Why Hideo Kojima is so popular?
Why Hideo Kojima is so popular?
Discover why Hideo Kojima is so popular, as we delve into his innovative approach to game design that has revolutionized the video gaming industry.
Hideo always has his 10 minutes on Game Awards, why? Why other game devs don't get that much recognition or screen time?
Because he's one of the few devs with true name recognition. All video game awards shows have always been chasing the Oscars but the film industry is full of massive celebrities. Not just stars but directors and even some writers and producers.
So Kojima has that. Plus his work always shows well. It's usually something unique and cinematic.
30Which seems a fruitless ambition, the talents required to be great at both are very different, charisma and attractiveness are much more important in the film industry. People will naturally like those stars more because their job is in part to be likable
6Bring back Josef Fares!
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Because in an industry dominated by yearly rehashed minimum viable products like CoD or AC or Battlefield or the plethora of lootbox infested live services meant to fuck your wallet for easy quick RoI for shareholders, Kojima spends time and resources creating new, novel ideas and taking the artistic medium (yes, games are art despite what capital G Gamers want to say) to new and exciting and interesting places.
This is why Hideo Kojima, Yoko Taro, Fumito Ueda, Hideaki Itsuno, Keiichiro Toyama, Eric Barone, Terry Cavanagh, David Szymanski (etc etc etc, I could go on) all get name recognition.
People always SAY they want games to expand and try new things/don't want the same game every year, but then when someone actually tries, the games get panned as "gimmicky" or "niche" or "pretentious" "pixel graphics indie garbage" or some other flavor of the month phrase gamers use to instantly discredit something that doesn't immediately and specifically cater to every single one of their preconceived demands on what a "game" is and/or should be.
30Outside japan Sam Lake comes to mind too.
9Yeah, I added a few western names too (I'm a bit biased to Japanese devs, growing up on JRPGs and whatnot).
But there's tons of people over here that get name recognition too, for sure.
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He makes good games. Polished ones, too.
Even MGS5, which was pretty clearly pushed out before he wanted it to be and broke him up with Konami, was extremely technically sound, just not filled out as much as it should have been.
28More devs make good games, polished ones. Why are they not there then if that is the reason?
6Because they don't have the cult of personality of Mr Kojima.
4Probably because not that many devs have being making good, polished games since the 80s
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Why other game devs don’t get that much recognition or screen time?
Probably because Geoff Keighle and Hideo Kojima are great friends. Game Awards announced 30 seconds limit for speeches, but those only apply to everyone else, not friends.
26Ads, "world premieres," and celebrity cameos were certainly the focus of the event.
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The arm was possessed by ghost and when replaced with a cyborg arm it wasn't really possessed anymore but psychologically was.
This is the writing genius of kojumbo.
Edit: that article is the most gpt thing I've read in a while.
10"Why is Hideo Kojima so popular?"
"Why this is" is an explanation. "Why is this" is a question.
3To actually answer the question:
Consistent novelty.
Metal Gear on MSX2 was a genre that didn't exist yet, and which sounded boring when he proposed it. The real Metal Gear 2 built on that in ways that would still be noteworthy features in Metal Gear Solid. Snatcher and Policenauts were little more than visual novels, but they were well-executed. That's largely thanks to Kojima insisting on artist-driven tools for scripting the exact timing of graphics, text, and music.
Metal Gear Solid fucked with the player by constantly breaking the fourth wall. MGS2 cranked that ten times higher, along with prescient comments on memetics and populist narratives. MGS3 was just polished as hell. MGS4 opens with fake commercials starring the voice actors and only gets weirder from there.
MGS5-- calling back to artist-driven tools, I recommend the article about the game's rendering engine. They developed a little rectangle you can drop into a screenshot, and then however you adjust the screenshot in Photoshop, copy-pasting that little rectangle back into the game will perfectly match whatever you did. Kojima productions have a certain "just solve the problem" vibe behind a lot of their technical direction. MGS 1-3 had too much focus on the minimap radar, so MGS4 has a holographic ring around your feet. Why? How? Who gives a shit, it's a video game.
P.T. was a horror game demo set entirely in one hallway. And it was terrifying. And weird. And full of promise. So when Kojima handed that gift to Konami, reviving one of their beloved franchises, with several big names on-board thanks to his weird industry connections... and then Konami booted his ass out the door... people noticed.
Death Stranding is the ultimate illustration of why he became well-known and why he remains well-known. It's a ridiculous product. It forces comically long sequences that are not technically gameplay. Its writing is completely bonkers and longwinded. But every aspect is deliberate. It is that way, on purpose. A premise that sounds boring becomes interesting because it's well-executed. Balance and stamina aren't floating UI elements; they're represented in your character's movement, so you keep your eyes on your dude.
Basically, Kojima is the sort of lead who can insist on a ten-minute opening cutscene, thirty seconds of actual gameplay, and then another eight minutes of cutscene, and still have people's attention.
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Because most of the good ones are reclusive or busy working on their games.
3The same reason people thought star wars the last Jedi was good, if you just make a fucked up enough narrative and pretend it's high brow instead of contrived, you can fool the elitists into believing they're smart for liking it.
3Let's not forget that his name sounds good
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