Kojima knows his audience. In an article called, “MGS4 makes last stand against Casual Gaming” (oh, that word!), Kojima laments the end of the Cinema Era. “The example is Hollywood not doing high-budget movies,” says Kojima. “They do horror movies or comedies instead, which are less expensive. There are a lot of talented people in the industry,” says the man. “I want to return the power to developers. I don’t want them making Brain Age games.” Kojima has spoken like a true hardcore.
My first article on the net was the “Theory of Cycles” which first described the waning cinema age and how the upcoming cycle would be Social/Interface Gaming. Back when it was written (2006), there was no difference between gaming and cinema, people were writing about gaming as if there was no difference between that and the movie model. Today, more and more people are writing about gaming as if there is no difference between gaming and social. It shows the change that has been made in the last couple of years.
How strange it is that, in that article, I only see sense coming from the director of Bioshock, Kevin Levine (also quoted in “Birdman” about the ‘gateway drugs’ that leads to upstreaming), who says: “Japanese game development has gone stagnant. They’re trying to reach a hardcore market in Japan that is actually shrinking, and part of the reason is that they’ve been making the same game for so long – Japanese RPGs – the audience is getting tired of it.”
Levine is correct. The fault, dear industry, is not in the market but in ourselves. He accurately blames the developers. Why? Because they are hardcore. They only want to make games for themselves.
You might ask, “Well, Malstrom, what is wrong with that?” How many jobs do you get to do what you want to please yourself? Show business knows they must please their audience. Engineers certainly don’t have the luxury to work on what they ‘want’. Writers have to write what will sell if they ever want to make any money. Even business owners know they have to please the market. They would be declared mad if they demanded that the market buy whatever they produce.
But the hardcore are made of finer clay than the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us mortal beings, hardcore are angel like floating above the rest of the mainstream. On their current path, it is like movie directors who insist that their movie be made as a vehicle for their own ideological fantasies and to hell what the market thinks. When such movies bomb (as they do because you can’t tell the market how to behave), they just declare the mainstream ‘too stupid’ and continue right on content to be a niche. They will elevate their niche by saying, “We make art. Not common trash.”
The difference between the old school developers and these newer hardcore ones is quite astonishing. The old school developers instantly understand the changes occurring while the hardcore developers, when feeling it, despise it. Old school developers are graced with gratitude that they get to make games for a living instead of having ‘a real job’. Hardcore developers are arrogant and condescending that they actually have to tweak their games to what the market wants! How dare that market no longer want their hardcore games! The market is just a bunch of idiots who do not know True Gaming and do not know True Art. Calling them ‘idiots’ and their perceived ‘idiot games’ as trash will not fly well so they refer to it all as casual games (say it with a sneer).
The hardcore developers have this attitude of entitlement while the old school developers overflow with humility. They know it is a different world when you are making games from your garage when you have no real job or career versus the current ‘industry’ model of today. If you spent many, many years in your garage and barely keeping your head above water, you’d be pretty damn humble too.
Now let’s move forward to the Hardcore-gasm. Kojima was in New York to promote the launch of Metal Gear Solid 4. This story comes off as an unintentional parody of the hardcore.
1) This quote: “It’s a rare opportunity,” a hardcore said. “The game’s dramatic, like a movie — not just your simple Tetris or Mario type of game.”
2) He’d been waiting since 7 p.m. the night before, over 30 hours, for his chance to meet the master.
3) The hilarious pictures.
4) The hardcore, when asked why they are standing in line by everyone (who wonder WTF is going on with these youngsters), the hardcore are either ashamed or unwilling to admit they are in line for a videogame director. The quote: “We’ve been asked at least 70 times what we’re in line for,” said one of the fans. Passing the time, they started making up the most outlandish answers for passers-by: Cher tickets. American Idol auditions. I don’t think it was to ‘pass the time’. Cher tickets and American Idol auditions do not make people look at you like a freak as would replying, “We are in line to meet a video game director from Japan! He made Metal Gear Solid 4, the bestest of games! OMG! I can’t wait to play it! It is SOOOO cool!”
5) When Kohler talks to the cuisine guy, this great line: I struggled to somehow make this relevant. “A video game director. From Japan.” If gaming was mainstream, Kohler obviously wouldn’t have to struggle. It illustrates how we have to work hard to communicate the behavior since hardcore is a strange alien sub-culture that normal people cannot relate to.
6) Just at this moment, a customer walked up, shoving his food container back. “What is this? This is supposed to be chicken and lamb and rice. I can barely see the rice. I could go to the Chinese food place and get this for three bucks.” This line has no place in the article yet it fits so well because this is how hardcore act. They will take their games back, shoving it at the game clerk, and demand, “You call this a next generation game? I can see some jaggies! What scam are you trying to pull!?”
7) “No handshakes,” a staffer said as the fans took their newly-purchased copies of Metal Gear Solid 4. It’s understandable. Tonight’s launch is just the first stop on Kojima’s whirlwind world tour — he’ll be in San Francisco this weekend, for starters — and shaking literally thousands of hands is the least hygienic thing this side of, I don’t know, sitting on a New York City street for 30 hours. Hardcore are not hygienic.
While I doubt Kohler made an underground humor piece on the hardcore, it certainly reads that way to me. This stuff is gold.