‘Ignore the systemic problem and there is no systemic problem’ is never sound advice.
No kidding there’s always going to be some games that don’t commit this abuse - but anything with marketing and payroll will be tempted, and damn near all of them will go for it, because the downsides are fucking slim. The market brought us here. The market will not magically get us out of here.
Again, not a Netflix problem. This is becoming the entire industry. More big names are using it than avoiding it. There is almost no cost to adding this greedy bullshit.
Metal Gear on MSX2 was a genre that didn’t exist yet, and which sounded boring when he proposed it. The real Metal Gear 2 built on that in ways that would still be noteworthy features in Metal Gear Solid. Snatcher and Policenauts were little more than visual novels, but they were well-executed. That’s largely thanks to Kojima insisting on artist-driven tools for scripting the exact timing of graphics, text, and music.
Metal Gear Solid fucked with the player by constantly breaking the fourth wall. MGS2 cranked that ten times higher, along with prescient comments on memetics and populist narratives. MGS3 was just polished as hell. MGS4 opens with fake commercials starring the voice actors and only gets weirder from there.
MGS5-- calling back to artist-driven tools, I recommend the article about the game’s rendering engine. They developed a little rectangle you can drop into a screenshot, and then however you adjust the screenshot in Photoshop, copy-pasting that little rectangle back into the game will perfectly match whatever you did. Kojima productions have a certain “just solve the problem” vibe behind a lot of their technical direction. MGS 1-3 had too much focus on the minimap radar, so MGS4 has a holographic ring around your feet. Why? How? Who gives a shit, it’s a video game.
P.T. was a horror game demo set entirely in one hallway. And it was terrifying. And weird. And full of promise. So when Kojima handed that gift to Konami, reviving one of their beloved franchises, with several big names on-board thanks to his weird industry connections… and then Konami booted his ass out the door… people noticed.
Death Stranding is the ultimate illustration of why he became well-known and why he remains well-known. It’s a ridiculous product. It forces comically long sequences that are not technically gameplay. Its writing is completely bonkers and longwinded. But every aspect is deliberate. It is that way, on purpose. A premise that sounds boring becomes interesting because it’s well-executed. Balance and stamina aren’t floating UI elements; they’re represented in your character’s movement, so you keep your eyes on your dude.
Basically, Kojima is the sort of lead who can insist on a ten-minute opening cutscene, thirty seconds of actual gameplay, and then another eight minutes of cutscene, and still have people’s attention.
Classic video game franchise. Realistically it’s not going to adapt any particular game. They’ll sample as they please from any previous works and build up their own version of the story.
It’s not often that any video game company gets to turn 50
In no sense is this company 50 years old. Atari was cleaved in half by Warner 40 years ago. One half was purchased and used for branding, right before the new parent company also went out of business… five separate times. The other half did quite well in arcades until those stopped existing. The absolute latest you could say “Atari” lasted was 2003, when Midway Games West ceased operations.
Even the modern company calling itself Atari, formerly Infogrames, has been in and out of bankruptcy, and no longer owns most of the IPs either brand was known for. This company is that shambling wreck.
This brand is such an L factory that their bold new direction is re-releasing the machine that came in third place behind the NES, basically unmodified, and pretending it’s downright archaic 1970s hardware that was brought low by the technical demands of Pac-Man.
And it’s honestly a good idea.
I’m excited to see how it goes. More companies should do it. But acting like this is a victory lap for a titan of industry is a punchline in itself.