Relatively soon a new Death Stranding trailer will be out and everyone will be praising Hideo Kojima, the actors, Hideo Kojima, the action, the posters, the graphics and Hideo Kojima.
I’m making this post hoping to remind people of some of the negative aspects from the marketing of the game and the atrocious way Kojima and some of his associates have handled the teasing of this product, I’m also hoping of course, there is still room here for criticism around a game that despite all things I still anticipate and will play. Still, wouldn’t be surprised if the post gets down-voted to hell or outright nuked to oblivion, which is fine, still a good exercise to let off some steam.
A recent post called “Very hard to remain optimistic about Kojima's Death Stranding” called my attention because it mentioned 2 points of criticism that are worth addressing. The first one basically goes like: It’s been a very long time, we don’t know what the game is about, Kojima just teases and only cares about appearing cool.
My response to this is: It’s OK to not know what the game is about. The way the trailers have been presented causes some intrigue and the world, designs, characters represent a level of originality you hardly see in the game industry these days. The problem here is not the content and story exposition, it is, you guessed it: Hideo Kojima and the way he teases Death Stranding. When u/Nortte, the author of the post says Kojima cares about appearing cool, well, simply put, he is 100% correct. Hideo Kojima is one of the few game directors, if not the only one that can also be considered to be a “celebrity”. For decades he’s made good games, caught the attention of a large international audience who appreciate his work, made sure his name is all over his games and the most relevant of all points: He’s been called a genius by everyone around him.
Kojima has owned his celebrity status and has used it to make Hollywood connections to the point where he chooses to use the likeness and recognition value of Hollywood actors to sell and empower the product (and also to hire his childhood crush from a 70’s TV series to also use her likeness) in a media where you can utilize technology to create and mold characters’ appearance to your liking. You can call that a “creative decision” all you want and some of the actors like Mikkelsen and Seydoux are pretty good but if the level of Hideo’s creativity when making characters is: I want my character to look like my friend Norman Reedus, well, what does it tell you about Kojima these days…
More to the point, the problem with Kojima’s celebrity status is that he seems to think it’s as important or more to sell his name and become more recognizable in other media and other VIP’s minds than to sell his game. The most up-voted response in Nortte’s post states: “It's been 8 months without new footage”. You know what happened during that time? He went to a film festival to talk about himself and not show anything related to the game. Wait, he did showed the game, presumably the first 2 hours to some friends in other countries, behind close doors but not to his audience for some reason (after deeply thinking about it I realized the reason is that he wants people to tweet what a brilliant game DS is and what a genius Kojima is). During these long drought periods of time (well known to the people in this sub) Hideo often finds himself traveling all around the world, giving interviews where he doesn’t say anything, going to film festivals and award ceremonies where he doesn’t show anything, he visits other studios and cool places where he takes pictures with other developers/celebrities and then proceeds to show them the game. He tweets a lot about food and the movies he loves and he advertises his actors by marketing their movies, which in some cases are terrible and probably not even to his liking. But that’s who he is, the cool, famous videogame guy.
This brings me to the second point in Nortte’s post, the freedom Hideo got with this game in response to his reputation. It’s not a bad reputation mind you, but let me ask you this, what other game developer behaves like this? Do you think because Kojima achieved this level of notoriety he is entitled to a sort of… Elitist behaviour? I know that word sounds bad but, do you think that, because he has been successful in the past and he’s famous he is entitled to do anything, get as much freedom as he wishes, take as much time as he wants and not really care about the audience perception of his game after 8 or more months of not giving them anything, it’s not as if his games are 100% perfect and nobody criticized elements of them in the past. Do you really think he doesn’t owe you anything and he’s just so very generous because he’s shown like 5 trailers in 3 years?
OK. The first 2 trailers were made before the game development even started, therefore he wasn’t showing a game, he was teasing an idea. Since he wasn’t showcasing an existent game, I’ll just guess Kojima’s intentions with the first 2 trailers and also what I think his thought process was behind the next trailers.
Trailer 1: LOOK AT ME - I’M BACK! And Norman from Walking Dead is still working with me guys!
Trailer 2: We hired Mads Mikkelsen!
Trailer 3: We just rendered this cutscene from the beginning of the game, all I can show for now.
Trailer 4 (you actually get to see they have been developing a videogame, which is good), the structure is: Cutscene, GAMEPLAY WITH WALKING ANIMATIONS, we hired Lea, another cutscene, DEATH ANIMATION. Brah, I finally got Lindsey Wagner.
Trailer/Thing with Troy Baker that can barely be called a trailer: We just rendered this cutscene, all I can show for now.
My point with this is, just like what happened back in good ol’ MGSV times Hideo follows a very particular pattern when presenting his game where, ultimately he seems to care more about what the media’s perception of his game is, what it is said about him at the time more than the experience the audience will receive, this is a behavior that is found more in known, famous artists (celebrities) than unknown artists (say… 98% of other game directors, independent filmmakers) The pattern goes like this:
Chapter I: For years, everyone around Kojima has been telling him he’s brilliant for what he’s done in his career. He creates a concept he is very proud of. Because everyone in his life has been telling him he’s a genius, he feels the immediate need to show it to the world disregarding how early it is. The first trailer is usually cryptic and in some cases brilliant, he excites people, creates discussion.
Chapter II: Some time has passed, he realizes hype is wearing off, needs to show something, still very early in development, shows another cryptic trailer, an early game cutscene usually because there isn’t much in the way of gameplay. Still, he revives the hype.
Chapter III: Still early in development, but months, maybe years have passed. He creates trailers based on the material he just completed, in the case of MGSV he makes E3 2013 trailer which is a masterpiece of editing, in the case of Death Stranding he makes trailer 4, which is a confusing mess made to demonstrate gameplay mechanics exist (2 years after game announcement)
Chapter IV: Overblown exposition. Later into development Kojima has more material and more cutscenes to show and HE NEEDS to show them constantly because he wants people to know what a brilliant creator he is and he also wants to make up for a long period of time where nothing was shown (like now). He wastes time editing more trailers because he thinks some part goes well with a song he was listening to that morning and he also goes all around showing extended gameplay sections and giving interviews about his “process”.
Chapter V: Usually fans are exhausted by the amount of information they have been getting during the last period of development (the exact opposite of what you are feeling right now), IGN, Gamespot, Gameinformer, they have all played the game and the amount of articles, merchandise, gameplay videos is overwhelming. Game is released, you still get the game, because what the hell, after all this time... But you know that magic of not knowing, the theorizing, the mystery, it’s all gone, killed during those last couple of months. It is now a machine and Kojima let some terrible, careless game journalists beat the game before you. You!, who spent multiple years trying to understand what the necklace pattern was about, everyone knows now because he explained it on an article. Because of this preferential treatment towards journalists the game gets perfect and almost perfect scores. He receives some criticism from some people in the internet, he reads them, but doesn’t care, he gets called a genius by his friends, the cycle begins again.
Don't worry there is a lot coming your way but what is happening right now, the frustrating amount of time where nothing has been shown to the fans while he goes around visiting Tribeca and some European studio, the marketing of toys, figures, T-Shirts of a game that hasn’t come out yet, of a company that, has yet to release it’s first game is not only proof of the elitism I mentioned before but also proof of a disconnection with his audience. The lore and mythology of Hideo Kojima’s greatness has given him the entitlement and power to sell you merchandise of logos and characters that you don’t know yet, don’t understand what they mean or represent yet, things you have no connection to yet, but sure, you buy them because you just trust him, they look cool so that’s good enough, so let me ask this question again: What other game director behaves like this?
Tell me, right now, what is the purpose of Kojima teasing the turned down posters and the credit screen of a trailer instead of you know… Releasing the bloody trailer and the poster?, right now after 8 months, I’m not talking about Sony not giving him permission, even though he should have it with all that “freedom”. I’m talking about the act of posting this. Is he that paramount? Where he needs to tease for teasers, like those dumb mini-trailers for Hollywood trailers where they let you know the trailer will come out in 2 days?… Is he doing this for your benefit or for his twitter likes benefit?
Oh, and speaking of selling things, Marketing & Communications of Kojima Productions super star Aki Saito is simply an unbelievable triumph and success at his job. He created a big twitter following by doing nothing, or rather by emulating Hideo Kojima’s internet persona and he’s done nothing to call attention towards this game. Don’t blame Sony for not letting the man post things other than poor videos where he says a line from the game. Blame him for doing exactly that. That is what the chief of marketing is doing: Posting boring, snapchat quality videos that only appeal to a niche, teeny audience. Is he letting the fans do all the work? He could be doing some strange, hidden viral marketing, playing around with music, images, codes, being creative. Remember when the Archllect guy made everyone think one of his pictures would lead to DS info? Then he released a picture for people to decode and then he said it had nothing to do with the game but it was just inspired by it?. Remember when some guy made a fake leak with bloody MG: Survive and there where people kind of exited as to what they were seeing. Some guy posted, yet to be proved faked at the best of my knowledge, audio sample leaks that actually sounded kinda legit. Youtube videos connecting T.P themes with Death Stranding have done more for the marketing of this game than Saito’s “work”. Amazing fan art from the community has been better marketing for the game than Saito’s “work”, why is the best marketing for Death Stranding coming from people that are not being paid to do marketing for Death Stranding?
Oh, but it's not like they haven't put an effort to take advantage of the relentless passion and intelligence shown by the fans, it's us, you know, it's up to us."the game already began" and we are connected, so we are doing this thing here? Get it? 4th wall???
And I’m talking marketing for the fan community of a few thousand people who are loyal to Kojima and are still paying some attention. What is the general perception of Death Stranding?, Tell me, to normal people or at least random gamers? This is a game that needs to sell millions of copies and it does not have “Metal Gear Solid” in the title. The perception of the game is a series of strange videos on youtube you get intrigued by but then forger after a day because you didn’t get any connection to any of the nonsense anyone in the trailers were saying and you simply do not understand what is happening. You get stimulated for a couple of seconds by the fact the game has celebrities you recognize doing weird stuff but then again, you don’t know what this is, you can’t pinpoint what genre it is. Now you know you’ll be able to walk around carrying some boxes though…
OK, it looks cool but if you want it, you don’t know where to buy it, how to get it or when. Death Stranding is like number 3. On a Top 10 list of upcoming PS4 games, it’s just behind last year’s Spider-Man and you still don’t get a release year. It’s on the level of those unreal engine demos where cool, strange, somehow creative and awesome things happen for a couple of minutes but it’s not a real game, it’s nothing, it’s the video you share and then move on with your life and because of the lack of info, you simply let it go. That’s it. People who were here day 1 may have forgotten the game exists, what it’s name was. What is the marketing team of Kojima productions doing to change that perception?
That’s what I got at this point, a rant and questions about Hideo Kojima for whomever cares to answer, I was also writing this because of the negative response and dismissal posts like Nortte’s get, most people are quick to do 2 things here: Like every one of Kojima's Tweets and make up excuses for some of the things I just described and that’s why I resort to the word “apologetics” in the title, which is a term mostly used to describe the defense of religious practices against any sort of objection, you could also apply it to another idea, a “cult of personality” which I think may fit better in this case.
TL;DR version: Our salvation lies in the Father's sins,
Beyond the truth, let me suffer now! - #whereisthegame
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