Konami, a well-known Japanese spa manufacturer, yesterday uploaded final versions of Metal Gear Solid V‘s box art. As you might expect, there’s no “Hideo Kojima” in sight.
Previous versions of the cover of MGSV, which comes out September 1, featured both the Kojima Productions logo on the bottom left and the words “A Hideo Kojima Game” above the title.
For comparison, here’s the old version:
This face-slap comes as no surprise to anyone who’s followed the ongoing Kojima-Konami clash, which started with Konami stripping Kojima’s name from various items on their website and has led to rumours that the veteran director will leave the company once his contract is up later this year. Konami also cancelled Kojima’s other announced project, the horror game Silent Hills.
And, hey, you could certainly argue that placing “A Hideo Kojima Game” on top of a title does something a disservice to all the other designers, programmers, producers, artists, sound designers, QA testers, and other developers who dedicated countless hours to the fifth (and presumably final) Metal Gear Solid. Kojima’s name is all over the game anyway. But this is still a bizarre, apparently offensive move.
Comments
19 responses to “It’s Official: No Kojima On Metal Gear Solid V’s Box”
That’s pretty disgusting that they’d stoop so low. If I wasn’t so excited about this game, I’d give it a miss all together.
i feel the same way.
This is actually a pretty common problem in games overall. Developers often don’t get credited if they leave the project before it ships, even if they made a significant contribution.
That sucks.
The same thing happened with L.A. Noire, and there was a huge amount of controversy over it. I remember it well.
What’s the evidence that this wasn’t instigated by Kojima? After all, having his name on would be a no-brainer marketing decision. It wouldn’t make sense that they would do this out of spite.
Hopefully we eventually find out the truth. I really hope Kojima isn’t the one doing this for marketing purposes, he has a crazy mind, but surely not crazy enough to pull a stunt like this.
But I have my pitchfork ready! Who has time to wait for rational explanations?
What will happen to the fox engine in the future?
Konami owns the Fox Engine.
As noted by projared, konami has had a lot of terrible games for a couple of years now, with him commenting that konami only keeps kojima for his talent or they must of had some blackmail on him, but this saga is really about the decline of konami
A “well-known Japanese spa manufacturer”? Am I reading that right? Why would they be posting game covers?
I’m pretty sure he’s just taking poking fun at the fact that Konami barely releases video games any more. Instead, they’re focusing on other business ventures, like health spas…
Not even remotely. As having the name of the respected designer/director (in this case auteur) of the game and it’s series validate these games as made by people at all. There’s games out there where the development studio would be lucky to be mentioned on the front of the box.
I also think it’s kind of akin to a movie having a director’s name prominently displayed, and not the bunch of other vital roles that went into making the film. Same goes with actors etc.; it’s all about marketing.
Well yeah it’s pretty much that. Unlike film, most games haven’t really had that ‘made by Mr. Director’ attribution and so never built up a culture of attracting audiences to their media by their name alone.
MGS has managed this well so-far by being a unique series where Kojima’s style has led to auteur status and indeed makes games by him attractive.
What I originally said was that the addition of his name never ignored the contributions of his dev team, but that the removal of it definitely does.
The removal of the Kojima Productions logo from the box art (we can safely assume that all mention of Kojima & Kojima Productions has been removed from the back cover art and legal information) is more of an insult to the people who worked on the game. Every game publisher gives the development team some sort of credit on the box somewhere, to completely remove that is a dick move to the people who are making the publisher money.
Konami just don’t care. They see current video games as little profit and it was shown by how they basically one day said there would be no more (but reversed it when people complained). Kojima and his team are done at Konami from what we have heard and Konami have taken this as an OK to remove most references in the box art.
Can’t wait for the mission when Snake removes his voice modulator and David Hayter busts out “Kept you waiting, huh?” then calls Miller and they have a long codec conversation about how this was all a Kojima trick and Konami are releasing more games than ever.
Gonna be sweet.
I want to believe
You’re only hurting us in the long run! It’s time to accept!
Thats okay, ill write it in.
I disagree that putting “A Hideo Kojima Game” on top disservices the other people involved, I think games would benefit from being more like films and give stronger individual recognition to their directors (and ideally, result in more diverse AAA games because investment can be made on the strength of a directors reputation rather than the fact that 5 identical games already exist)