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Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots had an extraordinary amount of hype leading up to its launch over the summer, and many would say that the game nearly lived up to it. But its development wasn't easy. Series creator and codirector Hideo Kojima voiced frustration about developing for the new PS3 hardware on several occasions, and the entire undertaking was on a scale much larger than anything Kojima -- or Konami as a whole -- had ever tried before. As a result, MGS4 was the first Metal Gear Solid game to see a delay. We recently spoke with Kojima about the game's tricky development -- what worked, and what didn't. As you'll see, he's surprisingly candid about the mistakes that were made, and he gives a lot of insight into the process of building such a major game. He also talks a bit about what's next, about what's happening with Metal Gear Solid 5...and if he's ready to step aside this time around.
1UP: Every time I talked with you over the past few years, you were always quite stressed because of Metal Gear Solid 4. You now seem a bit more relaxed. How are things going for you now?
Hideo Kojima: Well, members of the team started to take vacations in April, and some people are on vacation for six months, since they worked straight for such a long period of time. Anyway, people are slowly coming back to the office now. As for me, I'm not a "regular team member," I guess you'd say. I was on the MGS4 world tour, and I had a lot of promotional activities surrounding the launch. Now that it's all over, I might take a vacation. But before I take off, I have to prepare a bunch of homework for the staff that's coming back to work -- prepare a bunch of concepts so they'll have work to do.
1UP: Naturally, you have to make compromises with every game. Looking back at Metal Gear Solid 4, were there many features that you left out from the final product?
HK: There were so many things! I won't say that we made a lot of mistakes, but even with MGS2, the last time I created a game for new hardware, I learned to take steps very cautiously. It was new technology, so we had to take things day by day, moving in baby steps. After MGS3, I couldn't really work like that -- I had a lot of business things that I had to take care of and other projects that were dividing my attention. So the point is, with MGS3 this wasn't so difficult -- we were working on the same platform as before, and I could pretty much just let the staff continue doing what they learned working on MGS2.
With MGS4, however, we were once again dealing with new hardware, and it really pushed us. What I regret is that I should have probably concentrated more on the fact that we were working on a new machine. I let the staff work like it had on MGS3, and we came to a point where we had problems, which I should have recognized earlier. I should've paid closer attention to what the staff was doing. Because of this, it was the first time we delayed a major game. This hadn't happened before with an MGS game, and it was all due to those problems.
1UP: The documentary on the Metal Gear Solid 4 Limited Edition shows some of the behind-the- scenes struggles. It captures what usually goes on during development: programmers telling designers they can't execute what's envisioned and you arguing with your technology director. Was harnessing technology your biggest hurdle with MGS4?
HK: The reason I got so frustrated wasn't necessarily about the technology but more about the mentality -- making the impossible possible. If you don't think you can do that, what are you doing making games? If you only do what you think you can do, then you'll work on a normal schedule, using normal technology, and nobody's going to be surprised with the end result. Some of the staff didn't make the big leap that I expected, and that was what I was frustrated with.
1UP: How did the development of MGS4 pan out for you, since over the years you've kept talking about how you want to share more of your responsibilities with other team members?
HK: That was one of the mistakes in the end. Because I thought that leaving things up to the team members and giving them more responsibility was the only way for them to grow, sometimes that sort of sacrifice can be too much, and in this case it was. Nothing good came of giving them more responsibility. I'm not saying the staff were slackers -- definitely not -- they were working really hard. But it was about the decisions they made.
If I were working on the project and I could experiment [with] a lot of things...how shall I put this...if I think the experiment isn't working, I'll change the story or the sequence and basically just take a different route. Making that sort of decision was probably a bigger barrier for the staff than I thought it would be. They sometimes worked really hard while going in the wrong direction -- if I had been in that position, I would have known better and recognized that it wasn't working. But they wouldn't stop -- they'd keep at it. And I should have stepped in to say that it wasn't going to work. That was my mistake, and looking back, I should have done better.
1UP: But with hundreds of people on the team, it's impossible to keep track of everything.
HK: Two hundred people. And yes, that made management very difficult. A lot of key staff that I've worked with have been with me a long time, but working under them were a lot of new people who hadn't worked on a Metal Gear Solid game before, so the whole family grew, and that brought issues with it.
1UP: But now they're pretty much ready for anything, right?
HK: I have to say that I'm really looking forward to seeing the staff come back and to hear all of their new ideas. I'm really excited about that. This year, or next year, they will have tons of experience that they can utilize in MGS5 if they want.
