Now, in hindsight, it’s very easy to see why Metal Gear Solid succeeded: it’s a great espionage game, with fantastic gameplay and a story capable of expanding across various genres, ideas, characters, and years without eroding in the slightest. But in 1987, no one at Konami was too sure that this guy Hideo Kojima could bring Metal Gear to fruition. And, above all, they didn’t know if anyone besides him would understand it. Until a miracle happened.
Snake? Snaaake!
Hideo Kojima had just arrived at Konami, and obviously, no one cared in the slightest about what he had to say because only the voices of the more experienced mattered. And at that time, the executives insisted on making “a war game.” Then, the developer friend of everyone, after the failure of several expert developers, proposed a “stealth game.” In the end, they allowed him to start making it, but with a warning: “There are no games like these.”
According to Kojima himself, the developers were asking “What do I have to do here, do I have to start hitting people?” on each screen, and it was so frustrating that he even considered leaving the company. Fortunately, a long-time employee held a meeting to show his vision, and little by little he earned their respect.
And what made them change their minds completely? Well… “Everyone was wondering ‘Can an escape game be fun?’ But when we had a playable test, and they saw the exclamation that appears when the enemy is surprised, it sold them on the concept. They changed their tune to ‘This is going to work!'”
So they say that details are not important: that “!” defined an entire saga, and we would never have had Solid Snake (and therefore, not games like Death Stranding) if Kojima had thought it was nonsense. So, don’t give up – what you think others may see as trivial, could be what changes the world forever.
