Speaking at the “Il Cinema in Piazza” Film Festival in Italy (translated by Genki), the Death Stranding and Metal Gear director said that at least with digital games, users have the data on their systems, something that isn’t the case with cloud gaming.
“Since production is ending in 2028, this is about video games, but I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad,” he said. “Currently, I’ve been buying up a lot of Blu-rays, such as various movies, and CDs too.
“The situation is different for games [than movies], as they are downloaded to the hard drive, that means the game data remains on your own hardware. However, if things shift to streaming in the future, that won’t be the case anymore.”
The same Koijima thar was doing a game for Stadia?
He pitched it, it was approved, he started working on it.
Then he received pressure to make it multiplayer (presumably to add microtransactions). He refused, so the game was canceled.
Yes, that Kojima. The same Kojima who never sold you a microtransaction, weapon skin, season pass, or even a paid DLC. The same Kojima who never compromised his artistic vision for a payday, the same Kojima who never bowed to studio pressure to make his game “more accessible” or “more marketable”. The very same Kojima who had to be forcefully removed from his own studio before he’d allow Konami to have a say in his creative process; yes, him. That’s the Kojima you’re referring to.
You could release DRM free copies that users can copy to any form of media they like. If you are using DRM and complaining about this I have no respect for you.
So you’d rather live in a world without Metal Gear Solid, Zone of the Enders, or Death Stranding?
There’s no way Konami or Sony are going to let that fly. Should Kojima have died on the DRM hill on principal instead releasing his art to the world the way he did?
I don’t disagree with you but I also have to assume there are contracts / stipulations in place that prevent a publisher from doing this after sony/microslop/Nintendo agree to sell digital / physical copies if your game.
At the end of the day discs are not the important part consumer protection and the right of first sale in the digital space just need to be created to fix this mess. I also wonder if the Tariff tomfullery was a factor as they couldn’t have any consistency of cost and profit like before.
the right of first sale in the digital space just need to be created to fix this mess
That sounds nice at first, but if you think about it, the logical conclusion is that: rather than an artist making a sale per person who wants to experience their work, they would make sales proportional to the maximum number of simultaneous viewers. With digital ownership, it would be trivial to instantly transfer ownership, so the moment someone is done playing a game or watching a movie, they’ll sell it instantly to someone else.
The only content that could benefit in such an economy is low production value slop that seeks to go instantly viral and issue licenses while there’s still demand. Then by the time it dies down they’re on to their next slop hit. That and live-service titles that try to keep people holding their licenses. Short single-player experiences, and games from small creators who rely on passive income from a few new people finding their game over time would sell a few copies at first, and then the licenses out there would just always undercut the purchase of any new license.
Also the exchanges would make a bunch of money by taking a cut of each sale. Which is arguably better than just Sony or Valve taking their cut.
I don’t like it either, but we can’t act like right of first sale for digital licenses would solve all problems and not create any new ones.
I haven’t bought a console in over a decade, but I was under the impression that most/all “physical” copies these days were little more then digital download codes on discs or in cases. How many actually hold the whole game, enough to qualify as “owning” it?
All of them contain the entire game. The only functional difference over the early days is that the game data isn’t read from disc while you play.
Most discs still contain the full game, most physical releases contain discs of the full game
Some physical releases are just an empty case with a code. Some Nintendo Switch cartridges are just license dongles for the game download.
You’ve never owned a game. You’ve only ever licensed a game. This is true for all software. Removing the physical medium of distribution just allows the copyright cartel the control it has always wanted over something you paid for. But they have been hoodwinking consumers over what “purchase” and “buy” and “own” mean. Technically speaking, any game company could send you a C&D and tell you to stop playing their game forever, your license is revoked, and if you ever played it again they could sue for damages. Doubtful they would, as I doubt it would be worth their time; but this does mean they have the right to just decide their work is no longer available and vanish all digital copies; and they could also make all physical discs stop working through system software updates.
Exactly. The only reason physical media has seemed like “owning” is because the mechanism to actually enforce their license has not been feasible.
You know how often movies or shows flip off on streaming services? That’s the future of games if the laws don’t change
Sorry to kind of ignore your question, but I think it misses the point.
Even with only the partial game data on the disc, the disc still held the rights to the game. Therefore, the rights were transferrable. That is to say, you could still sell your disc and it would have value to the next owner.
When you are forced to buy the game directly from the PlayStation store, your game license is no longer transferable. You can’t sell your old games, and you can’t buy used games from someone else.
Not true for the majority of games, however there have been a few that have done this or something like this.
Been seeing this sentiment a lot in the wake of the news and want to stress, most games still come on disc these days. FF7 Rebirth, for example, is so big it comes on two.
God I wish his games were better.
I’ve tried to get into them many times, and usually I find the experience to be soooo lacking.
It’s sad cause when he does get it right, the game can be really good, but he focuses too much on things he thinks everyone wants, like very long cut scenes.
Kojima originally wanted to be a filmmaker. When he couldn’t break into the industry, he switched over to making video games.
Have you tried the death stranding series? I just finished 2 yesterday. It was fantastic. In both, you can tailor your experience - skip cut scenes, drop difficulty to ‘story’ for frustrating fights, etc. But those games tell a story in a way only video games can. And all the little flourishes that emotionally connect you to your character, like rocking the controller to sooth the baby sealed in your chest pod, are so charming and affecting.
Taste issue
As someone who loves Kojima games and has since MGS1, not wanting multiple hour-long cut scenes in an action game is a perfectly reasonable preference. Even diehard Kojima fans acknowledge he’s long-winded with his storytelling and his pacing is glacial; it’s practically part of his style at this point.
Skill issue
More like a patience issue.
I just don’t have the time to invest in something that I don’t find fun for the sake of it getting fun later.
If you don’t like the long cinematics just skip them. Problem solved.
Oh, you think that solves the problem? Go play MGS4 or Death Stranding. Skip every cutscene, then come back and tell me what happened in the story.
But I play games to enjoy the story, the art of game making is about telling a story in an interactive way.
To be fair it does work out sometimes. I found metal gear rising revengence to be an amazing game. So that’s what I do with his games, try them hoping to hit a home run. My original comment was about wishing it was more likely.
Said the guy who released a horror game teaser then took it off the store…
Death stranding sits at about 10k votes to bring to gog.com but nah. Gotta have that DRM.
But nice try Kojima. You almost got me.
I’ll call bull on the game removal front. Pretty sure that was Konami being shitsticks when they had the falling out.
You are spot on the GoG front though. If he really cared about ownership he would of put it on the storefront and not hid behind the DRM.
Fair enough. Apparently that was 12 years ago already. Damn, where did the years go?
But yeah Kojima is just doing cheap lip service here. He never cared about game preservation at all. Sorry for the people here that worship him like a god but he never chose game preservation when he actually did have full reign.
It’s a teaser for a game that never came out, I’m pretty sure he had complications with studios. What’s the point of keeping a short demo of a game that was canceled?
P.T. was the announcement teaser that Kojima was to be directing Silent Hills with del Toro but then Konami cancelled it as the company exited the video game industry and Kojima left to found his own studio.
Why blame Kojima for something Konami did without their involvement at all and long after they’d left the company?
Kojima is a they?
Everyone is a they. It’s been a singular third person pronoun since the 1300s.
The demo is really fucking good and consoles that still have it installed go for a high price. There is demand for it.
What‘s the point of keeping a good game, you ask? Are you serious?
He took it off the store? I thought it was the company, after he was fired.
Complete fucking bullshit. Konami literally did that and caused a break with Kojima because of it
