Hideo Kojima Says Games And Films Will Merge Together

Megalith

Megalith

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The famed game designer has opened the doors of his brand-new Kojima Productions studio to the media, and he has started a dialog on everything from his relationship with Konami to what he thinks about the future of entertainment. On the latter subject, he believes that games and films are eventually going to become one, with the reasoning being that people are going to only seek one type of entertainment. I can see through Kojima, though—this is the guy who tries to make every game a movie (I think he really regrets not going into or making it in the film industry), so I think he is just trying to make an excuse for himself to continue his usual business. What’s your opinion on “cinematic” games where you spend more time watching cutscenes than actually playing it?

"In life people are very busy doing lots of things," he explains through a translator. "The time you have to choose what media or entertainment you experience is dwindling. "More and more people are looking at types of media that combine elements together." "If we just make a game people are less likely to choose that as something to do. "They would rather engage in something that combines different forms of entertainment together. "That's where we need to focus our efforts, on this convergence." He's planning on a future where movies are playable and games give players the choice to access more extended movie like content within them.
 
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Not a prophet like prediction.
Many games are player action set between a lot of cut scenes that move the story along. I would already call that an interactive movie of a type.
 
Darunion said:
I love a good story in a game but when I start a game and it takes me 15-20minutes before I need to grab a controller, I get bored. Story should be told in bits not huge segments
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Hence Metal Gear Solid 5. Although some life-long MGS fans like myself feel as though MGS 5 went way too much in the opposite direction. I always loved the cutscenes in MGS games and love the lore of the franchise, and Kojima is really good at being a director as well so I feel as though he's not far off.
 
Don't we already do this and have this? Pretty sure most all single-player games tell story for the most part and cut scenes or "movie" to go along with them for ages. Look at Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Dragon's Liar, Sewer Shark, etc. from back in the day.
 
No, thanks. I like games that rely on gameplay to tell the story through. DOOM was an excellent example, using short in-game cutscenes very minimally. Same with the Half-Life series.
 
zamardii12 said:
Hence Metal Gear Solid 5. Although some life-long MGS fans like myself feel as though MGS 5 went way too much in the opposite direction. I always loved the cutscenes in MGS games and love the lore of the franchise, and Kojima is really good at being a director as well so I feel as though he's not far off.
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I actually loved the 30+ minute cut scenes in MGS4, same with Uncharted. It helps give me a better emotional connection to the character. MGS5 I felt nothing..
 
NickJames said:
I actually loved the 30+ minute cut scenes in MGS4, same with Uncharted. It helps give me a better emotional connection to the character. MGS5 I felt nothing..
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Yup, so much this. I consider myself a pretty big MGS fan. I've had to put MGSV off for a while but I'm now currently playing it. I miss the long cutscenes so much.

Not saying it has to be every game but let us let developers like Kojima go hog wild.

Xenosaga is another series with 30min cutscenes I'd like to see return.
 
Is this so he can keep plastering his name on screen every 5 minutes?
 
NickJames said:
I actually loved the 30+ minute cut scenes in MGS4, same with Uncharted. It helps give me a better emotional connection to the character. MGS5 I felt nothing..
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I do agree. I think if we skip past the notion of 'all games or movies will blend together' and just let artist do their art, it will be fine. No, movies and games will never become the same as you have different audiences and art appeals differently. Also I do think his work is great, he is also kind of an arrogant prick, rightly so though lol.

A good balance is best imo.
 
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Darunion said:
I love a good story in a game but when I start a game and it takes me 15-20minutes before I need to grab a controller, I get bored. Story should be told in bits not huge segments
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Oh how I agree.
 
There is an ubelievable amount of actual gameplay in MGS V, I get the impression that most people here who say "it's just cutscenes!" didn't play it. This is coming from someone who loved Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge on NES, but hated MGS on Playstation because there was almost no gameplay, then gave up on the series until V. Sure there are long cutscenes in V (you can skip them) but nothing like the gameplay-to-cutscene ratio that MGS had. V is a major departure from the previous games.

The problems with V are that the story is batshit insane, there are tone issues regarding that story, and Kojima is an egomaniac of the highest order. The actual gameplay is incredibly in depth and by far the best stealth game I've ever played, and I don't normally like stealth gameplay.
 
NickJames said:
I actually loved the 30+ minute cut scenes in MGS4, same with Uncharted. It helps give me a better emotional connection to the character. MGS5 I felt nothing..
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So did I. I actually still replay those games to watch the cut-scenes sometimes.
 
I think Kojima is an idiot. He is not a good director or a good writer and the only reason he's popular is because he was a visionary during a time when the limitations of the hardware masked his inability to do what he does. His popularity seems to come more from the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia than anything else. The narratives of his games were great when we were 12 when we lacked the ability and experience to see how poorly written, scripted and paced it all was through the, at the time, pretty awesome gameplay. Unfortunately, he just doesn't have the talent to match his vision when it comes to directing and that became glaringly obvious in pretty much everything he has done since the PS2 because the hardware is no longer limiting his ability but instead shining a spotlight on the limitations of his ability.
 
grifter_66 said:
I think Kojima is an idiot. He is not a good director or a good writer and the only reason he's popular is because he was a visionary during a time when the limitations of the hardware masked his inability to do what he does. His popularity seems to come more from the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia than anything else. The narratives of his games were great when we were 12 when we lacked the ability and experience to see how poorly written, scripted and paced it all was through the, at the time, pretty awesome gameplay. Unfortunately, he just doesn't have the talent to match his vision when it comes to directing and that became glaringly obvious in pretty much everything he has done since the PS2 because the hardware is no longer limiting his ability but instead shining a spotlight on the limitations of his ability.
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I agree, the guy is a hack. He evidently has too many yes-men around him ala George Lucas. The weakest parts of his games are the story elements, and I get the feeling those are the parts he is most proud of.
 
Gweenz said:
I agree, the guy is a hack. He evidently has too many yes-men around him ala George Lucas. The weakest parts of his games are the story elements, and I get the feeling those are the parts he is most proud of.
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grifter_66 said:
I think Kojima is an idiot. He is not a good director or a good writer and the only reason he's popular is because he was a visionary during a time when the limitations of the hardware masked his inability to do what he does. His popularity seems to come more from the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia than anything else. The narratives of his games were great when we were 12 when we lacked the ability and experience to see how poorly written, scripted and paced it all was through the, at the time, pretty awesome gameplay. Unfortunately, he just doesn't have the talent to match his vision when it comes to directing and that became glaringly obvious in pretty much everything he has done since the PS2 because the hardware is no longer limiting his ability but instead shining a spotlight on the limitations of his ability.
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Well, luckily it takes all sorts because I love all of his games and he is deserving of his reputation. Every MGS game he has released has pushed game-based story-telling and technology to the limit of what it can do. You can disagree about it all you want, but I am a fan and always will be. Am super excited for Death Stranding and to see what he is capable of without Konami breathing down his neck. To me at 30 years old it's not a rose-tinted glasses situation. I think he is very capable in all facets of game design. I mean shit have you played P.T.? I haven't seen a game hyped like that in a very long time and proves that he can switch gears and is capable in other areas, and MGS 5 was a universally loved action/stealth game that pushed stealth action into territory which I don't see anyone matching for years. To me, he has consistently put out great games and even the reviews reflect that (even though I could care less what others think). I grew up playing his games, and I will continue to. Everybody has different opinions which is great, but I sincerely disagree with both of you.

Also, with someone who has his track-record it would make sense that he has more "yes-men" than not. Go to metacritic and look up any MGS game... they are all about 90 which can't be said about every game developer's portfolio. When Kojima is creative director, producer, writer, director, and is OCD about the level of detail in his games that consistently are welcomed with way more positive reception than negative obviously he is doing something right. Whether you like him or not, he has contributed greatly to gaming and is really a shame that most people can't appreciate that whether you played his games or not, whether you liked his games or not... his influence has touched many many games and developers that you likely did and/or do like.
 
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Lol at the people saying Kojima doesn't know what he's doing. The guy has consistently put out more award winning games than any other developer. He is ranked number 1 in almost any list featuring top video game developers. The man is a living legend in the video game business. I doubt a couple of negative posts in this thread is going to change that.
 
Yeah...MGS4 holds two world records: longest cutscene (27 minutes) and longest cutscene sequence (71 minutes).

Yes, that is over an hour of straight cutscenes.

Maybe Kojima should just work on movies.
 
Highly ironic when Kojima torpedoed his own franchise into the ground in the entire opposite direction after MGS4 with PW and V.

Both of which were bloated, badly paced, shallow games with 89% filler crap. Making it worse you had to chug through it all if you wanted the entire story and much of the actual story was made completely optional.

He needs to get back to the perfect balance of MGS 1-3 of story and gameplay. And keep the extra crap off to the side separate where it doesn't kill the story.
 
It depends how it is done. It would absolutely welcome a game with excellent gameplay but had 3-4 hours of well done cutscenes in it. A game with essentially a mini-series built in to carry a lot of the story.

Quantum Break sort of hits the general idea, but the gameplay itself is decent but not stellar. Same can be said for the live action mini series. And it certainly was not very ambitious story wise; but I suppose we can say the same for most Hollywood movies.
 
This was not at all what I expected. People who don't want to play games watch movies, people who want to play games DO NOT want to watch movies. The people who sit in the middle are not some massive market that is waiting to explode.

Do something interesting like make a game that can smoothly be either or a mix and that would be interesting. I thought he was going to say something like as video game graphics get so good it will be hard to tell the difference between them and movies and the same content used to make movies will also be used to make video games that go with the movies and release at the same time or something.
 
Not surprising coming from this guy. It's why I never bothered with any of his games. Go hardcore like DOOM or go home
 
Witcher 3 was the only game where I truly cared about the story and didn't think blah blah blah! during the cutscenes. Like everything else with that game, the story and dialogue were of the highest quality.
 
Darunion said:
I love a good story in a game but when I start a game and it takes me 15-20minutes before I need to grab a controller, I get bored. Story should be told in bits not huge segments
Click to expand...

I feel the same. Like "Last of Us" which has a long ass intro. Where part of the intro lets you walk around as a little girl, even that bored me cause you couldn't do anything. Long cut scene, walk here to there, another long cut scene. Run here to there, another long cut scene. I think it's like 15-20 mins of essentially doing nothing. A cutscene should be like a commercial. You quickly get some info and you get back to the game.

Another thing I hate is wasting time trying to expand the story. Dragon Age Inquisition is one of them. I literally spent like 45 mins running around from NPC to NPC to talk to them to expand their stories. I would have been fine with that, except they had to space the damn NPCs on different floors and different areas.
 
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