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> Kojima and Notch both represented daring, avant-garde creators, with vision and creativity strong enough to go head to head with soulless corporations.

This is an interesting retelling of Minecraft if you'd ever seen or played Infiniminer first.

There wasn't much "daring" or "avant-garde" about Minecraft. Right place, right time for a toy side project, which mildly iterated on the last thing in that genre, to blow up. That doesn't mean that Minecraft isn't good (it is, and it works even better as a platform for mods on top of it) and it doesn't take anything away from Notch (though his hot-garbage bad-human behavior over the last few years certainly should), but comparing that kind of thing to Kojima's output is pretty dang revisionist.

I don't think it's "wrong" inasmuch as folks continued to give Notch (and really all of Mojang) credit despite the fact that they were essentially completely incapable of pushing minecraft (or really any other games) past a very basic stage, properly embrace their community (Minecon was, by the way, a third party thing) with better engagement and a modding API, or monetizing what they had. Mojang was in a position to turn the fact that everyone had Minecraft into a central gamer identity service and their main argument against it was "standards like OpenID are hard."

Notch's accidental status as a symbol by stumbling onto a refinement of a Zachtronics game really drives home this phenomena.

Even though I love a lot of Kojima's work, I think that we see a similar phenomenon there and that phenomenon is comparable. Kojima certainly continues to have an outsized impact on the industry despite very limited output. Death Stranding is outrageously well-funded and supported despite being... well... I mean I'm playing it and I like it but I don't think it's a game that'll have more than cult status.

It's ironic really, because there are so many heroic indie creators hanging on by their fingernails in the industry pushing out amazing game after amazing game while the industry and market as a whole glorifies this condition even as it abuses workers with terrible working conditions (and worth noting: some of the worst comp in the software world). Meanwhile the fandom and press seem content funneling all those hopes and dreams for brilliant creators into a few avatars.

All totally true, fantastic--and I mean fantastic--post.

It's funny, because Zachtronics might be doing some of the more "daring, avant-garde" stuff in games now. Guy doesn't seem at all bitter that a knockoff of his game took off and made somebody else a billionaire, either, which is to his credit.

Zachtronics makes amazing games and most everyone who tries them finds at least one they love.

I have to disagree. The core similarity is block-based gameplay, but after that they're entirely different games. Minecraft is an adventure game, a survival game, deep RPG influenced, and even a circuit simulator. And all the new features of the game exponentially increase the amount of gameplay possibilities, a true sandbox. I'm aware in 2019 the phrase "sandbox survival" is tired and a little sad, but this underscores the fundamental impact and innovation that Minecraft had.

I don't disagree that Minecraft owes a LOT to luck (what doesn't at that level of success), but I disagree heavily with the idea it was merely a "toy side project which mildly iterated on the last thing in that genre".

Minecraft wasn't that game when it blew up--moving in that way, but Minecraft became the RPG-ish game you describe afterwards.

Infdev was not the game it is today, IMO.

What was daring or avant-garde about Kojima? He makes incredibly popular mainstream games that had cool quirky gameplay mechanics and great attention to detail and had a focus on storytelling.

When I think of "avant-garde" games, I think of games like Katamari Damacy, or Untitled Goose Game or Feather. Maybe Ridiculous Fishing.

I can't think of a single thing avant-garde about Kojima's games. Or Minecraft tbh, though I'm significantly less familiar with Minecraft.

Setting aside the themes of alienation and purpose that run through most of his games (because that is a can of worms) it’s hard not to say that Kojima's work, at least in the modern gaming era (call it PS1 and later), definitely put into practice some pretty wild stuff I'd certainly consider unorthodox and radical--it's worth juxtaposing the cinematic/filmic presentation and direction of Metal Gear Solid with your CO telling you, in-universe and in-character, to "Press the Action Button to..." while in the next sentence somebody else is going on about the “physical” limitations of your radar system. That didn’t happen then, it doesn’t really happen today, and when it does it’s clearly an homage to that sort of blurred-lines unorthodoxy that MGS, whole not creating, certainly made A Thing for a lot of people.

Metal Gear Solid 2 probably counts for a lot, IMO. To an extent it might have some "Seinfeld is unfunny" to it today, but when it came out there was just nothing like it as a downright subversive story and experience. Still kind of isn’t.

That isn’t, of course, to take away from the games you mention, because those are all great games. But Kojima’s stuff fits that description for quite a few reasons, too.

(Agreed that Minecraft doesn’t belong, though, and I am very familiar with it. ;) )

I agree all that stuff was interesting and innovative. Maybe we just disagree on how far you have to push expectations to be avant-garde. When I think of avant-garde I think of creators trying to push toward a paradigm shift or break as many rules as possible or be experimental. At their heart Metal Gear games were still action games but Kojima was innovative enough in how he presented the story and gameplay mechanics to the gamer that they felt like more than that. The Metal Gear games I played never felt experimental, they felt like exquisitely done versions of an existing genre.

The case for MGS2 being avant-garde:

Metal Gear Solid 2 was the sequel to Metal Gear Solid, one of the most celebrated action games of all time. In MGS you play as Solid Snake, a badass special forces operator. It would have been very easy for Kojima to make "Metal Gear Solid" again. In the sequel, it seems to be going that way, since you start out playing as Solid Snake again, but relatively early in the game you switch to playing as Raiden, a dude who kinda sucks compared to Solid Snake (he's a rookie, he's not cool, he whines, he loses his clothes, etc). Raiden represents you, the gamer, the person sitting in front of a screen play-acting at being a badass special forces operator. Raiden gets orders from the colonel and follows them unconditionally, without realizing it's a simulation; but that's exactly what you, the gamer, are doing. So in a way I think MGS2 is Kojima taking a jab at his own fans, the ones who didn't appreciate the anti-war message of MGS. I think there was an interesting meta-narrative that hadn't been done before in games, as far as I know. I know meta-narratives had already existed for a long time in literature, but the active user involvement in gaming adds another layer of meaning.

I would also say that the game had a pretty prescient understanding of memes and fake news, considering it came out in 2001.

http://archives.insertcredit.com/features/dreaming2/

This article by the incredible Tim Rogers, makes a really compelling case for why MGS2 is avant-garde, and why it’s so special.

Tim Rogers is a necessary function of the games industry. If he did not exist we would be forced to invent him.

If you take Kojima games at surface value, then yeah, nothing makes sense and he seems insane. Even the most die-hard fans will admit the plot of the Metal Gear games was incomprehensible batshit. If you look at his games the same way you would an art film that is obsessed with understanding why the modern world feels so inhuman, they start making a lot more sense.

He's basically showing us what impressionism / magical realism looks like dressed up as a AAA video game. He focuses on themes and emotion rather than then who/what/why of the story. His games are subversive as fuck; Death Stranding is a game about how the modern world has isolated us from other people, and the only way out of that grey and black world is by reconnecting with individuals. By doing so, you can literally carry more weight -- the "weight" you have to carry around and balance is literally a stand-in for emotional weight. The more people you connect to, the more you can withstand. Every funky random mechanic that seems random in his games is a metaphor for something.

Death Stranding does nothing for me as a game, but yeah, the metaphors are not subtle. It’s odd that so many folks in the games space had trouble picking up on the references and metaphors because they hit you in the head with a brick about them for hours on end.

Yeah, Metal Gear wasn't exactly subtle either. I think whether you pick up on the metaphors is a sort of confirmation bias based on your previous exposure to the theme he's addressing.

I often say that Kojima takes metaphors to the extreme; either he makes something super abstract, or so intensely direct calling it "metaphor" is a stretch.

There's a line of dialogue in Death Stranding that exemplifies this and wouldn't exactly be spoiler-ish, but I'll err on the side of not including it just in case.

>When Notch sold Minecraft, the reason he gave was that he didn't want to be a symbol#

This seems in stark contrast to Kojima, who based on the number of times his name appeared in his previous game and other factors, is extremely focused on building his personal brand.

> When Notch sold Minecraft, the reason he gave was that he didn't want to be a symbol

He didn't want to be a symbol, so he became a billionaire instead

If you played the game you wouldn’t be “betting”