Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes/The Phantom Pain

  • Thread starter Ddrizle
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No more Kojima with Konami. ?

Sooooo... what the hell?

I still can see Kideo Kojima making great games (possibly another series, especially on his own), but it leaves to question the Silent Hill(s) series. Will it be left as that teaser, or will Kojima, Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus still be involved in the release of the next Silent Hill!?!??!?!?!?
 
The news gets worse. Essentially, Konami is now looking to reboot the Metal Gear franchise now, and in pretty quick order too. They posted up a job listing roughly an hour ago looking for staff for that project.
 
That might actually be for the best, don't you think? Kojima making a new game without being restrained by a convoluted story line and the expectations associated with a game titled 'Metal Gear', that doesn't sound bad to me, at all.
 
Gleaming as much news as seems to be out there, this actually sounds a lot like the crap that got Sega into so much trouble in the early 90s. I think the best we can hope for at the moment is that Konami doesn't start actively meddling with the game with what little time is left before release, even after they've gone out of their way to slash up promotional material.
 
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The media blackout continues. However, the company reorganizing may have claimed a couple of other producers in the company as well. Gematsu is reporting that Akari Uchida and Mino Taro of Lonetime Love Plus fame are also leaving the company in short order.

Here is their tweets announcing their resignation:

http://gematsu.com/2015/03/akari-uchida-and-mino-taro-depart-from-konami

EDIT: At least someone has spoken out. A pair of videos for your consumption, and both of them involve Donna Burke.



In this one, she makes a statement that basically confirms the Gamespot article.



In this video, Konami and Gamespot are basically denying that Kojima was "fired", a claim made by Donna Burke on twitter. However, the Gamespot editor who originally wrote the article did confirm that Kojima will leave the company in December when his contract expires.
 
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Sanji Himura


Neurologist to sue Kojima and Konami to fund his research
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*sigh* people like that really bother me. Suing so he can do his research when they have just created a frankly generic looking bald doctor with glasses. Hardly a stand out description for someone is it? This is as bad the GTAV cover girl scandal.
 
Rumor: Kojima is being sacked due to Konami CEO Kagemasa Kozuki's desire to expand into casino gambling. Casino gambling is currently illegal in Japan, but there is an attempt to get gambling legal that is currently in the Japanese Diet as of April. The same measure failed to pass the Diet last year.



Here is what the source had on him.

wZrhM7V.jpg
 
Jawehawk
I really hope none of this will have a negative affect on MGS V...
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It's finished. The release date has been announced, and the game just needs to be put on disc and shipped.

Besides, the new management at Konami would be mad to let their transition affect what is likely to be the company's biggest release.
 
You know what, I think that Kozuki is just insane enough to pull that 🤬 and gift wrap it to the press as Kojima scrapping the project (which won't be true). He is that desperate to get into the gambling market.

This is the very reason why Western developers are so dominate in the market right now. They actually have the same standards that Kojima would have set had he been a AAA publisher. If I were Kojima right about now, I would consider suing Konami on Sept. 2, right after his new bosses forces him to resign.

On a kinda funny note, this sort of reminds me of Iron Man 1, where Tony Stark stops making weapons. I can't wait to see how the Japanese stock market reacts to this news.
 
Considering Kozuki's position from a more neutral perspective, Kojima Productions has all the makings of a financial black hole. His projects are big, expensive, and time-consuming; MGSV was originally planned as a launch title for the eighth-generation of consoles, but then got delayed, split into GZ and TPP, and delayed again. They get a return on investment, but it would take a very long time to come to fruition, and eventually you reach a point of diminishing returns. The Fox Engine is powerful, but has no practical application beyond the MGS games. And if Konami are taking a beating in the international market, they need to expand outward.

If the above is true, then the way Kozuki is going about it is all wrong. But I doubt he'd can TPP just to spite Kojima - it was an expensive production, and it's just about ready to go. And there is no guarantee that the Diet will pass the legislation legalising gambling, since Shinzo Abe holds an absolute majority by a very comfortable margin. If Kozuki tried to do it, the board would likely take action.
 
But he already immediately removed all of the players that had any position of strength from executive positions within the company, and got away with it without any inaction from the board.

I'll grant you that Kojima's games are generally expensive, but they earn them a hell of a lot of money. I think that Kojima's ultimate crime was actually communicating with the press, something that Konami has had a history of not doing:



In case you were keeping score at home, Jim Sterling, the guy talking in the video is actually blacklisted from covering Konami's games because he didn't get the "green light" in a prerelease news article covering one of their games...
 
Sanji Himura
But he already immediately removed all of the players that had any position of strength from executive positions within the company, and got away with it without any inaction from the board.
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Canning a project that will (all but) guarantee a return on investment out of spite whilst banking on legislation that is by no means guaranteed to make profit is probably taking things a little too far. Especially when Kojima could then take TPP and release it through another publisher - and given both the money to be made and the way Konami paid for its development, any studio would pounce on it for its minimal investment and massive returns.
 
prisonermonkeys
Canning a project that will (all but) guarantee a return on investment out of spite whilst banking on legislation that is by no means guaranteed to make profit is probably taking things a little too far. Especially when Kojima could then take TPP and release it through another publisher - and given both the money to be made and the way Konami paid for its development, any studio would pounce on it for its minimal investment and massive returns.
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That still doesn't answer the overall debate on who owns Metal Gear, Kojima or Konami? If it is the latter, you can be sure that whatever interest that Konami has in remaining in the video game market will cause the utter death of whatever reputation that the Metal Gear series had enjoyed.

Kojima may wish to avoid the courts in sheer avoidance of being outright fired a few short months before The Phantom Pain's release date, but if he seriously cared about the franchise that he created going by the way of the dodo bird under Kozuki's watch, he couldn't have been in a greater position of strength. Kozuki is running the company into the ground betting the farm on legislation that even if it manages to pass the Japanese Diet, won't survive Prime Minister Abe's scrutiny, much less the courts anyways.

If Kojima decides to sue anyway, he has a fairly legitimate chance of getting Metal Gear under his portfolio anyways because of the malpractices that the company has treated its employees.
 
Treatment of employees and intellectual property rights are two different things. If it went to court, Kojima wouldn't be awarded the rights to the franchise because Kozuki mistreated his employees.

The sticking point would be the Fox Engine. Kojima might own the IP for the franchise, but Konami funded the Fox Engine, and the two are intrinsically linked. Kojima can't just walk away, which is probably why he's sticking it out.
 
Thankfully we have a bit of history to fall back on. In the late 90's, the old SNK heavily invested in pachinko slots, in the process alienating fans of their video games and firing all of their developers, not unlike Konami. A few painful years later, the former developers formed PLAYMORE, and bought out SNK, thus becoming SNK PLAYMORE.

If any of those developers cared about their franchises at all, they need to start thinking about how much money it would take to buy Konami out of it.
 
But seeing as MGS V will likely be the last game in the franchise, then what would be the point of acquiring the rights for it now? It has to end at some point. Let Kojima do something new.
 
Jawehawk
But seeing as MGS V will likely be the last game in the franchise, then what would be the point of acquiring the rights for it now?
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Profit. Konami spent all that money on the game, but if they don't want it, any publishing house could pick the rights up relatively cheaply, and get a massive return.
 
prisonermonkeys
Profit. Konami spent all that money on the game, but if they don't want it, any publishing house could pick the rights up relatively cheaply, and get a massive return.
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I know, that's not who I was referring to. What I meant was what would be the point of Kojima Productions trying to get the full rights over the IP? They'd need a publisher regardless, and I don't see how getting another publisher, would mean higher profit for Kojima Productions.
 
Jawehawk
But seeing as MGS V will likely be the last game in the franchise, then what would be the point of acquiring the rights for it now? It has to end at some point. Let Kojima do something new.
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You're also forgetting the eventual Metal Gear remakes that may or may not happen now. Kojima wanted the first three games in the Metal Gear franchise redone in the FOX engine. While that was a lofty goal, the legal wrangling that, quite frankly, still remains echos how much of a mess Konami actually runs their business.

EDIT: In case anyone cares, if you backtrack two of my video posts, you may notice that the video that I posted has received a copyright strike from Konami. Thankfully I may have saved the original video from YouTube, but the fact that it received a copyright strike in the first place gives the message credibility.
 
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Wouldn't cancelling it be akin to suicide for Konami? having spent all that money, only to cancel it a few months before release, strikes me as impossible.

A remake of the old MGS games in the Fox engine would be interesting. MGS3 would benefit a lot from having smoother gameplay, I think.
 

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