Tag Archives: Ryan Payton

Camouflaj and Logan Games have passed their $500,000 Kickstarter target for iOS stealth survival game Republique.

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With just 65 hours and over $200,000 to go, former Halo designer Ryan Payton maintains Camouflaj did the right thing in asking for half a million bucks to Kickstart République.

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343 Industries creative director Ryan Payton has left the Halo developer to begin a new studio called Camouflaj.

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Ex-Metal Gear 4 associate producer Ryan Payton – and all his hats – has been confirmed as a hire to the internal Microsoft Halo team by Phil Spencer, Edge reports.

Spencer’s also confirmed that Corrine Yu, formerly of Gearbox Software, and her husband, former id artist Kenneth Scott are definitely on the crew.

The exec said in a statement, “Microsoft Game Studios is thrilled to have such talented people working to develop new and exciting projects within the Halo universe and supporting existing projects from studios like Bungie and Ensemble.”

More through the link.

Both Kotaku and Shacknews are rumouring that MGS4 producer Ryan Payton has been signed as creative director on Halo Chronicles, the Peter Jackson-developed Halo title.

Payton recently left Kojima Productions to return to the US, citing family issues.

Hit the links for more.

MGS4 assistant producer Ryan Payton’s spilled a pretty big can of beans in this 1UP interview, saying that the MGS trilogy on PS2 was never meant to be continued.

“The stories of MGS2 and MGS3 were truly written without any backup measures if the series continued, leaving dozens of confusing and unexplained plot elements in the wake,” he told the site.

“The fact that we were able to tie up all the loose ends with MGS4 was nothing short of a miracle.”

Payton left Kojima Productions after the launch of MGS4, citing family reasons.

Heaps more through there. Even on a cursory glance, it appears to contain a huge amount of spoilers, so be warned.

Ryan Payton, formerly of Kojima Productions, now unemployed in Seattle, thinks the sun is setting on high-end game development in The Land Of The Rising Sun.

“The Japanese public seems to be disinterested in next-gen and high definition gaming,” he told Kotaku. “There is a stigma still attached to western technology there.”

“There have been a lot of good mainstream games built for the Japanese Xbox 360,” he continued. “But they only sold a small number of copies. I think that kind of drained a lot of expectations.”

Most telling, however, are the panicked reactions of those who hedged their bets on “next-gen” gaming.

“It’s apparent, everyone knows it in Japan,” he said. “The developers here feel the pressure. They’re starting to develop more with the West in mind and the tech is in the West now. I’m surprised at how many titles have been produced on the Unreal 3 Engine.”

More poignant commentary, along something about hobos, through the link.

By Nathan Grayson

According to this Kotaku post, Metal Gear assistant producer Ryan Payton has quit Kojima Productions, citing family reasons.

“Back when I joined Kojima Productions in 2005, I hit the ground running and didn’t stop until we shipped Metal Gear Solid 4,” he said. “Then, for the first time in three years, I wasn’t working on any games and I had a three month vacation ahead of me.

“I went back home to my family’s place in Washington state and literally three weeks after MGS4 launched we were hit with some pretty heavy news concerning my mom. I don’t think I need to go into details, but all of this has reminded me about how important family is. So this past month I decided to leave Kojima Productions and look to continue my career working closer to my family in North America.

“It’s not easy leaving my other family (the MGS team), but with everybody taking time off and not having any other big projects to shift focus to, it feels like this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s fate.”

And yes, he does mention MGS5 over there. We salute you, Ryan. Best of luck.

Speaking to 1UP, MGS4 associate producer Ryan Payton has admitted that running up to the game’s launch was more than a little taxing.

“It’s all kind of a blur,” he said. “I tell people who visited us at the Nasu Boot Camp event back in March that I don’t really remember much about it because I was so tired. There were so many things going on in my head. I had a huge 100-item list that I knew I had to take care of before the game launched. Things I had to check and things I had to fix. I was in a hazy state.”

Payton added that an intense launch period is par for the course, and gave a nice insight into what happens at Kojima Productions when the shit hits the fan.

“A day in the life… when you’re in crunch time, at least in Japan, you sleep when you can. I’m lucky enough that I live close to the studio where I can sleep for a few hours, get a shower, and come back and feel semienergized, whereas a lot of the other guys don’t have that luxury. Really, it’s about squeezing every minute you can to keep checking the game.

“One tradition we have is that we all run to the convenience store for lunch. No more of these one-hour breaks. During crunch time we’re going downstairs to 7-Eleven, and all you see is the Kojima Productions staff doing the same thing – grabbing onigiri, maybe a sandwich, and taking it upstairs. The same thing goes for dinner. That’s what crunch time is like — you put every single minute you have into the game.”

Worth a read.

MGS4 producer Ryan Payton’s sent an email to Kotaku explaining in a fair bit of detail the review restriction placed on US reviewers of the game.

From the note:

We asked reviewers to avoid the following topics:

-Install times
-Length of cutscenes (the ending in particular)
-Number of environments
-Opening “movie”
-Product placement
-(Plus a half dozen story-specific items)

The game requires an eight minute install, as well as a number of two to three-minute installs between acts.

As for the cutscenes, reviewers are more than happy to comment on whether they’re too long or short. We simply want reviewers to refrain from describing which scenes are long, thus spoiling some of the experience because players will know what to expect when a scene is unfolding.

I want to make it clear that, from today, reviewers are welcome to discuss the length of the cutscenes and install times, but we ask that they not get too specific about the cinematic times and what happens in later install sequences…

Well worth reading. It does clarify a lot of the issues that blew up surrounding this last week.

According to this, MGS4 will only include one language per region because of disc space.

“Unfortunately because of disc space, we don’t have the space to include other languages, other voice over files for the respective versions,” said producer Ryan Payton. “So the Japanese version’s not gonna have English VO, and the North American and European versions won’t have Japanese VO.”

Obviously, this means if you buy the Japanese version, you won’t be able to understand any of it. Unless you speak Japanese, of course.

The game’s now been confirmed for a June 12 release for both the US and Europe.

Oh dear. According to this, MGS4 isn’t going to be on show at GDC. Which is a bit odd, if you think about it, considering the game was at CES last month and Konami’s said it’s nearly finished.

It’s Ryan Payton saying it’s not going to be there in that podcast, the guy that apparently didn’t tell a Reuters journalist that Konami needed to sell a million copies of the game on day one to recoup dev costs.

Probably not best to read anything into it, or stick your PS3 on eBay just yet.

Oh dear. Kojima Productions associate producer Ryan Payton has gone on the record and said that the widely reported quote attributed to him by Reuters journalist Kemp Powers (real name?) last year, which said that Konami needed to shift a million units of MGS4 on day one, isn’t correct.

The original piece said, “Payton said the new ‘Metal Gear Solid’ needs to sell over a million copies on the first day it goes on sale due to its costly production, but that may be a tough mark to hit given sluggish PS3 sales.”

Payton begs to differ. Speaking in this podcast, he said, “That million dollar figure is incorrect. I don’t even know how many figures we’d need to sell to be profitable. More importantly, that’s not something you really talk about in an interview. It’s nothing I’d ever say. It could’ve been something like, ‘You guys need to sell at least a million copies to be profitable, right?’ ‘Well, yeah, that sounds about right.’ Worldwide, obviously, right? I don’t think that’s too controversial, but it blew up. I’ve been trying to contact Kemp Powers over at Reuters to see, I don’t know if he recorded it on tape, but I’d love to hear it. So we can set the record straight.”

We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again. Learn how to say “off the record” very loudly when you’re speaking to mainstream journalists, naive development types. Thanks, Kotaku.