Metal Gear....Online...Maybe!
Straight From The GameSpy:
GameSpy: Will we see an online version of Metal Gear Solid sometime in the future?
Kojima: We are completely re-doing the game engine for Metal Gear Solid III, we are not using the MGS2 engine at all. One of the reasons we are doing that is to implement online features. Another project that we have, not that we have begun work on it, is Metal Gear Online. We call it "MGO."
The new engine for MGS3 can be used for MGO as well. We can use the engine for both games.
GameSpy: How would you implement Metal Gear Online? Doesn't every player want to be the one and only Solid Snake?
Kojima: That is a big problem. If we try to do MGO the conventional way, obviously everybody is going to want to be Solid Snake. The thing is that if everybody gets to be Solid Snake, most of the Solid Snakes will be killed in the first minute.
The cool thing is that you get to escape from reality. Everybody wants to be the hero. If you are killed in a minute, you are not a hero. The boy who gets bullied in school, he wants to escape from reality. Then if he gets killed in a minute on MGO, he has no escape from reality.
Technologically we can come up with an MGO, but I am still thinking about how to handle the other questions.
Online games are popular and they will remain popular, but the problem with online games is that you do not know who you are playing against. The anonymity, when you do not know the other people you are playing with or against, you can kick the hell out of them. You will never be nice. You will never spare their lives.
What I want to do is somehow have the player reveal his face or his profile when playing, rather than keeping anonymous. When people go online and reveal themselves, they may be nicer. And when people go online and cannot get along with other people, they will have a hard time because other people will not want to play with them.
When an introvert, there will be other people who will understand him and will accompany him. There may be AI that understands these people really well, so that they can have a good time.
A lot of my staff -- not me, but my staff -- have played Counter-Strike every day for the last few years. Because of that, I cannot join them at this point. They have become such great players. They know much more than me about conventional online games. If we were to decide to make MGO, I would probably leave it to them to create it.
Hideo Kojima Interview
Konami's master game designer talks about the Metal Gear series and where games are going.
By Steven Kent | 5/18/2003
Hideo Kojima may have erupted on to the game scene with the publication of Metal Gear Solid for the original PlayStation, but that was not his first game. Back when he created the original Metal Gear for the MSX computer, he never dreamed that his games would have such a wide audience. Of course, back in 1987, when Konami first released Metal Gear, no one imagined that video games would have the wide audience that they have now.
GameSpy: Zone of the Enders II, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid III: Snake Eater, Boktai ... That's four projects at one time. Have you typically kept to one title at a time?
Kojima: I also had Metal Gear Solid Substance going at the same time, so it was five games. I was in a ****ed mood every day because I was so busy. That never happened in the past.
GameSpy: Now that you have worked on all of three game consoles, which one do you like best?
Kojima: All of the consoles have their strengths and weaknesses, and I really like them in different ways, but I really like the Game Boy Advance. The team doing Boktai has about 10 people. It is like a family and when I say things, my message runs through the entire team immediately. I love the aspect of working with a small group
GameSpy: In an earlier interview, you discussed your disposable game -- the game that players would buy cheap, play as far as they can in one sitting, then throw away. Have you done more work on that game?
Kojima: Boktai falls in the same genre as my disposable game in the sense that it is one of my wild ideas. Boktai is possible because of the technology of the solar sensor. Until the technology became available and cheap enough, I would not have been able to create the game.
With the disposable game, if we can come up with some kind of substance that will disintegrates or a disc that shatters once you reach game over, when we can find that kind of technology at a reasonable price, then I will work on the disposable game.
GameSpy: Do you have any other wild ideas that you are planning to work on in the near future?
Kojima: Yes. I have a lot of them that I cannot talk about.
GameSpy: The E3 trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater is very funny. Will the game have the same sense of humor?
Kojima: The references to Grand Theft Auto will not be in the game. We made that especially for the trailer. However, the game will have a lot of humor in it, like my previous Metal Gear games.
Metal Gear is a stealth and infiltration game. You are always under this maximum stress thinking that you might be caught at any moment. When you are under this pressure for too long, it starts to get tiring. That is why I throw in the funny things every now and then.
GameSpy: Any chance of a Metal Gear movie coming out soon?
Kojima: We do get a lot of offers. I think that there is a very great possibility given the interest.
GameSpy: Would you like to work on the movie or would you turn it over to somebody else?
Kojima: For me, the best way to create and express this thing called Metal Gear Solid with its storyline and characters is in a video game. I have no interest in turning it into a movie myself.
I personally am a film lover. I love movies and I did want to be a film director at one point. I would not mind seeing this film with whole new characters and a new storyline created for the film.
GameSpy: What is ahead for games?
Kojima: Mr. Miyamoto, not that he is the father of video games, has come up with so many new things like completing a level and maybe you collect 100 coins ... all of these elements Mr. Miyamoto has come up with over the past 20 years ...
And the Western video game designers, they're the ones with the interesting technologies. They know how to use the hardware and they are very imaginative. And they are artistic. But sometimes, because they are so artistic, they forget what games should feel like, that games need to feel right and they need to play well. It's like serving food in a restaurant. You need to be sensitive to the customer. You need to be nice and providing service. Maybe that was lacking in the western games, and that was what Mr. Miyamoto was so great at doing.
Obviously there were some great western games. Many of the games were great in one aspect but overall were not great to play because they did not feel right. That was in the eighties. But then in the nineties, there were video game creators who grew up playing Japanese games. As a result there are people like Mark Cerny who came out with Crash Bandicoot that had the Japanese touch while retaining the strength of the western designers.
The western games of the nineties were very focused on creating the rules for the player. Going into the 21st century, games like Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor are not about creating rules at all. What they did was create a reality, a very realistic world in which there are no rules. The pursuit of reality is what they are going for and people enjoy that.
We can no longer say that games are a Japanese thing. We cannot say that anymore.
As game technology advances, eventually what we shall see is digital stuff that is so real that you actually believe you are touching it or smelling it. But no matter how realistic the images become, the player will still know that he is just seeing a bunch of numbers, a bunch of math. No matter how realistic you can make game graphics, they are not real. An explosion that looks realistic is not a real explosion.
What we will want in the future is actual tangible things that are linked to the digital world. In the future, there will be a fusion of the digital stuff and actual tangible objects and an online element.
Up until a few years ago, video games were the thing for kids in Japan. Then came Bey Blade, then came Yu-Gi-Oh! and the card games. These things were tangible, and they became very popular among the Japanese kids a few years ago. The thing that vide games lack and these things have is tangibility.
