When Hideo Kojima dies, his brain needs to be dismantled and preserved by science to shore up global stockpiles of the Weird and the Crazy. Speaking in an interview filmed as part of the Critical Path project, Kojima has let it be known that videogames shouldn't try to tell stories. They should create environments and characters which foster certain kinds of action, instead. All well and good - but this is the guy who designed Metal Gear Solid 4, a game with hour-long cutscenes. Not exactly practising what you preach, then?
"It's very difficult to implement a storyline into an interactive game," Kojima observed. "I actually think we shouldn't do that. I am not trying to tell a story." Sorry Kojima, we'll need to shoot that part again once I've changed the camera. Next time, keep your head turned to one side - that way, your extending nose won't shatter the lens.
Finally: "within that environment I want the players to not only have a fun and exhilarating experience, but also think about many different things. That's my concept."
In fairness, Kojima only seems half-deranged here - the Metal Gear games are tremendously engaging studies in environmental coaxing, with all sorts of little cues to nudge you from A to B. But then you reach B and the exposition commences in earnest. It's a wonder the man ever managed before the advent of DVD.
Do skim the Critical Path project if you've missed it. Plenty of fascinating snippets there from some bigshot developers. Cheers, BeefJack.
8 comments so far...
Clanger67 on 24 Jul '12 said:
Wow bit weird,lol.I myself am all for story in games,who isn't ?.It's no great suprise that most gamers read and watch films all for the story.
sonicmark on 24 Jul '12 said:
And porn, don't forget porn
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But seriously, is this another way of saying that games need to be imitate the highly popular shooters more?
Plamsa wing on 24 Jul '12 said:
Perhaps the sudden change of nice weather has done something to me, but that didn't really make alot of sense.
If it wasn't for the story I would never have played games like KotoR or Mass Effect. Look at Mass Effect, if you stripped it of it's story you'd be left mediocre gameplay at best.
Look at Bioshock even, sure the gameplay was nice, but for me the best part was it's story. Take that away you'll be left with another FPS with "magic".
It's fine for games like Battlefield 3 where the story is very boring and not much of an effort, but RPG's? Don't say that I like the idea of an actual video game story.
For someone like me who just isn't very good at multiplayer but great against AI, the story is what I like to base most games on.
Bezza89 on 24 Jul '12 said:
I can only think he is lost in translation as he doesn't speak english (much) and probably means he'd rather have players being integrated with game, invested, rather than having a story just told to you - he's probably also saying this regarding his next venture rather than his past ones as we all know he'd be telling porkies if translated verbatim.
Clanger67 on 24 Jul '12 said:
sonicmark on 24 Jul '12 said:
There's always a story in porn, like the one where the teacher orders her student to buckle down and sort her grades out
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msbhvn on 24 Jul '12 said:
What I think he means is you can't just tell a story, there has to be gameplay rather than a movie where you just press a button once in a while... Wait a minute....
Are you sure you didn't press stop and that was Grange Hill?
YoungTobias on 26 Jul '12 said:
Yes, Kojima isn't known for lying or trolling like this. It has to have been poor translation, because games have been telling involving stories since long before Metal Gear - hell, look at some of his other major projects (Snatcher, ZOE) and you can tell that he's one of the leading advocates of story-driven gaming. He likely meant the story shouldn't be prescriptive or forced onto the player at the expense of gameplay, which is arguably where MGS4 made a misstep.