"Metal Gear Solid" mastermind Hideo Kojima thinks that game developers should make "pilots" for video games, allowing them to gauge consumer interest before investing 2-5 years on a project.
Kojima tells Edge he hopes the next generation of consoles will allow for a better rapport between gamers and designers during the development process, not just afterwards. His main suggestion? Game designers should produce a gameplay sample for consumers, who can tell developers if they're interested in seeing the developer commit to making the full game.
"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," Kojima says. "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."
In an era where large AAA games require teams upwards of 400 people to finish in a timely manner, allowing a studio to pitch an idea seems like a good idea in theory. In practice, the idea could allow designers and publishers to expand on some of their worst habits.
Making a game pilot before a game began full production would likely resemble the vertical slices the media and public are shown to preview games. "Press builds" aren't just snippets taken out of the game and isolated, they're put together especially for showing off the game and often differ from the final product. In some cases those differences are small: A developer adds more power-ups or items to a press build to make the demo easier for new players. Other times, the build has absolutely nothing to do with the final product, like the cinematic demo of "Aliens: Colonial Marines" shown to the public and the press, which boasted graphics far superior to what made it into the game. A game "pilot" made before a game is finished should be an introduction to what the game is all about, but until a game is finished, it isn't actually a reflection of the final product.
On the fan side, crowdsourcing seems like a great way for certain kinds of games greenlit, but it wouldn't necessarily foster creativity the way we might expect it to. Based on Kickstarter, developers would eschew original content for sequels, reboots and conceptual successors to old franchises... So it wouldn't be that different. On the bright side, you might be able to convince somebody to make that "Final Fantasy VII" remake you've been clammoring for.
It makes sense that Kojima would be the person who would suggest an idea like this. As a cinematic gamemaker who spends a lot of time making cutscenes, it isn't inconcievable that he could get close to finishing a realistic gameplay sample quickly, and use a "pilot" demo to gauge whether or not to follow through. So let him try and, if it works out, maybe he'll instigate a new era of crowdsourced game development. Coincidentially, this comes shortly after Kojima suggested his next game, "Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes," includes taboo themes that might prevent it from getting published. Kojima may see crowdsourcing as a means towards democratically-generated creative freedom, but he would more likely be trading one hard-headed dictator for another.
