Why do people like Hideo Kojima and his games?

[RaikuFA]

*picks up phone* Mr. Kojima, we have a turd in the punchbowl. *hangs up*

Oh, I wasn't doing anything. Anyways, I can't vouch for others, but I think his games are not bad. I love MGS3 and liked 1 and I enjoyed the fight against Fat Man in 2. If anything, Kojima knows how to do bosses. Every boss fight in the MGS series is great.

 

[happyninja42]

Maybe it's the Willy Wonka syndrome. All of his ideas are so batshit insane, that people just become mezemerized by the sheer insanity of it all, and go along, just to see what acid trip happens.

 

[Dragonbums]

I don't really get it either. All of his games seem to have a suferficially reasonable premises but then the plot goes off into bizarro land. They do generally have solid gameplay though, so I can understand the appeal of that aspect. The part that puzzles me is why people think he's some sort of genius auteur.

I think it's because in some of his games despite the plot going off onto weird tangents they tend to do have genuinely heavy and deep moments. Like when you have to kill Boss.
But I'm more of a super layman bystander to Konami games. Not an active participant. So I guess my opinion on the matter means very little.

 

[Laughing Man]

I have no idea, really no idea. I suspect that the love for him is less so that he is a fantastic human being (after all how many of us can say he actually know the guy outside of his games) and more that he is a figurehead that got fucked over by someone that we all find very easy to hate on (Konami). I am sure that in the whole mess that lead up to the end of Konami as a game maker more folk than Kojima got fucked over but we never get to hear about them, we only ever hear of Kojima because he was the guy behind what, in retrospective, turned out to be a series of games that were decidedly average at best and over the top boring bollocks ridden non sense at best.

 

[SweetShark]

I was hype with the Death Stranding trailer of how bonkers it is. This is my honest truth I have. However this is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time:
Good because it is a new IP and it is something unknown to us. Combine this with the crazy/weird/mondf*ck mindset Kojima have, this will be a wild ride!
Bad because the last Metal Gear games was over the top bonkers. MGS4 and MGSP were good, not gonna complain...but the plot man was all over the place!!! The "worst" was MGS4 for the mess of the plot it had. Seriously, it was IMMPOSSIBLE for a casual player to understand what the f*ck happens! Heck, even the fans was dumbfounded with the massive steam of informations and sub-plots they had to follow so they don't get "lost"...

With that said, the first MGS games was very good, especially MGS3: Snake Eater.
MGS3 was perfect for both action and story because the story was actually very interesting by its own and the ending man....OH THE ENDING was perfect!!!

So I hope the new game is good for its gameplay and story. A good bonkers story that it.

 

[SweetShark]

Well, when you say 'his games', you're basically saying all of them. So like, I DO like the original Metal Gear Solid, and I REALLY like the Zone of the Enders games. I like some of the games, not all of them.

Oh man that remind me, I need to find a way to play "snatchers" somehow...
Which version is the best by the way if have plans to play.

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, when you say 'his games', you're basically saying all of them. So like, I DO like the original Metal Gear Solid, and I REALLY like the Zone of the Enders games. I like some of the games, not all of them.

Oh man that remind me, I need to find a way to play "snatchers" somehow...
Which version is the best by the way if have plans to play.

Some would say Sega CD, but I dunno, personally. Never got after that one.

 

[Dragonbums]

Of all the MGS fanbase, how many of those are female? I know of none so far, but could be wrong and may well be. He at least doesn't show any desire to understand.

I agree with you on A LOT of things, but I'm going to have to heavily disagree with this one.

I have two women in my friends group that loves MGS as a whole. Granted they have their heavy criticisms of poorly done female characters like Quiet and they aren't afraid to say Kojima is flawed. But overall they love his work.

It would of been a better argument to pitch that a lot of women who are fans of MGS had major issues with Quiet. Not necessarily his work as a whole.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Of all the MGS fanbase, how many of those are female? I know of none so far, but could be wrong and may well be. He at least doesn't show any desire to understand.

I agree with you on A LOT of things, but I'm going to have to heavily disagree with this one.

I have two women in my friends group that loves MGS as a whole. Granted they have their heavy criticisms of poorly done female characters like Quiet and they aren't afraid to say Kojima is flawed. But overall they love his work.

It would of been a better argument to pitch that a lot of women who are fans of MGS had major issues with Quiet. Not necessarily his work as a whole.

I have to admit, I think I was wrong on the female character quality opinion; it's not that his female character writing is inconvincing, it's both genders that are equally pantomimey, the thing that probably confused me was that the stoic, or dramatically over-compensatory male is something more experienced in reality personally, so it felt more closer to believable than the other, which was a personal misinterpretation now understood and hopefully overcome, sorry about that.

On a slight tangent unrelated to your post, but worth throwing out there as dandelion thought seeds, I think even if he truly intended his characters to be metaphors, that shouldn't be an excuse to sacrifice convincing character scripting, and there are lot of unintentional metaphors to find for anyone imaginative enough. But still, criticism aside, his style is endearing, unique...and he does stealth mechanics damn well, which is my bread and butter of gaming enjoyment! Have been noticing that all of the traditionally non-gaming females I knew who assumed a lot of negative things about games, they have consistently been positively surprised by the existence of (quality) stealth based games. One would like to believe that COD and Mario were not their only points of reference, but never seem to ask at the time.

 

[balladbird]

Wait, what? As opposed to Miyazaki, Fumitory Ueda, Miyamoto, Taro Yoko, and numerous indie devs? Heck, you could even add David Cage to the list. He isn't a good auteur, but he fits the role. There are plenty of talented people working in the industry, and a lot of them are taking more risks then Kojima.

Well, I specifically mentioned AAA gaming when I brought up Kojima. Obviously the indie scene has a metric ton more creative freedom. They also don't have to sell their souls to bottom-line obsessed, amoral publishers in order to budget their games.

All of the peeps you mentioned there are talented, but most of them made niche japanese games, or had their height at a time when game development wasn't nearly as fiscally risky and prone to mediocrity as it has been since the PS3/360 era.

I'll grant you David Cage, though. Dude totally slipped my mind.

 

[GrumbleGrump]

Because he writes animefied versions of war that appeals to people that grew up watching anime. Personally, don't find him all that amazing or revolutionary.

 

[Kae]

I am not sure what experience he has of conversing with tbe opposite sex, but it is far from enough.

I'm not sure what fanservice and some awkward dialogue has to do with talking to women. But he's married.

Being married does not imply good communication. If that were the case, the world would be a marginally better place by now.

I have a feeling talking to women more wouldn't have any big influence on his work, though. Seems irrelevant.

He may appear to write good female characters, but they are basically no more than gender-swapped noble males. Life experience does determine the quality of a creator's work, nothing is irrelevant. Of all the MGS fanbase, how many of those are female? I know of none so far, but could be wrong and may well be. He at least doesn't show any desire to understand.

Could you elaborate on this, because that does not seem to make much sense considering that a huge part of The Boss's character is being a mother or at least a motherly figure despite being a soldier, I fail to see how that is a gender-swapped noble male when the character would be completely different if she was male, as for Eva the way she uses her sexuality would not work in a typical male character, the closest thing would be James Bond and that's actually very different.

Honestly I get that he's not a good writer and his games are weird as hell and in many ways very crude, but you could at the very least acknowledge that he does some things well and while not all of his female characters are good, you can't deny that The Boss is a genuinely good and well written intrinsically female character and if you do at least make some sort of argument as to why instead of just making a general claim.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I am not sure what experience he has of conversing with tbe opposite sex, but it is far from enough.

I'm not sure what fanservice and some awkward dialogue has to do with talking to women. But he's married.

Being married does not imply good communication. If that were the case, the world would be a marginally better place by now.

I have a feeling talking to women more wouldn't have any big influence on his work, though. Seems irrelevant.

He may appear to write good female characters, but they are basically no more than gender-swapped noble males. Life experience does determine the quality of a creator's work, nothing is irrelevant. Of all the MGS fanbase, how many of those are female? I know of none so far, but could be wrong and may well be. He at least doesn't show any desire to understand.

Could you elaborate on this, because that does not seem to make much sense considering that a huge part of The Boss's character is being a mother or at least a motherly figure despite being a soldier, I fail to see how that is a gender-swapped noble male when the character would be completely different if she was male, as for Eva the way she uses her sexuality would not work in a typical male character, the closest thing would be James Bond and that's actually very different.

Honestly I get that he's not a good writer and his games are weird as hell and in many ways very crude, but you could at the very least acknowledge that he does some things well and while not all of his female characters are good, you can't deny that The Boss is a genuinely good and well written intrinsically female character and if you do at least make some sort of argument as to why instead of just making a general claim.

Did you not see my last post then? I have been trying to not imply what you're saying I'm implying. The boss never felt any more convincing than any other character, personally, but it has been a very long while since playing MGS3 which I think was the strongest attempt at characterising her. So maybe I should find a way of replaying that in current existence to re-evaluate with different state of mind. Konami hasn't been playing ball too well recently though which may be barrier to achieving this.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

Explaining it without bringing in examples from a hundred and one other things to make my point clear is practically impossible, and I don't like being a windbag anyway so I'll be as breif as I possibly can, but just know that If I didn't want to sound rambly I'd have written a fucking essay.

People like it because other people think it's weird.

Hear me out. Think about a genre of music you think is shit. Could be country, metal, dubstep, doesn't matter. (Well, doesn't matter unless you're one of those lucky walking sphincters that can like any genre of music.) You dislike the unique flavor of that genre, everybody has preferences, the random lines across your brain that make up your thought pattern simply don't respond to that genre in a way that releases the chemicals you need to enjoy that music.

Same thing with Kojima. He has a unique style of presenting narrative and gameplay that is very hit or miss. Just happened to be a miss when it came to you and hit when it came to so many others.

Now as for you pointing out that Death Stranding is getting recognition just because it has Kojimas name on it. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. It happens. A creator proves himself to be worth his salt to enough people they'll get interested whenever he touches anything. Why do you think so many people went to go see The Hateful Eight? Why do you think so many people are waiting with bated breath for the next ASoIaF? Why am I checking online every month to see if Clutch is gonna release a new album soon?

No matter how many people love the work of an artist, even if they're 99.99% of any given population, there's still gonna be that 0.01%.

 

[Marik2]

WAIT!

Just... just give me a second, okay?

I realise that internet discourse being what it is, especially when games are concerned, this is going to be immediately interpreted as a dig at Kojima or his fans. "Oh man, how can anybody like Kojima games. They're so shit. Only idiots and creepy losers could like that garbage".

However, that's really not what I'm going for here. Now, obviously I'm not a Kojima fan personally. If I was then I would presumably already know why people like him. I'm asking purely out of curiosity.

If anyone cares, this was prompted by the reaction to the Death Stranding trailer. It made no coherent sense and told us absolutely nothing about the game, not even its general genre, but was received with interest purely because it had Kojima's name slapped on it. So what is it that people are looking forward to when they see that name?

Because his games actually take risks and changes throughout the series

He also adds a lot of secret things that are only accessed by experimenting with the gameplay

And for me it is one of the few series where I care about white military guys