Mon, Mar 11, 2013 | 23:04 GMT
Kojima: episodic content could reduce next-gen dev costs
Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima believes episodic releases could help developers and publishers cope with potentially staggering costs of next-generation development.
EDGE asked Kojima whether he expected next-generation development costs to rise, a subject of debate in the weeks since the PlayStation 4′s reveal. The designer suggested they certainly could.
“A very deep, 20-30 hour game might need a bigger team and take three or four years,” he said.
However, Kojima also said that while “it’s possible to make many things more realistic”, “that doesn’t mean you should”.
“You have to prioritise, and that is what’s going to separate the teams that succeed from the teams that don’t.”
He also suggested a compromise solution, allowing developers to try out new ideas without running the risk of wasting an enormous triple-A budget.
“Something similar to a TV series, where you can use pilot episodes to test the waters before you jump completely into the project,” he said.
“It can be distributed via download channels, so the player can try it out before production continues. Something like that wouldn’t take that long to create, maybe a year, and if it’s successful, you can continue.”
Kojima seems to believe the coming generation will be characterised by this kind of communication between content creators and consumers, rather than the current model of developing almost in a vacuum then launching a game to sink or swim.
“I think there’ll be a social aspect to game creation, because it will be more interactive. You’ll get user feedback, and I think there’ll be this back-and-forth between users and creators,” he said.
Kojima is currently working on Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes for current-generation platforms. The game is to be shown at GDC.
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Posted in: Development, PS4
Tags: Durango, hideo kojima
10 comments
#1
woe
11/03/13, 11:10 pm
Captain Obvious to the rescue!
#2
TMRNetShark
11/03/13, 11:25 pm
I will interject to say that I have never played The Walking Dead… but there were what? Five episodes and by the time everything was released, the game is only $25? As someone who was interested by the game but never bought any of them because episodic content didn’t turn me on at the time, but $25 now for what is basically a full game is awesome. In fairness to Kojima though, I don’t think the Walking Dead is comparable to a game like MGS. XD
#3
YoungZer0
11/03/13, 11:34 pm
Definitely not. No chance in hell is he able to create a game like that.
#4
SplatteredHouse
11/03/13, 11:38 pm
A Pilot Season equivalent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_Season_%28comics%29) for video games could produce very interesting results!
It could be great if they held the reveal in the time shortly after Christmas, and just prior to E3, the titles were announced, and people could speculate about what these new concepts could be after they were introduced. Maybe there could even be user voting, like that version, too.
#5
DrDamn
11/03/13, 11:47 pm
A game where Episode 1 is pure cut scene…
#6
ps3fanboy
11/03/13, 11:59 pm
im not interested in episodic content so i also see my cost on games reduced in the future by not buying them…
#7
nollie4545
12/03/13, 12:15 am
Episodic content, strikes me as a bad idea for consumers. I actually Lol’ed my cock off because Metal gear games roll off the conveyor belt so continually it might as well have been episodic. What are we on now, metal gear 27 or something. Originality out the window in favor of profit raping.
Would be hilarious if Devs started episodic content in a big way only to release crap games; people would stop buying after episode one and so save themselves a fortune rather than be forced to spend 40 big ones on a whole game which was shit.
#8
Bashtee
12/03/13, 6:22 am
I’m against episodic content, because of this “Pilot Episode” concept. There may have been an episode you really enjoyed, but you will never know how it ends, because the sales sucked.
Example: SiN Episodes. There never was a second one.
Of course there is also Telltale Games, but even here there was a big gap between certain episodes.
#9
Dragon246
12/03/13, 6:28 am
Good concept and has great potential to succeed imo.
Waiting for the pilot episode containing only one word-
SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!
#10
manamana
12/03/13, 7:57 am
What is it, that everytime I read “Episodic content”, I think of the missing HL Episode 3?