Kojima and Sony

False alarm?

Not so very long ago there was something of a false alarm bell ringing across the industry as the ever trolling head of Kojima Productions, the man himself, decided to have a bit of fun with Twitter. He posted a picture of the Sony Games logo with a bunch of games behind it, totally without context, and just sat back as the denizens of his Twitter followers, well documented to pick apart an analyse anything he'll post from blurry pictures of legos to a list of western books he's currently reading, drove themselves wild coming to the, apparently obvious, conclusion. Clearly KP were preparing their audience for the announcement of the upcoming merger between Kojima Productions and Sony! How presumptuous to- oh wait. The actual tweet was of the PlayStation logo with a collection of PlayStation exclusive titles behind it, and Death Stranding stuck into the corner. Okay, I can see where the confusion is coming from.

Now to be fair, Death Stranding was a PlayStation exclusive title, but it came to PC later. And when I squint at some of the other titles behind this logo, sure most of them are from Sony owned studios (Sony is very cautious about sharing their toys) but there's a couple there that I either can't identify or don't appear to be exclusives at all. There's a sports game I can't exactly pinpoint because ya-know: sports games, am I right? And then there's a medieval looking game which I have no clue abo- oh wait, that's Demon Souls, isn't it? Yep, that's another exclusive from an exclusive studio. So pretty much Death Stranding, and maybe that sports game, are the only two pictures here not from a company in bed with Sony, conclusions were pretty inevitable to draw.

But Kojima is adamant, their studio is independent and will continue to be so for the future; although I have to wonder why that's even a point to belabour. I mean sure, Kojima Productions is independent today; but why are they independent? What is the reason for not signing up to the Sony wagon and becoming their exclusivity pumping machine? This is a genuine question, by the way, I'm not an expert on this particular facet of the industry, and my observations here can be only surface level. On one hand, independence allows Kojima Productions to have full control over what they make, although Kojima has claimed that Sony were hands-off during the development of Death Stranding anyway. The company would be pressured to make their games exclusive to PlayStation, but then Kojima tends to lean that way anyway, as he did with Death Stranding and has done with Metal Gear Solid titles whenever possible. And independence gives Kojima freedom of schedule; which is the only point I can't possibly refute, I suppose.

The relationship between Kojima and Sony reaches back far, to the point where their love affair has made identifying the distinction between them difficult. Who remembers back in Metal Gear Solid 4 (a game still exclusive only to PlayStation, which has not even been ported to PC yet) in which Snake uses a PlayStation controller in order to control an UMG drone? Or the scenes both in that game and MGS 1 where Psycho Mantis speaks specifically about PlayStation hardware and how he can manipulate it with his mind? (Which leads to some very cheesy, but iconic, fourth-wall breaking moments.) Death Stranding was even made with the express help of Sony studios, and was the headliner for their Direct showcase for a couple of years. All this time it's been hard not to see Kojima and his production studio as something of unpaid interns at their offices.

So what this incendiary tweet was likely referring to, if we use the ol' 'extrapolation' parts of our noggins', was probably some sort of upcoming collaboration between the two companies come the next PlayStation showcase, which of course means another round of watching the two lead acts of the romcom frolic around in the montage trying to pretend there's any legitimate 'will they won't they' in this paint-by-numbers script. Once there was a time where the prospect of these two powers joining up would have worried me, but since Sony has started to chill out on the whole 'porting to PC' thing I've lost my personal compunctions. By all means, let the Kojima heads into your web, Sony, I'm pretty sure the Venn diagram of active and excited Kojima fans and PlayStation owners are a circle at this point, the only weirdo outliers are people like me, so I say let the two elope and be done with it.

But of course, Kojima doesn't want to make that official step, because that would threaten to endanger that enigmatic anonymity that he enjoys so. I've never met the man, but from the distance of the internet, he feels like the type to not really appreciate having a boss. He'd rather be the mad scientist on the fringe of the industry, tinkering away on his little passion projects and playing the Wizard behind the TV screen when he wants to. There's a performance to the man that seems integral to his every choice and decision. I mean just look at the whole Bluebox thing with their game Abandoned. For months they were sized up as secret Kojima sleeper agents thanks to their difficulties with communicating to the Internet, and all it would have taken would be for Kojima to tweet out once that he was in no way involved with them, and that suspicion would have had a credible cradle to put the conspiracy to rest in.

I've played Devil's advocate before: 'he's known to lie to his audience here and there and thus his word would only inflame the issue', or 'he didn't want to draw more attention to the issue through addressing it himself and potentially cause more flaming Bluebox's way', but nothing I can conjure holds water. Whenever Kojima has lied he has done it in a comical and see-through way, such that it doesn't seem vindictive, but humorous in hindsight. (Except for the Raiden in MGS2 thing. That was cruel.) And as for drawing attention: this story was the talk of every game's journalist site for half a month, there's no signal boosting that any worse! Which says to me that he just loves the story, he loves the drama, and he won't sacrifice that for his smoke and mirrors stage presence. Even when a single statement could have done a world of good for a studio with terminal foot-in-mouth syndrome. 

Hideo Kojima is the phantom of the opera, a virtuoso recluse who wants the attention yet shuns the spotlight, at least until the stage is set to his exact specification. And there's just something so darn entertaining about a story with no straight answers, now isn't there? I love the show as much as the next fan, I'd be a fool to pretend otherwise; but in that same vein it can be oh so frustrating trying to pin down the man-who-refuses-to-be-categorised. Is he a loyalist or a loner? A showman or a no show? Yet at the end of the day does any of that even matter when he puts out great games? I suppose not. Unless Bluebox ends up getting themselves actually crucified with their genuine inability to convey a straight message; he could have really helped with that one.