Metal Gear creator looks to television for inspiration
Talking to Edge, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima shared his thoughts on next-generation videogames potentially requiring substantial development teams, depending on the scope of the project. “It’s possible to make many things more realistic, but that doesn’t mean you should,” he told the publication. “You have to prioritize, and that is what’s going to separate the teams that succeed from the teams that don’t. A very deep, 20-30 hour game might need a bigger team and take three or four years.
“[But] I think there’s a different way of tackling this problem: something similar to a TV series, where you can use pilot episodes to test the waters before you jump completely into the project … 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.”
While I’m instantly reminded of episodic gaming and that doesn’t necessarily instill confidence, when I think about big-budget games that get stuck in long development cycles and somehow manage to release in less-than-ideal states, there’s potential. Execution, particularly for some genres? That’s another matter. But if it meant more new intellectual properties getting greenlit, I’d probably give “pilot” games as they’re described here a shot.
Kojima touts potential of ‘pilot episodes’ for next-gen game development [Edge]
