The Cult of Hideo Kojima | Hacker News Reader

The Cult of Hideo Kojima

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41 pointsdanso65 comments

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

Kojima is the only game designer who has been referred to as "God" in a Thomas Pynchon novel, so he wins.

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.

I'd argue John Romero is the most influential among those. He is the architect of the grand daddy of 3D game engines.

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.

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.

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.

That would be Carmack. But Carmack and Romero are pretty much the Ryu and Ken, respectively, of 90s PC gaming, so their achievements are almost always considered together.

As for the most influential game designer, Miyamoto by a country mile. His games established or refined the modern vocabulary of the medium.

If we credit all of valve's accomplishments to Gabe I would argue he is up there as well, for the games, but even more for Steam, given the influence it has had on pc gaming, and indie games in particular.

[quote]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.[/quote]

Well, I consider myself a serious gamer but I have no idea who Todd Howard is... <googles>... oh, Bethesda.

That kinda proves my point because I have bought and played most Bethesda titles. Had absolutely no idea who the lead designer/director was though.

However, I absolutely knew about Kojima from MGS 1 onwards...

You forgot Warren Spector btw :) But there was no "Peter Molyneux's Black and White", or "Will Wright's The Sims". Was there?

Shigeru Miyamoto is pretty well known, possibly more than both Kojima and Sid Meier. I mean, look at this gold https://youtu.be/DiUeuc7eOh0

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.

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.

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.

Don't forget Miyazaki (Dark Souls not Ghibli) or Sakurai.

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

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.

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.

Bennett Foddy has a GDC talk with another indie game developer (whose name I've ironically forgotten) about how good of an idea it is to release indie games under your own name. At the scale of an indie game, you're not likely to release another game with the same group of people, but you are likely to work on another game yourself.

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]

Metal Gear Solid 5 shows his name constantly. I don't know if anyone's counted but I bet it's over 100 times.

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.

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.

IIRC its his way to protest having his name removed from the boxart by Konami.

Ken Rolston is the name you're seeking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMCEssAfhWI

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...

> 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.

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.

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.

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

I have to disagree. The core similarity is block-based gameplay, but after that they're entirely different games. Minecraft is an adventure game, a survival game, deep RPG influenced, and even a circuit simulator. And all the new features of the game exponentially increase the amount of gameplay possibilities, a true sandbox. I'm aware in 2019 the phrase "sandbox survival" is tired and a little sad, but this underscores the fundamental impact and innovation that Minecraft had.

I don't disagree that Minecraft owes a LOT to luck (what doesn't at that level of success), but I disagree heavily with the idea it was merely a "toy side project which mildly iterated on the last thing in that genre".

Minecraft wasn't that game when it blew up--moving in that way, but Minecraft became the RPG-ish game you describe afterwards.

Infdev was not the game it is today, IMO.

If you played the game you wouldn’t be “betting”

What was daring or avant-garde about Kojima? He makes incredibly popular mainstream games that had cool quirky gameplay mechanics and great attention to detail and had a focus on storytelling.

When I think of "avant-garde" games, I think of games like Katamari Damacy, or Untitled Goose Game or Feather. Maybe Ridiculous Fishing.

I can't think of a single thing avant-garde about Kojima's games. Or Minecraft tbh, though I'm significantly less familiar with Minecraft.

Setting aside the themes of alienation and purpose that run through most of his games (because that is a can of worms) it’s hard not to say that Kojima's work, at least in the modern gaming era (call it PS1 and later), definitely put into practice some pretty wild stuff I'd certainly consider unorthodox and radical--it's worth juxtaposing the cinematic/filmic presentation and direction of Metal Gear Solid with your CO telling you, in-universe and in-character, to "Press the Action Button to..." while in the next sentence somebody else is going on about the “physical” limitations of your radar system. That didn’t happen then, it doesn’t really happen today, and when it does it’s clearly an homage to that sort of blurred-lines unorthodoxy that MGS, whole not creating, certainly made A Thing for a lot of people.

Metal Gear Solid 2 probably counts for a lot, IMO. To an extent it might have some "Seinfeld is unfunny" to it today, but when it came out there was just nothing like it as a downright subversive story and experience. Still kind of isn’t.

That isn’t, of course, to take away from the games you mention, because those are all great games. But Kojima’s stuff fits that description for quite a few reasons, too.

(Agreed that Minecraft doesn’t belong, though, and I am very familiar with it. ;) )

I agree all that stuff was interesting and innovative. Maybe we just disagree on how far you have to push expectations to be avant-garde. When I think of avant-garde I think of creators trying to push toward a paradigm shift or break as many rules as possible or be experimental. At their heart Metal Gear games were still action games but Kojima was innovative enough in how he presented the story and gameplay mechanics to the gamer that they felt like more than that. The Metal Gear games I played never felt experimental, they felt like exquisitely done versions of an existing genre.

The case for MGS2 being avant-garde:

Metal Gear Solid 2 was the sequel to Metal Gear Solid, one of the most celebrated action games of all time. In MGS you play as Solid Snake, a badass special forces operator. It would have been very easy for Kojima to make "Metal Gear Solid" again. In the sequel, it seems to be going that way, since you start out playing as Solid Snake again, but relatively early in the game you switch to playing as Raiden, a dude who kinda sucks compared to Solid Snake (he's a rookie, he's not cool, he whines, he loses his clothes, etc). Raiden represents you, the gamer, the person sitting in front of a screen play-acting at being a badass special forces operator. Raiden gets orders from the colonel and follows them unconditionally, without realizing it's a simulation; but that's exactly what you, the gamer, are doing. So in a way I think MGS2 is Kojima taking a jab at his own fans, the ones who didn't appreciate the anti-war message of MGS. I think there was an interesting meta-narrative that hadn't been done before in games, as far as I know. I know meta-narratives had already existed for a long time in literature, but the active user involvement in gaming adds another layer of meaning.

I would also say that the game had a pretty prescient understanding of memes and fake news, considering it came out in 2001.

http://archives.insertcredit.com/features/dreaming2/

This article by the incredible Tim Rogers, makes a really compelling case for why MGS2 is avant-garde, and why it’s so special.

Tim Rogers is a necessary function of the games industry. If he did not exist we would be forced to invent him.

> When Notch sold Minecraft, the reason he gave was that he didn't want to be a symbol

He didn't want to be a symbol, so he became a billionaire instead

If you take Kojima games at surface value, then yeah, nothing makes sense and he seems insane. Even the most die-hard fans will admit the plot of the Metal Gear games was incomprehensible batshit. If you look at his games the same way you would an art film that is obsessed with understanding why the modern world feels so inhuman, they start making a lot more sense.

He's basically showing us what impressionism / magical realism looks like dressed up as a AAA video game. He focuses on themes and emotion rather than then who/what/why of the story. His games are subversive as fuck; Death Stranding is a game about how the modern world has isolated us from other people, and the only way out of that grey and black world is by reconnecting with individuals. By doing so, you can literally carry more weight -- the "weight" you have to carry around and balance is literally a stand-in for emotional weight. The more people you connect to, the more you can withstand. Every funky random mechanic that seems random in his games is a metaphor for something.

Death Stranding does nothing for me as a game, but yeah, the metaphors are not subtle. It’s odd that so many folks in the games space had trouble picking up on the references and metaphors because they hit you in the head with a brick about them for hours on end.

Yeah, Metal Gear wasn't exactly subtle either. I think whether you pick up on the metaphors is a sort of confirmation bias based on your previous exposure to the theme he's addressing.

I often say that Kojima takes metaphors to the extreme; either he makes something super abstract, or so intensely direct calling it "metaphor" is a stretch.

There's a line of dialogue in Death Stranding that exemplifies this and wouldn't exactly be spoiler-ish, but I'll err on the side of not including it just in case.

>When Notch sold Minecraft, the reason he gave was that he didn't want to be a symbol#

This seems in stark contrast to Kojima, who based on the number of times his name appeared in his previous game and other factors, is extremely focused on building his personal brand.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

> 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

> His latest game death stranding was panned by most people

Clearly not.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/death-strandin...

> rightfully so since it's just a walking simulator.

I haven't played the game, but even I know this is not true.

Is Super Mario Brothers is just a jumping simulator?

Call of Duty is just a point and click adventure.

Tetris is just a matching game.

Walking simulator is a genre like Jump & Runs/Platformers (Super Mario Brothers).

Yes but that doesn't change the fact that Death Stranding is not a member of that genre despite the fact that it is, in the most literal sense, a walking simulator....am I making any sense at all?

The "walking simulator" meme is just wrong and is a description levied by people who haven't actually played the game beyond the first few hours. Vehicles become available pretty early on and are a core component of the gameplay. Players even have a garage where they can store, manage, repair, charge, colorize and share various vehicles with other players online. A very significant part of the game involves the collective construction of roads in order to maximize travel efficiency using said vehicles. The game is certainly not without its issues, but "walking simulator" is just a thing people on the internet say to annoy fans of the game.

No, it's not. Walking simulator is a meme handed out to games as a joke. Saying Death Stranding is "just a walking simulator" implies more than a genre. You couldn't even call SMB "just a jumping simulator" without attaching additional meaning to it.

Witcher 3 is just a walking simulator.

I see you've bought into the "Death Stranding is bad actually" mindset. Hope you take pleasure in that. Meanwhile, in reality, it has high ratings from critics and decent ratings from users. And you can find lots of anecdotes from happy people playing the game. I enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit myself, although the clumsy story telling fell short for me.

I thought Konami stopped making games that weren't attached to Pachinko machines entirely?

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