Back to talk more about my brain. I was going to expand on my premise, but after rereading my last post about Kojima, I decided to elaorate a bit more on the last bit. I read that he’s desputing that he was missing deadlines and going over budget, but I take what he says with a grain of salt. Other people are saying that all big budget games go over budget and miss deadlines. I would not be surprised if this was true, but how does that excuse him from doing it? “Everyone else is doing it, Mom!” has not ever been and still is not an acceptable excuse.
And, call it a hunch, but I bet Kojima misses deadlines by more and goes over budget by more as well. In addition, he’s the one in charge so the buck stops with him. If you’re going to get the accolades for being the auteur who is also a visionary, then you have to deal with the blowback of missing deadlines and going over budget.
Look. I am not one to take the side of a corpo over–well, just about anyone. However, in this case, there’s enough blame to go around. I don’t doubt that Sonyy is looking to cut their losses after hemorrhaging money over their ill-conceived idea of being ALL LIVE SERVICE GAMES ALL THE TIME. In addition, they’ve decided, weirdly, not to port their games to the PC. I know they did not make a ton of money on their ports, but it brought their best games to a whole different crowd. And, I think if they did it steadily and consistently, they would have seen a significant increase in their sales.
For whatever reason*, they have chosen live service games over everything else. Even though their last big live service game (Concord (Firewalk Studios, who got shut down because of the fiasco)) was an utter disaster.
So, yeah. Sony’s panic is of their own making, completely. Let’s add to that the fact that they shot themselves squarely in the foot with their stance on physical copies of their games, including the fact that they chided their customervs fdor being naive/not smart enough to realize that, duh, of course they don’t really own anything digitally. This as they’ve taken away movies from their shelves long after customers have bought digital copies of said movies and are SOL.
In other words, they are owning their own goals so hard right about now. The last thing they need is (in their eyes) a high-strung, nervy auteur who is not meeting the demands goalposts they were setting.
I’m not saying Sony is blameless–far from it. I’m just saying that it’s not outrageous that they would cut the cord with
Well, my sleep has been aaaaalllll over the map, and I was struggling to stay awake for hours when I was writing this. I finally gave in and went to bed, so this is me writing the next day.
Kojima. I have thought for some time that the clout he has outweighs his actual output. I’m not going to say talent because I am not the judge of that. But I will say that he’s been given a lot of leeway, and in that time, he’s followed the same path he did in the past. It’s been eleven years since Jonami dropped Kojima. In that time, he’s made–you know what? That doesn’t matter, really. I was going to say how many games he’s made since he was fired by Konami (versus how many Miyazaki has made), but that’s not a fair comparison in the least. Miyazaki has enough employees that he has three or more dev teams going at the same time.
I actually think that’s one of the reasons that Miyazaki isn’t called an auteur–because he and his teams get games out at an astonishingly pace. Since he dropped Elden Ring in…2022? Is that right? Yes. February of ’22, FromSoft has also released Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, Shadow of the Erdtree (DLC for ER); Elden Ring Nightreign; the Tarnished DLC for ER (ehhhhhhhhhhhh it is being generous to call it DLC); and The Duskbloods is coming out soon, too.
Let’s be real. Of those that have already been released, only AC VI and SotE are full games. But, if we want to go back to 2016, we have Dark Souls III and the two DLCs, the latter of which was super-meaty. We also have Sekiro. All of these are quality games in different genres that were all critically acclaimed.
I’m just bemused as to why Kojima and Miyazaki are treated in very different manners. They are both venerated, yes, but in different ways. I do think it’s in part because Kojima has a Big Personality and makes his presence known. Miyazaki, on the other hand, is pretty chill. More than that, he seems to be very shy. He rarely does interviews, and when he does, he’s careful to not say anything controversial. Kojima, on the other hand, thrives on controversy. When he’s not sowing it, he’s reaping it. Sometimes, he does both at the same time.
There’s very little pretentiousness about Miyazaki, whereas Kojima built his brand on pretention. And creativity. I want to give him his due credit. He is hailed as a genius, which is partly why it was such a shock that Sony cut ties with him. To games journalists and content creators, at any rate.
I started these posts to point out taht me being neurospicy is probably the reason that I don’t get drawn into things based on societal norms. I can see things as they really are, even if I’ve been masking for most of my life. I’m usually off when it comes to gen pop opinions, but when it’s diametrically opposite is when I think, “Hm. How can I be this wrong about something?” And that’s when I’m usually the one who is right.
It’s because I can strip away the societal expectation bullshit (or not see it in the first place) and see things as they really are. Without any copeium or rose-colored glasses attached. Which is why there is never going to be a Bloodborne sequel. Which, by the way, is another way in which Miyazak is treated differently. I sussed out a while ago that he did not like doing sequels. He has said that BB is as close to a perfect game as possible (I think? I remember reading that, but who knows if he actually said it?), so there’s no reason to think he’s going to make a sequel.
And, I realized that Sony did not want to piss him off by giving BB to another developer to do a sequel, especially after Miyazaki was not pleased with the Demon’s Souls remake. In fact, Shuhei Yoshida pretty much confirmed it (though carefully stated) in an interview after he left Sony. And yet, people still wonder about it and hope that there will be a sequel.
Am I saying there will never be a sequel? No. One day, the call of the BB dollars may be too much for Sony to resist, but for now, they’re not going to rattle the cage of their golden goose.
*It’s complicated, but I can boil it down very broadly to the fact that they are a Japanese company who sells very well in their home country. They don’t fdeel the need to make inroads into other markets, including the PC market. That’s the very short and sanitized version.