Hideo Kojima: 70% made up of movies
“In the fourth ten, I try to move away from business issues and concentrate on creating great games. I don’t have to say this with Konami management, but in the future I don’t want to think about money, demographic data, and so on — I want to become a freelancer and create the games I dreamed of. Creative work requires a strong financial component, but the gaming business is slowly burning me from the inside, ”Hideo Kojima told Edge Magazine in 2004.
The former vice-president of Konami Digital Entertainment, who is now in a difficult relationship with a company where he worked for nearly thirty years, began his career by trying to publish his stories in magazines. Kojima's wild imagination forced him to write huge texts, and the editors refused him in favor of short works. For many years he worked at Konami, and now, after parting with the company because of disagreements on the topic of business approach, Kojima continues to do what he likes - he creates the project Death Stranding, without thinking about business. Let's remember why Kojima is considered one of the most ingenious game designers.
Hideo Kojima was born in 1963. Some of the earliest memories of a game designer are associated with death. He almost drowned in the river, a homeless dog attacked him, and the train almost moved him. And when Hideo's parents did not have time for the child, they forced him to watch TV. He watched everything: anime, entertainment and cooking shows, programs about the wild nature - the topic was not important. He came home before everyone else and spent time alone, which he hated. Until now, Kojima in hotels turns on the TV immediately when he enters the room - to cope with solitude.
')
Like many children of the 1960s and 1970s, Kojima wanted to become an astronaut. Later, he drew attention to the work of a policeman or detective. The desire to become an artist from Kojima was beaten off by one of the relatives of the creative profession, who had constant difficulties with money. Despite this, Kojima began writing stories, cherishing the dream of becoming a writer after school. Kojima sent his stories to magazines, but they refused. The publications wanted 100-page stories, and Kojima produced 400 pages.
At the same time, the future game designer tried his hand at cinema. As a gift from a friend, he received an 8-millimeter camera and began shooting short films, showing his classmates for money. The family did not understand the ambitions of Hideo, and almost all friends were focused on their studies. Beginnings Kojima was not supported by the closest people.
The next stage was video games. Many people did not understand the potential of this industry. “I remember very well how everyone told me not to do it. A little after I started working at Konami, I had to talk at the wedding of my acquaintances. In Japan, this person was represented by the presenter at the ceremony. Then he said: “This is Hideo Kojima, a man of tremendous talents that he spends at Konami.” It is unlikely that my mother ever told anyone that I was developing games. ”
In the 1980s, the company Konami successfully earned games for arcade machines with shooting from a helicopter like Super Cobra and a number of other games, in 1984 the company's shares were quoted on the Osaka Securities Exchange.
In those years, household computers of the MSX standard , introduced by Goldstar, Philips and other hardware manufacturers in cooperation with Microsoft, were popular in Japan. Many game developers have focused on this platform, including Konami. In 1986, Hideo Kojima began working in the company on games under this standard. The first project was Penguin Adventure.
In 1987, the first game, already developed by Hideo, was released. First, Metal Gear was released on MSX2, and later on NES outside of Japan. After three years, the owners of computers under MS-DOS could play this stealth action. The latest edition of the very first MGS game dates back to 2012, when the story of Solid Snake was released under the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The most unusual in the game was the process. Kojima has created a new genre. Instead of constant firefights and explosions, he proposed the idea of quietly passing the game, performing missions without attracting the attention of the enemy.
Kojima himself talked about the films that most influenced the Metal Gear Solid series. The first of them is the “Great Escape” of 1963. The film tells about the mass escape of American, British and Canadian prisoners of war from the German camp during the Second World War. Kojima's task was to make a game about battles, but he was not interested in such a topic. Instead, he tried to embody the tense moments in the game from the movie, where people are hiding from the spotlights or making their way through the tunnel.
The second film that influenced the series is also dedicated to the events of the Second World War. In “Guns of Navaron Island” , a special-purpose group penetrates the island in order to destroy the coastal battery with large-caliber guns in order to give an opportunity to conduct a convoy past the island to evacuate the garrison of British soldiers. Here, besides the idea of penetrating the enemy base, Kojima took the idea with a noise to distract the enemy. Starting from the second Metal Gear 2, it was possible to knock on the wall to bypass the guards, and later to throw objects.
The third film, oddly enough, was George Romero 's The Dawn of the Dead . When a game character opens locks, he can always get caught by the enemy. If the player is worried and quickly presses the buttons in Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, the process accelerates. This is the epitome of movie moments, where heroes with a big bunch of keys hooked up the necessary keys for a particular door, when a crowd of hungry zombies slowly moves behind their backs.
Not without 007 . James Bond penetrated into the enemy base in a tuxedo and, as if nothing had happened, carried out a mission with the British style, using ultramodern devices. So in Metal Gear, the protagonist is a loner, who is able to unwittingly, with the help of his own mind, cunning and technological advances, to deceive the enemy.
From these ideas came the first Metal Gear, one of the most popular games of the 1980s , and all subsequent games in this series.
If Metal Gear was a stealth action, then Kojima’s next project was a psychological thriller with cyberpunk elements. Snatcher's game was a rethinking of Kojima 's Blade Runner . The project saw the light in 1988.
According to the plot, biorobots, which are called “snechchers,” attack people and take their place - they steal other people's lives. The main character is Jillian Sid. He and his wife awoke from amnesia. As soon as they try to reproduce the events of the past in their memory, the word “snatcher” comes to mind. Jillian gets a job in the organization JUNKER, which fights with androids.
Your enemies in Snatcher are calculating killing machines. And while you can not immediately determine whether you are talking to a person or a robot. Here lies the difference from "Blade Runner", where in the end we begin to empathize with androids with the makings of human consciousness, looking for answers to the main questions of life.
The game has erotic scenes, a lot of blood and cut off parts of the body. Most of these frames, depending on the platform and country of publication, were censored. For example, in the original version there was a moment where a dead android with a woman’s body lay on the floor with a bare chest. In other editions, the chest was carefully covered with a dress.
In 1990, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was released under MSX in Japan. Kojima made a few “cosmetic” changes to the process, which brought the stealth action to a new level: the character got the opportunity to crouch, crawl and knock on the walls to attract the attention of enemies, a radar appeared in the corner of the screen. The enemy has become smarter - the soldiers now saw not only in front of themselves, but also in a certain radius, and could also hear the player’s footsteps.
In the break between the creation of Metal Gear, Hideo Kojima again participates in the development of the detective story. The name of the game comes from the words "police" and "astronauts." You play as Jonathan Ingram from the special squad Policenauts, who spent 25 years in the rescue capsule after an accident in space. They found him, but no one waited at home - his wife went to another and gave birth to a daughter, and the detachment was disbanded long ago. Jonathan takes a job as a detective. The former wife, Lorraine, comes a couple of years later and tells that her husband was kidnapped. Right near the office, Lorraine is blown up in her car, and the killer is hiding.
Policenauts also has references to films and is filled with dialogues with sexual overtones and relevant images. The game was released in 1994 and was ported to 3DO, PlayStation and Saturn .
Hideo Kojima became the star of the gaming industry in 1998 with the release of Metal Gear Solid on Sony PlayStation. It was the first game with 3D graphics in the MGS series. Solid Snake had to penetrate the island, captured by a group of special-purpose soldiers who had become terrorists, rescue the hostages and prevent the terrorists from delivering a nuclear strike.
The game Kojima was able to roam and realize much more of his ideas thanks to the capabilities of the PlayStation. The prefix had a processor operating at 33.8688 MHz, 2 megabytes of RAM, 1 megabyte of video memory and 512 kilobytes of memory for sound. But this was still very little, not enough for the full cinematography of the game. After all, Kojima is first and foremost a director who "makes" the films you play. Or who play you?
A new level of graphics in 2001 received Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for the PlayStation 2. Konami sold seven million copies of this tactical spy thriller, the best result so far in the entire series.
Each game of the Metal Gear Solid series retained the original idea of the gameplay, but from an evolutionary point of view it improved it according to the capabilities of the platform. And it's not in the schedule. Sometimes, when you play old games, you understand: if not for an interesting gameplay and plot, then there is no point in the game. On the other hand, any new game with a great visual can be a dummy.
All Kojima games are filled with Easter eggs and references to each other. In Snatcher, the main character has an assistant robot called Metal Gear MK2. And in Metal Gear Solid 4 the same robot from Snatcher 1988 appears.
In 2005, Kojima received his own studio Kojima Productions as a division of Konami. The studio has existed for ten years, releasing several games exclusively in the Metal Gear Solid series.
At a certain point a conflict arose between the company and the game designer. Composer Rick Maranaka talked about his reasons. Hideo Kojima received a salary in the company despite the sale of games or any other factors. But instead of releasing a new part of Metal Gear in time, Kojima postponed releases to bring the game to perfection. By the way, developer fees suffered from this. In addition to this, Kojima was spending more resources than originally planned. The game designer could not master the business approach.
After the dismissal of the Kojima, the rights to Metal Gear remained with Konami. Of course, the company could not give the creator of a series of games the hen that lays the golden eggs. How golden? In the first three quarters of 2015 , out of 7.19 million gaming companies sold, almost two million are Metal Gear. This is one of the pillars on which the company's income rests.
In 2015, Hideo Kojima officially left Konami . The Silent Hills game, which all fans of both the series and Kojima were waiting for, was canceled.
His return to the gaming scene after a lot of controversy with Konami, Hideo Kojima defeated in a tremendous way, presenting the trailer, in which Norman Reedus played again. Since Silent Hills has been canceled, why not use a talented and famous actor in another project? Kojima in the game represents his vision, where he can enter any ideas or characters. Actor Mads Mikkelsen and director Guillermo del Toro also joined the project.
The ingenious game designer already plays a lot with future players even before the projects are released, using trailers and social networks. He warms up the audience, makes inventing the details on their own, leaves Easter eggs and tips. There are a lot of rumors and conjectures around Death Stranding. While we are waiting for the game, I propose to reconsider two trailers again. How many years to wait is unknown, but perhaps it is worth it.
The former vice-president of Konami Digital Entertainment, who is now in a difficult relationship with a company where he worked for nearly thirty years, began his career by trying to publish his stories in magazines. Kojima's wild imagination forced him to write huge texts, and the editors refused him in favor of short works. For many years he worked at Konami, and now, after parting with the company because of disagreements on the topic of business approach, Kojima continues to do what he likes - he creates the project Death Stranding, without thinking about business. Let's remember why Kojima is considered one of the most ingenious game designers.
Hideo Kojima was born in 1963. Some of the earliest memories of a game designer are associated with death. He almost drowned in the river, a homeless dog attacked him, and the train almost moved him. And when Hideo's parents did not have time for the child, they forced him to watch TV. He watched everything: anime, entertainment and cooking shows, programs about the wild nature - the topic was not important. He came home before everyone else and spent time alone, which he hated. Until now, Kojima in hotels turns on the TV immediately when he enters the room - to cope with solitude.
')
Like many children of the 1960s and 1970s, Kojima wanted to become an astronaut. Later, he drew attention to the work of a policeman or detective. The desire to become an artist from Kojima was beaten off by one of the relatives of the creative profession, who had constant difficulties with money. Despite this, Kojima began writing stories, cherishing the dream of becoming a writer after school. Kojima sent his stories to magazines, but they refused. The publications wanted 100-page stories, and Kojima produced 400 pages.
At the same time, the future game designer tried his hand at cinema. As a gift from a friend, he received an 8-millimeter camera and began shooting short films, showing his classmates for money. The family did not understand the ambitions of Hideo, and almost all friends were focused on their studies. Beginnings Kojima was not supported by the closest people.
The next stage was video games. Many people did not understand the potential of this industry. “I remember very well how everyone told me not to do it. A little after I started working at Konami, I had to talk at the wedding of my acquaintances. In Japan, this person was represented by the presenter at the ceremony. Then he said: “This is Hideo Kojima, a man of tremendous talents that he spends at Konami.” It is unlikely that my mother ever told anyone that I was developing games. ”
In the 1980s, the company Konami successfully earned games for arcade machines with shooting from a helicopter like Super Cobra and a number of other games, in 1984 the company's shares were quoted on the Osaka Securities Exchange.
In those years, household computers of the MSX standard , introduced by Goldstar, Philips and other hardware manufacturers in cooperation with Microsoft, were popular in Japan. Many game developers have focused on this platform, including Konami. In 1986, Hideo Kojima began working in the company on games under this standard. The first project was Penguin Adventure.
In 1987, the first game, already developed by Hideo, was released. First, Metal Gear was released on MSX2, and later on NES outside of Japan. After three years, the owners of computers under MS-DOS could play this stealth action. The latest edition of the very first MGS game dates back to 2012, when the story of Solid Snake was released under the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The most unusual in the game was the process. Kojima has created a new genre. Instead of constant firefights and explosions, he proposed the idea of quietly passing the game, performing missions without attracting the attention of the enemy.
Kojima himself talked about the films that most influenced the Metal Gear Solid series. The first of them is the “Great Escape” of 1963. The film tells about the mass escape of American, British and Canadian prisoners of war from the German camp during the Second World War. Kojima's task was to make a game about battles, but he was not interested in such a topic. Instead, he tried to embody the tense moments in the game from the movie, where people are hiding from the spotlights or making their way through the tunnel.
The second film that influenced the series is also dedicated to the events of the Second World War. In “Guns of Navaron Island” , a special-purpose group penetrates the island in order to destroy the coastal battery with large-caliber guns in order to give an opportunity to conduct a convoy past the island to evacuate the garrison of British soldiers. Here, besides the idea of penetrating the enemy base, Kojima took the idea with a noise to distract the enemy. Starting from the second Metal Gear 2, it was possible to knock on the wall to bypass the guards, and later to throw objects.
The third film, oddly enough, was George Romero 's The Dawn of the Dead . When a game character opens locks, he can always get caught by the enemy. If the player is worried and quickly presses the buttons in Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, the process accelerates. This is the epitome of movie moments, where heroes with a big bunch of keys hooked up the necessary keys for a particular door, when a crowd of hungry zombies slowly moves behind their backs.
Not without 007 . James Bond penetrated into the enemy base in a tuxedo and, as if nothing had happened, carried out a mission with the British style, using ultramodern devices. So in Metal Gear, the protagonist is a loner, who is able to unwittingly, with the help of his own mind, cunning and technological advances, to deceive the enemy.
From these ideas came the first Metal Gear, one of the most popular games of the 1980s , and all subsequent games in this series.
If Metal Gear was a stealth action, then Kojima’s next project was a psychological thriller with cyberpunk elements. Snatcher's game was a rethinking of Kojima 's Blade Runner . The project saw the light in 1988.
According to the plot, biorobots, which are called “snechchers,” attack people and take their place - they steal other people's lives. The main character is Jillian Sid. He and his wife awoke from amnesia. As soon as they try to reproduce the events of the past in their memory, the word “snatcher” comes to mind. Jillian gets a job in the organization JUNKER, which fights with androids.
Your enemies in Snatcher are calculating killing machines. And while you can not immediately determine whether you are talking to a person or a robot. Here lies the difference from "Blade Runner", where in the end we begin to empathize with androids with the makings of human consciousness, looking for answers to the main questions of life.
The game has erotic scenes, a lot of blood and cut off parts of the body. Most of these frames, depending on the platform and country of publication, were censored. For example, in the original version there was a moment where a dead android with a woman’s body lay on the floor with a bare chest. In other editions, the chest was carefully covered with a dress.
In 1990, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was released under MSX in Japan. Kojima made a few “cosmetic” changes to the process, which brought the stealth action to a new level: the character got the opportunity to crouch, crawl and knock on the walls to attract the attention of enemies, a radar appeared in the corner of the screen. The enemy has become smarter - the soldiers now saw not only in front of themselves, but also in a certain radius, and could also hear the player’s footsteps.
In the break between the creation of Metal Gear, Hideo Kojima again participates in the development of the detective story. The name of the game comes from the words "police" and "astronauts." You play as Jonathan Ingram from the special squad Policenauts, who spent 25 years in the rescue capsule after an accident in space. They found him, but no one waited at home - his wife went to another and gave birth to a daughter, and the detachment was disbanded long ago. Jonathan takes a job as a detective. The former wife, Lorraine, comes a couple of years later and tells that her husband was kidnapped. Right near the office, Lorraine is blown up in her car, and the killer is hiding.
Policenauts also has references to films and is filled with dialogues with sexual overtones and relevant images. The game was released in 1994 and was ported to 3DO, PlayStation and Saturn .
Hideo Kojima became the star of the gaming industry in 1998 with the release of Metal Gear Solid on Sony PlayStation. It was the first game with 3D graphics in the MGS series. Solid Snake had to penetrate the island, captured by a group of special-purpose soldiers who had become terrorists, rescue the hostages and prevent the terrorists from delivering a nuclear strike.
The game Kojima was able to roam and realize much more of his ideas thanks to the capabilities of the PlayStation. The prefix had a processor operating at 33.8688 MHz, 2 megabytes of RAM, 1 megabyte of video memory and 512 kilobytes of memory for sound. But this was still very little, not enough for the full cinematography of the game. After all, Kojima is first and foremost a director who "makes" the films you play. Or who play you?
A new level of graphics in 2001 received Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for the PlayStation 2. Konami sold seven million copies of this tactical spy thriller, the best result so far in the entire series.
Each game of the Metal Gear Solid series retained the original idea of the gameplay, but from an evolutionary point of view it improved it according to the capabilities of the platform. And it's not in the schedule. Sometimes, when you play old games, you understand: if not for an interesting gameplay and plot, then there is no point in the game. On the other hand, any new game with a great visual can be a dummy.
All Kojima games are filled with Easter eggs and references to each other. In Snatcher, the main character has an assistant robot called Metal Gear MK2. And in Metal Gear Solid 4 the same robot from Snatcher 1988 appears.
In 2005, Kojima received his own studio Kojima Productions as a division of Konami. The studio has existed for ten years, releasing several games exclusively in the Metal Gear Solid series.
At a certain point a conflict arose between the company and the game designer. Composer Rick Maranaka talked about his reasons. Hideo Kojima received a salary in the company despite the sale of games or any other factors. But instead of releasing a new part of Metal Gear in time, Kojima postponed releases to bring the game to perfection. By the way, developer fees suffered from this. In addition to this, Kojima was spending more resources than originally planned. The game designer could not master the business approach.
After the dismissal of the Kojima, the rights to Metal Gear remained with Konami. Of course, the company could not give the creator of a series of games the hen that lays the golden eggs. How golden? In the first three quarters of 2015 , out of 7.19 million gaming companies sold, almost two million are Metal Gear. This is one of the pillars on which the company's income rests.
In 2015, Hideo Kojima officially left Konami . The Silent Hills game, which all fans of both the series and Kojima were waiting for, was canceled.
His return to the gaming scene after a lot of controversy with Konami, Hideo Kojima defeated in a tremendous way, presenting the trailer, in which Norman Reedus played again. Since Silent Hills has been canceled, why not use a talented and famous actor in another project? Kojima in the game represents his vision, where he can enter any ideas or characters. Actor Mads Mikkelsen and director Guillermo del Toro also joined the project.
The ingenious game designer already plays a lot with future players even before the projects are released, using trailers and social networks. He warms up the audience, makes inventing the details on their own, leaves Easter eggs and tips. There are a lot of rumors and conjectures around Death Stranding. While we are waiting for the game, I propose to reconsider two trailers again. How many years to wait is unknown, but perhaps it is worth it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/400161/
All Articles