Comic Talk and General Discussion *

Konami vs Kojima, no actual heroes.

Posted at 1:09PM, Sep. 15, 2021

I guess I'm going to be that guy, but I like Konami and think they are, alright… They are still a bad company for what they do to their employees, allegedly, I will put that one in there because I did look it up and I get some different reports of what kind of abuse is happening, and honestly it is small potatoes to the horror show that is Ubisoft and Blizzard….

Anyway Konami is not a hero, they are a company that did some bad things like blacklisting former employees or instead of firing they shifted them to the most boring jobs in the office..

But I would argue that Kojima isn't exactly the hero many gamers had made him out to be. He was spending a lot of money on a production that might not cover the cost of the massive budget on things like Hollywood stars and expensive rights to songs, and as good as P.T. was the thing one has to remember that the full game not have played like it, and considering that Kojima got a very high profile actor it is a safe bet it would have been in third person to justify such a cost and to be honest while the short was very scary, it was scary because it is short and stretching it out would kill the horror, and from the theory of some kind of multiple dimensional Silent Hills, and that does not sound very good on a story front. And speaking of which I don't know how the game play would be in a full game, from what I seen in Death Stranding it might have been very good and be a very disappointment.

I honestly never got the hate behind Konami publishing Pachinko machines, the video game division was not making profit and said Pachinko machines and mobile was, plus in Japan they joined up with Bowflex to create a health club. A kind of aside back to George Lucas Syndrome, this time is the fans are never quiet happy. They did not like Neverdead, the western Silent Hill games (which is understandable, they weren't good, point still stands) but got insanely mad at them when they just threw up their hands and try to walk away.

I guess I am doing this topic as a "Konami rah, rah, rah," and a bit of "Kojima is not good" because it is a fascinating topic of the phenomenon of "George Lucas Syndrome", of a creator who has unlimited funds, no one to answer to and kind of an ego from previous creations being good to industry changing projects only for the newest entry to be kind of lukewarm at best due to having no one to edit, limit and shape their vision into something that worked.

I'm running but of steam on the subject, so what is everyone think of the subject?

Posted at 3:09AM, Sep. 16, 2021

I honestly don't know if I have any opinions that are relevant on the subject. I used to be a huge Metal Gear Solid fan back in the 2000's, playing through MGS1, 2 and 3. I do think that Kojima's work on those games were a big inspiration for me as a creator back in those days, but then again I'd had many, many, MANY things inspire me over the years and my passion for the franchise cooled down a long, long time ago.

It did come to my awareness that Kojima may not have ever planned for there to be any more MGS beyond MGS 2: Sons of Liberty, and I think it might be true if you look at MGS 3: Snake Eater and you notice how more fan serving it is compared to earlier installments, as much as I love that game. The earlier installments was Kojima wanting to tell his story and after that it became more and more about giving the fans what they want.

Which I think culminated with MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots, which I haven't played, but watching through the entire longplay of the game on Youtube, I'm glad I didn't play it. That game should have been called MGS 4 the fans because that's basically what I saw in that longplay. It was a concoction of half-baked leftover ideas concieved for the soul purpose of pleasing fans. It felt like watching a bad MGS Fan fic from start to finnish.

And I don't know if either Kojima or Konami is solely to blame for that. Maybe a big part of the blame really is on the fans on this one, for demanding answers to questions that Kojima never wanted to answer and didn't know how to answer, or something like that. I certainly think that what they did to Raiden both in MGS 3 and MGS4 was an unfair and uncalled for treatment of the character. I mean, was the MGS-crowd really THAT offended by the fact that they had to play as Raiden for most of MGS2 instead of Solid Snake, it's just silly to me.

All the stuff they did to him felt to me like it was to compensate for something, as if there ever was anything to compensate for. I don't know, man. I honestly don't care much for what either Kojima or Konami is doing these days. I'm just not in the loop on these things and I don't think I ever was. What I have said here is all I really have to say about it.

Posted at 10:09AM, Sep. 16, 2021

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
I honestly don't know if I have any opinions that are relevant on the subject. I used to be a huge Metal Gear Solid fan back in the 2000's, playing through MGS1, 2 and 3. I do think that Kojima's work on those games were a big inspiration for me as a creator back in those days, but then again I'd had many, many, MANY things inspire me over the years and my passion for the franchise cooled down a long, long time ago.

It did come to my awareness that Kojima may not have ever planned for there to be any more MGS beyond MGS 2: Sons of Liberty, and I think it might be true if you look at MGS 3: Snake Eater and you notice how more fan serving it is compared to earlier installments, as much as I love that game. The earlier installments was Kojima wanting to tell his story and after that it became more and more about giving the fans what they want.

Yeah, I followed the series for years but MGS 2 was the only one I actually played, which I thoroughly enjoyed and had some pretty deep conversations with a game store worker about future generations and passing on our knowledge to them, the rest.. I try to play Acid on a psp emu, and I just couldn't get into the gameplay there after a few minutes and switched over to Burnout.

But yeah, four is just one big sink from everyone, from Konami wanting to milk some more money out of Metal Gear fans, Sony wanted to show off the ps3's power with their tech hoping to get more investors, the fans demanding more and more and never being happy, Kojima wanting to work with super models, er, he was excited to.. I can't keep a straight face, he wanted to work with the Beast and Beauty core.

What seem to happen is the same with John Romero, fans latch onto a name not realizing that there is a team under/around them help them out. In this case Yoji Shinkawa as lead artist, Tomokazu Fukushima as a writer, and Motoyuki Yoshioka as producer and lead composer Kazuki Muraoka came together for the original MGS.

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:

Which I think culminated with MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots, which I haven't played, but watching through the entire longplay of the game on Youtube, I'm glad I didn't play it. That game should have been called MGS 4 the fans because that's basically what I saw in that longplay. It was a concoction of half-baked leftover ideas concieved for the soul purpose of pleasing fans. It felt like watching a bad MGS Fan fic from start to finnish.

And I don't know if either Kojima or Konami is solely to blame for that. Maybe a big part of the blame really is on the fans on this one, for demanding answers to questions that Kojima never wanted to answer and didn't know how to answer, or something like that. I certainly think that what they did to Raiden both in MGS 3 and MGS4 was an unfair and uncalled for treatment of the character. I mean, was the MGS-crowd really THAT offended by the fact that they had to play as Raiden for most of MGS2 instead of Solid Snake, it's just silly to me.

All the stuff they did to him felt to me like it was to compensate for something, as if there ever was anything to compensate for. I don't know, man. I honestly don't care much for what either Kojima or Konami is doing these days. I'm just not in the loop on these things and I don't think I ever was. What I have said here is all I really have to say about it.

The fans should really take a massive part of that blame, they wanted this and that without giving an inch. Even now they still believe that just letting Kojima "finish" by giving him more time and money would have them raking in cash, not realizing times changed, markets shift and let's be honest the game itself does not look appealing and the series had became a mess on so many fronts.

And honestly after the whole big debacle everything kind of, faded. Konami seemly to be making some fun video games again, though low key with their soccer/football/futball and Baseball series, Getsufumaden looks good, their slot machines are, well, being slot machines, and while the Contra Rouge Corp is… I heard fine, a lot of hiccups but much, much better than the ps1/Saturn entries. They are just kind of low key, which seems to fit them better in this day and age.

As for Kojima, I don't know what he can come up with. He kind of blew through a lot of money and time for Sony for what is basically "the Post man" for gaming, and let's be honest I think it is his last chance in the big leagues.