotapia 7y ago

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.

fhood 7y ago
I agree that Kojima is probably a pain in the ass to work with, but Konami's last few efforts have been far more poorly received than death stranding.
buttsu_ 7y ago
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?
- themikesanto 7y ago
  Do you have a source for the story about the Castlevania director? That sounds wild, and I haven't been able to find anything about it.
- m10i 7y ago
  > 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

gallerdude 7y ago

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

eropple 7y ago
> 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 7y ago
  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.

m3kw9 7y ago

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

m3kw9 7y ago

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

m3kw9 7y ago

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