News reports are saying Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series has quit, but Konami is claiming otherwise…
The Godfather of the Metal Gear franchise Hideo Kojima has been through a lot this past year or more specifically, Konami has undergone some serious transformations although few would argue for the better. It all began earlier in the year when the highly anticipated Silent Hills PT was abruptly cancelled. This was going to be a star studded collaboration that would include Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus, visual genius director Guillermo del Toro and of course Metal Gear father himself Hideo Kojima. Fans were going crazy over the super scary Silent Hills PT demo that was released on the Playstation Network which was then later removed by Konami. But that wasn’t the biggest revelation. It was the shutdown of Kojima Productions that sent ripples across the whole gaming universe. How could the production studio of Metal Gear be shutting down…what the F@!$% was going on? Well it seems money was going on.
Konami, like many Japanese gaming companies, were all making the transition to mobile. Here in the US, consoles such as the PS4 and XBox One are still popular and most importantly, profitable for companies. In Japan however, most people game on mobile plus it’s way cheaper and more profitable to produce mobile games. I mean the latest, and most likely last, triple AAA Metal Gear Phantom Pain game probably cost near 100 million when you factor in all costs and marketing, plus it took about 5 years to make. And as talented and legendary as Hideo Kojima and his team are, it just didn’t make economical sense to push forward with this type of development any more which resulted in the most recent rumors where Hideo Kojima was said to have quit after more than 20 years at Konami. Konami’s response? well he’s on “Vacation”….yeah riiiiight! So this leads me up to Modern “Gaming.”
Modern “Gaming”…wow what can be said about its current state. When I think of gaming today, I get visions of buggy, un-finished games, limitless DLC’s, and the dreaded disease of Microtransactions! To be a gamer today means being broke from all the DLC’s, microtransactions and more than anything, not having FUN! I mean when you spend most of your time downloading “exclusive” content, complicated setup, and frequent buggy updates, when the hell do you actually get to have fun playing games. And that’s why I’ve all but abandoned modern gaming. If I want to game, I’m gonna get on my emulators, hook it up to my big screen, and start playing. Yeah just like the good ole days when you can step into an Arcade, drop in some quarters, and game to your heart’s content…or until you run out of quarters.
And although the gaming landscape looks bleak, I still see hope. With crowd-funded platforms like Kickstarter and the power of the Internet, we’ll probably be seeing more Indie-published games. The most recent games I’ve backed are Bloodstained, by Castlevania Symphony of the Night Mastermind Koji Igarashi, and Shenmue 3 by Historical Gaming Genius Yu Suzuki. I’ve got faith that the gaming community will help push, develop, and CREATE games that are fresh, memorable and above all, FUN!
-Geek Outside!
