With Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain nearing release in September, many people are wondering what will happen to Hideo Kojima. It's no secret that this will be his last Metal Gear title as the rift between the creator and Konami has gotten more and more public over the past few months. It's bad timing, considering the marketing push needed for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, but the drama is still happening anyway.
While fans may never get a detailed explanation of what happened between Hideo Kojima and parent company Konami, according to a new rumor posted on Reddit, the picture may now be a bit clearer.
In a recent episode of The Codec with Yong Yea, former Metal Gear composer, Rika Muranaka, was interviewed and provided her take on the situation and how it deteriorated so quickly between the two sides. Essentially in her opinion, the rift arose due to Kojima being paid a salary to create games rather than the traditional way of getting profit based on the game's sales. Considering Kojima gets paid a set sum of money no matter what, combined with his meticulous attention to detail, development time and the budget for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain were being shifted to upgrading various aspects of the Fox Engine, causing delays on the project which obviously irked Konami.
The interview also gives gamers great insight into Kojima's unique development style as Kojima tends to create more than he can use in the game. By doing this, he can pick and choose the best items from the bunch. Considering that traditional game delays have no effect on his bottom line, Kojima was free to continue to improve and add features to the game, making sure it was the best that it could be.
"Where instead of, for example, cutting corners by lowering foliage resolution, he wants to make sure everything looks as good and polished as possible. She said they paid for her to write 30-40 songs that ended up not being used, and he'd tell her to write another one, then another one, then another one, because he settles for what he likes and has a good mind for what people want to see and what people want to hear."
While there's little doubt that Kojima gets results and is wildly popular with fans, if this rumor is true, there's no question why a deal like this would irritate Konami. As most developers are tied into the success of the game they create, Kojima was free to do as we wished as his base pay isn't affected by normal development issues. A deal like this definitely benefits the creator rather than the publisher.
Still, if money was the source of the problem between the two sides, it doesn't quite explain some of the great lengths that Konami has gone to scrub Kojima out. It all started with the complete rebranding of various Kojima Productions items such as their Twitter account, streaming broadcast, and even studio name. More recently however, the company even updated the box art for Metal Gear Solid V, removing Kojima's name and slogan completely. There's even a conspiracy that Kojima saw the writing on the wall and added a mission into Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes which mirrors his real life situation with Konami.
What do you guys think, is this plausible? What's your take on the situation?
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is scheduled for release on September 1st for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, with a PC release coming September 15th.
Source: The Codec