I am begrudgingly buying MGSV because I want it on release day and it's possibly the final Kojima Metal Gear game and/or the last Metal Gear I'll ever care about.
I hate the circumstances surrounding it, but it ain't the fault of the game itself.
I keep on seeing people online being surprised that Suikoden development is halted, and all I can think of in response is, "Well, duh."
People confuse and frighten me. (I mean, the main writer/director of the series left in 2002! 2002! )
My surprise at Suikoden development being halted was more to the fact that there was actually any Suikoden development going on at the time to be halted. I had assumed that the DS game had been the final nail in the coffin of the series, and we were never going to get any more.
Just a small point. If MGSV doesn't sell because of fan outrage (and honestly, I seriously doubt this is genuinely going to impact sales in a major way) this will impact Kojima because employers will look at the cost of the game he made, look at the profits that game made, and write him off regardless. Sure he's well respected in terms of the quality of the games but if he's known as the guy that spent $$$$$$$$ that returned .000$ you are directly hurting his reputation.
Metal gear isn't huge. It's biggish.
Sure, all us customers know the real reason why people wont be buying it. But that isn't going to impress suits who look at numbers first.
You want to really hurt them, don't buy anything else from them that kojima hasn't touched. That way he'll be known as the only guy that made the brand successful. But refraining from supportin something he had a major hand in will hurt his reputation directly. Keep that in mind before you hare off on the loyalty boycott bandwagon.
You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.
Might as well be damned and have a great game.
konami sent us to hell— but we're going even deeper
Just a small point. If MGSV doesn't sell because of fan outrage (and honestly, I seriously doubt this is genuinely going to impact sales in a major way) this will impact Kojima because employers will look at the cost of the game he made, look at the profits that game made, and write him off regardless. Sure he's well respected in terms of the quality of the games but if he's known as the guy that spent $$$$$$$$ that returned .000$ you are directly hurting his reputation.
Metal gear isn't huge. It's biggish.
Sure, all us customers know the real reason why people wont be buying it. But that isn't going to impress suits who look at numbers first.
You want to really hurt them, don't buy anything else from them that kojima hasn't touched. That way he'll be known as the only guy that made the brand successful. But refraining from supportin something he had a major hand in will hurt his reputation directly. Keep that in mind before you hare off on the loyalty boycott bandwagon.
Speaking of his reputation and further employment Kojima also has to make sure the game works when it launches. His last Konami game can't have a steam refund train if he wants to find employment else where. It's unlikely but I'm holding off picking it up until after reviews are out after the whole Batman thing.
Who knows what post launch support the game will have given how much Konami want rid of Kojima.
Just a small point. If MGSV doesn't sell because of fan outrage (and honestly, I seriously doubt this is genuinely going to impact sales in a major way) this will impact Kojima because employers will look at the cost of the game he made, look at the profits that game made, and write him off regardless. Sure he's well respected in terms of the quality of the games but if he's known as the guy that spent $$$$$$$$ that returned .000$ you are directly hurting his reputation.
Metal gear isn't huge. It's biggish.
Sure, all us customers know the real reason why people wont be buying it. But that isn't going to impress suits who look at numbers first.
You want to really hurt them, don't buy anything else from them that kojima hasn't touched. That way he'll be known as the only guy that made the brand successful. But refraining from supportin something he had a major hand in will hurt his reputation directly. Keep that in mind before you hare off on the loyalty boycott bandwagon.
I doubt it'll have that much impact, at least on the publishers who were ever going to publish a game by him in the first place. MGSV seemed like a pretty unique set of circumstances, with Kojima up until recently basically having the run of the company and seemingly trying to revive Konami as a major publisher single handedly (developing the Fox Engine, rebooting Silent Hill, etc.). That's not going to be the case for his next game, which will almost certainly be on a tighter budget and will probably use UE4 like the rest of Japan, since Epic's Japanese office apparently documents and supports it really well (which is why DQXI PS4, Tekken 7, SFV, KH3, Shenmue 3, etc. are all UE4).
@danx, pretty sure the PC port is being handled by a same team who ported Metal Gear Rising and Ground Zeroes to PC, so I don't think it has much to do with Kojima. He won't even be working for the company by the time Metal Gear Online launches on PC.
$80mil is just slightly higher than a normal Western AAA title's costing budget, most of which have been in the $50-70mil range lately. Then again, there's anomalies like GTA5 and it's $265mil cost to make and market.
It also likely included Ground Zeroes. Though I wonder if that number includes building the Fox Engine.
Also, Destiny's $500 million... yow!
Eh, that number was always pretty misleading. It's the budget for the entire franchise, not the game itself, so it's including Destiny, all the DLC, the expansion, Destiny 2, etc. I think Destiny's actual budget was somewhere along the lines of $100-120 million.
I keep on seeing people online being surprised that Suikoden development is halted, and all I can think of in response is, "Well, duh."
People confuse and frighten me. (I mean, the main writer/director of the series left in 2002! 2002! )
Verendus (the guy who leaked the FFVII remake way back in 2013, Bloodborne, DQXI on PS4 and a host of other games) leaked that a Suikoden game was in development for PS4 last year. Obviously that's not happening anymore.
HUFF HUFF HUFF WHAT I CAME AS FAST AS I COULD WHAT ABOUT IT.
No details, he just said that it was very early in development. Here's the post where he leaked it and a bunch of other games that are a ways off. The FF spinoff, World of Final Fantasy, is the only one announced so far.
Just a small point. If MGSV doesn't sell because of fan outrage (and honestly, I seriously doubt this is genuinely going to impact sales in a major way) this will impact Kojima because employers will look at the cost of the game he made, look at the profits that game made, and write him off regardless. Sure he's well respected in terms of the quality of the games but if he's known as the guy that spent $$$$$$$$ that returned .000$ you are directly hurting his reputation.
Metal gear isn't huge. It's biggish.
Sure, all us customers know the real reason why people wont be buying it. But that isn't going to impress suits who look at numbers first.
You want to really hurt them, don't buy anything else from them that kojima hasn't touched. That way he'll be known as the only guy that made the brand successful. But refraining from supportin something he had a major hand in will hurt his reputation directly. Keep that in mind before you hare off on the loyalty boycott bandwagon.
Speaking of his reputation and further employment Kojima also has to make sure the game works when it launches. His last Konami game can't have a steam refund train if he wants to find employment else where. It's unlikely but I'm holding off picking it up until after reviews are out after the whole Batman thing.
Who knows what post launch support the game will have given how much Konami want rid of Kojima.
The onus is entirely on Konami if that happens.
I bet Kojima's time and resources are severely limited right now. It's a miracle that he's even allowed in the building.
As long as pachinko machines make them more money than video games, they don't care.
The fact that they're renting out their IPs would imply Pachinko doesn't make them more money or they would literally sit on them like with Hudson.
Nothing we've learned about this company implies the people in charge are competent.
um, no it doesn't imply that at all. all that it implies is that they realise that there is still some value in their IPs which they can leverage by leasing them out, there for collecting on their worth without having to expend any great amount of resources on development.
realising that they can get others do to the work for them and still make money doesn't even come close to suggesting that other departments aren't as profitable as we thought. the only thing it does suggest is that Konami likes money.
...you guys do know that Konami's making the pachinko machines themselves, right? No renting out necessary.
there was talk of them licensing one of their IPs to Nintendo, so yes they make the pchinko machines themselves because those are profitable, but games aren't so they're getting others to do the heavy lifting for them in that department.
...you guys do know that Konami's making the pachinko machines themselves, right? No renting out necessary.
there was talk of them licensing one of their IPs to Nintendo, so yes they make the pchinko machines themselves because those are profitable, but games aren't so they're getting others to do the heavy lifting for them in that department.
Oh, okay. I may have misread.
Though it's pretty easy to see that pachinkoizing their games would make money faster and cheaper than, well, actually making new games.
...you guys do know that Konami's making the pachinko machines themselves, right? No renting out necessary.
there was talk of them licensing one of their IPs to Nintendo, so yes they make the pchinko machines themselves because those are profitable, but games aren't so they're getting others to do the heavy lifting for them in that department.
Oh, okay. I may have misread.
Though it's pretty easy to see that pachinkoizing their games would make money faster and cheaper than, well, actually making new games.
It occurs to me that Konami might actually be the only sane AAA developer.
...you guys do know that Konami's making the pachinko machines themselves, right? No renting out necessary.
there was talk of them licensing one of their IPs to Nintendo, so yes they make the pchinko machines themselves because those are profitable, but games aren't so they're getting others to do the heavy lifting for them in that department.
Oh, okay. I may have misread.
Though it's pretty easy to see that pachinkoizing their games would make money faster and cheaper than, well, actually making new games.
It occurs to me that Konami might actually be the only sane AAA developer.
Much as dumping AAA makes business sense, if that damning magazine report is accurate it may be less a planned business strategy and more a consequence of management being pissy and driving away all their top talent. Which is a ludicrous way to run a company, but they've managed to make it work in their favor, sadly enough.
You'd have to pay me a lot to put up with 1/4 of the list of things on that working conditions leak. I don't think you could pay me any amount to put up with the whole list if it's all true.
You'd have to pay me a lot to put up with 1/4 of the list of things on that working conditions leak. I don't think you could pay me any amount to put up with the whole list if it's all true.
Basically, Japanese Corporate Culture is really, really weird.
There's weird and then there's "we don't think you, a video game developer, are productive enough. We're sending you to the pachinko factory to crank out some machines."
There's weird and then there's "we don't think you, a video game developer, are productive enough. We're sending you to the pachinko factory to crank out some machines."
Japanese companies are famous for this; there was a particularly gruesome train wreck a few years ago that was attributed to the engineer not wanting to run late because things like missing schedules got you assigned to walking the tracks and pulling weeds.
I love Japan; I went to university there and have visited a bunch of times before and since, but corporate culture can be awful.
It was from a GAF comment, so I don't know the absolute validity, but apparently one of the reasons such a culture can even thrive, much less exist, is because I guess it's notoriously hard to fire somebody in Japan. A DJ overslept twice and missed his radio program, so the company rightly fired him. But the courts ruled the firing invalid. Companies are expected to train and nurture their employees or some shit. So you can't fire somebody for being bad (you're supposed to teach them to be good) and you can't fire them if their job/skill is made redundant (you're supposed to train them to work in some other form). So if you can't fire or let anybody go, what do you do? Apparently the answer is "Make their work environment so awful that they'll quit"
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
It was from a GAF comment, so I don't know the absolute validity, but apparently one of the reasons such a culture can even thrive, much less exist, is because I guess it's notoriously hard to fire somebody in Japan. A DJ overslept twice and missed his radio program, so the company rightly fired him. But the courts ruled the firing invalid. Companies are expected to train and nurture their employees or some shit. So you can't fire somebody for being bad (you're supposed to teach them to be good) and you can't fire them if their job/skill is made redundant (you're supposed to train them to work in some other form). So if you can't fire or let anybody go, what do you do? Apparently the answer is "Make their work environment so awful that they'll quit"
Except they don't want to quit, so everything just ends up terrible.
It was from a GAF comment, so I don't know the absolute validity, but apparently one of the reasons such a culture can even thrive, much less exist, is because I guess it's notoriously hard to fire somebody in Japan. A DJ overslept twice and missed his radio program, so the company rightly fired him. But the courts ruled the firing invalid. Companies are expected to train and nurture their employees or some shit. So you can't fire somebody for being bad (you're supposed to teach them to be good) and you can't fire them if their job/skill is made redundant (you're supposed to train them to work in some other form). So if you can't fire or let anybody go, what do you do? Apparently the answer is "Make their work environment so awful that they'll quit"
Except they don't want to quit, so everything just ends up terrible.
It kind of makes my head hurt.
I would love a "corporate lifestyle" thread but this isn't the place for it. I don't know a whole lot about Japan's corporate culture, only what I vaguely remember from some travel shows and Shadowrun books.
"Make things so awful people quit." is hardly unique to Japan.
Any time there is a penalty for firing someone, or chance to end up in litigation, the preferred option is going to be having them quit. Hell, every single time I've known someone (American retail) who got caught stealing or something else equally bad against the business, the first thing the managers did was do the "you can quit, go home, no questions asked, or we call the police and have you arrested" thing. Because it would be cheaper for them to not run the risk of litigation regardless of whether they were 'obviously' in the right or not.
+1
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited August 2015
It all comes down to the social expectation to work for the greater good rather than the individual. Complaining or striving to change that is like, well, asking someone in wall street to give up money.
It's seen not just as madness, but antisocial.
To us, where the expectation is on individuals rather than society, its like looking through a mirror: everything's backwards.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
There's weird and then there's "we don't think you, a video game developer, are productive enough. We're sending you to the pachinko factory to crank out some machines."
Japanese companies are famous for this; there was a particularly gruesome train wreck a few years ago that was attributed to the engineer not wanting to run late because things like missing schedules got you assigned to walking the tracks and pulling weeds.
I love Japan; I went to university there and have visited a bunch of times before and since, but corporate culture can be awful.
This just blows my mind, not only because of the conditions that most very likely caused the accident, but in that their impression of fixing the fucking problem boils down to "have the top executives related to the shitty policies in the first place resign in order to save face for the company" instead of "review the shitty work culture and amend the system so people don't flip the fuck out like this in the first place"
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I hate the circumstances surrounding it, but it ain't the fault of the game itself.
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My surprise at Suikoden development being halted was more to the fact that there was actually any Suikoden development going on at the time to be halted. I had assumed that the DS game had been the final nail in the coffin of the series, and we were never going to get any more.
This is... not at all true. It's actually delusional.
konami sent us to hell— but we're going even deeper
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Speaking of his reputation and further employment Kojima also has to make sure the game works when it launches. His last Konami game can't have a steam refund train if he wants to find employment else where. It's unlikely but I'm holding off picking it up until after reviews are out after the whole Batman thing.
Who knows what post launch support the game will have given how much Konami want rid of Kojima.
I doubt it'll have that much impact, at least on the publishers who were ever going to publish a game by him in the first place. MGSV seemed like a pretty unique set of circumstances, with Kojima up until recently basically having the run of the company and seemingly trying to revive Konami as a major publisher single handedly (developing the Fox Engine, rebooting Silent Hill, etc.). That's not going to be the case for his next game, which will almost certainly be on a tighter budget and will probably use UE4 like the rest of Japan, since Epic's Japanese office apparently documents and supports it really well (which is why DQXI PS4, Tekken 7, SFV, KH3, Shenmue 3, etc. are all UE4).
@danx, pretty sure the PC port is being handled by a same team who ported Metal Gear Rising and Ground Zeroes to PC, so I don't think it has much to do with Kojima. He won't even be working for the company by the time Metal Gear Online launches on PC.
No details, he just said that it was very early in development. Here's the post where he leaked it and a bunch of other games that are a ways off. The FF spinoff, World of Final Fantasy, is the only one announced so far.
The onus is entirely on Konami if that happens.
I bet Kojima's time and resources are severely limited right now. It's a miracle that he's even allowed in the building.
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Oh shit, that totally happened.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT ITS EVEN WORSE THAN I THOUGHT.
That is some straight up "Fuck your nostalgia".
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Everyone: "Fuck this, fuck everything, fuck it all. Fuck."
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It simply cannot process.....that.
"You know what this Silent Hill slot machine remake really needs? Awful butt-rock."
Diablo
The fact that they're renting out their IPs would imply Pachinko doesn't make them more money or they would literally sit on them like with Hudson.
Nothing we've learned about this company implies the people in charge are competent.
um, no it doesn't imply that at all. all that it implies is that they realise that there is still some value in their IPs which they can leverage by leasing them out, there for collecting on their worth without having to expend any great amount of resources on development.
realising that they can get others do to the work for them and still make money doesn't even come close to suggesting that other departments aren't as profitable as we thought. the only thing it does suggest is that Konami likes money.
there was talk of them licensing one of their IPs to Nintendo, so yes they make the pchinko machines themselves because those are profitable, but games aren't so they're getting others to do the heavy lifting for them in that department.
Oh, okay. I may have misread.
Though it's pretty easy to see that pachinkoizing their games would make money faster and cheaper than, well, actually making new games.
It occurs to me that Konami might actually be the only sane AAA developer.
Much as dumping AAA makes business sense, if that damning magazine report is accurate it may be less a planned business strategy and more a consequence of management being pissy and driving away all their top talent. Which is a ludicrous way to run a company, but they've managed to make it work in their favor, sadly enough.
It's highly unlikely, as Konami is probably still supplying the big enough paychecks to endure that kind of bullshit, but it would be a nice dream.
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Basically, Japanese Corporate Culture is really, really weird.
Japanese companies are famous for this; there was a particularly gruesome train wreck a few years ago that was attributed to the engineer not wanting to run late because things like missing schedules got you assigned to walking the tracks and pulling weeds.
I love Japan; I went to university there and have visited a bunch of times before and since, but corporate culture can be awful.
Except they don't want to quit, so everything just ends up terrible.
It kind of makes my head hurt.
I would love a "corporate lifestyle" thread but this isn't the place for it. I don't know a whole lot about Japan's corporate culture, only what I vaguely remember from some travel shows and Shadowrun books.
Any time there is a penalty for firing someone, or chance to end up in litigation, the preferred option is going to be having them quit. Hell, every single time I've known someone (American retail) who got caught stealing or something else equally bad against the business, the first thing the managers did was do the "you can quit, go home, no questions asked, or we call the police and have you arrested" thing. Because it would be cheaper for them to not run the risk of litigation regardless of whether they were 'obviously' in the right or not.
It's seen not just as madness, but antisocial.
To us, where the expectation is on individuals rather than society, its like looking through a mirror: everything's backwards.
This just blows my mind, not only because of the conditions that most very likely caused the accident, but in that their impression of fixing the fucking problem boils down to "have the top executives related to the shitty policies in the first place resign in order to save face for the company" instead of "review the shitty work culture and amend the system so people don't flip the fuck out like this in the first place"
I watched that TPP Motherbase trailer posted today and...
We could have had a Silent Hill game filled with all those little Kojima touches.
Fuck You Konami.
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