Nicalis (Cave Story Wii/3DS port dev) says Kojima is 'terrible&#39

[ChaosBoi]

I'm not saying that I agree with Mr. Rodriguez here (I absolutely don't), but I think people are using a pretty weak argument to dismiss his claims.

I don't know, the whole, "You can't judge X unless you have reached X's level of success/training/etc," just bugs me. You don't have to be a chef to tell when the food is bad, and a film critic is perfectly suited to judge a movie without needing to make one him/herself.

While that is true to some extent, we gotta remember that those are merely opinions and not facts. However, my point here being is that since Kojima has proven himself to be successful among his fans and the population in general. Mr. Rodriguez doesn't really have any basis to claim that the guy sucks. Sure he may not like him, but the way he said it made him sound like he's above Kojima's level.

Of course has the basis to say that Kojima sucks; that's his opinion. The amount of success and fans under Kojima's belt doesn't change that.

Of course he's entitled to his own opinion, but what really bugged me about what he said was that he's saying it like it's a fact. He says Metal Gear is good in spite of Kojima, not because of him. He also doesn't offer any explanations to back up his opinion either about why he thinks Kojima sucks, which kind of leads us to believe he just outright hate the man for no good reason.

Kojima's success does show that he is decent if not good at what he does. If he wasn't, no one would play or buy his games.

 

[HiroshiYamauchi]

While i don't think that Kojima is the genius that people say he is, i think this guy should try to at least point his opinions with a better argument.

 

[Just Another Gamer]

His entitled to his opinion even if he voiced it badly. Look I neither like or hate Kojima but saying that people should hate him because some indie dev wait not even just someone who ported an indie game to the Wii said so its just stupid.

 

[Gahars]

I'm not saying that I agree with Mr. Rodriguez here (I absolutely don't), but I think people are using a pretty weak argument to dismiss his claims.

I don't know, the whole, "You can't judge X unless you have reached X's level of success/training/etc," just bugs me. You don't have to be a chef to tell when the food is bad, and a film critic is perfectly suited to judge a movie without needing to make one him/herself.

While that is true to some extent, we gotta remember that those are merely opinions and not facts. However, my point here being is that since Kojima has proven himself to be successful among his fans and the population in general. Mr. Rodriguez doesn't really have any basis to claim that the guy sucks. Sure he may not like him, but the way he said it made him sound like he's above Kojima's level.

Of course has the basis to say that Kojima sucks; that's his opinion. The amount of success and fans under Kojima's belt doesn't change that.

Of course he's entitled to his own opinion, but what really bugged me about what he said was that he's saying it like it's a fact. He says Metal Gear is good in spite of Kojima, not because of him. He also doesn't offer any explanations to back up his opinion either about why he thinks Kojima sucks, which kind of leads us to believe he just outright hate the man for no good reason.

Kojima's success does show that he is decent if not good at what he does. If he wasn't, no one would play or buy his games.

Of course he's going to say it like it's fact; that's what he believes. Every time you make a statement regarding the quality of someone or something ("This food is the worst!") do you have to qualify it by telling people it's your opinion? Of course not; it goes without saying.

And he makes his reasoning pretty clear.

I haven't enjoyed a game of his since maybe the original Metal Gear Solid, maybe.

He's played Kojima's games, has found the majority of them to be lacking, and drew conclusions from that. Of course he's not going to go into the minute details behind his opinion; the question wasn't about Kojima specifically. It was about Japanese developers as a whole, and it seemed that he gave Hideo Kojima a passing mention in his answer.

That assumption is another weak, poorly formed argument. Popularity does not inherently equal quality; if you want proof, just look at the careers of Micheal Bay and Stephanie Meyer.

 

[Foxi4]

Pathetic.

"Everything from Japan is going to suck due to cultural differences" is a paradoxical sentence in itself - it may not be enjoyable for some due to the differences but it doesn't suck, it's just different. If you can't cope with that then sorry, you probably shouldn't be in the Biz.

Like it was said earlier, little developers cry because they make less then bigger developers.

I don't think the title should say "Save Story Dev", because then people will think it's the actual developer, Pixel. This is about one of the porters.

Fixed. Pixel >>> Kojima, anyway.

You're out of your bloody mind.

 

[prowler]

Like it was said earlier, little developers cry because they make less then bigger developers.

Nicalis doesn't develop anything

 

[Thesolcity]

Excuse me, my hipster meter just broke.

 

[raulpica]

I don't think the title should say "Save Story Dev", because then people will think it's the actual developer, Pixel. This is about one of the porters.

Fixed. Pixel >>> Kojima, anyway.

You're out of your bloody mind.

Kojima's a director and has always had large numbers of staffers beneath him who worked on stuff in place of him, he just told them what to do.
Pixel made EVERYTHING from soup to nuts. He's far more blessed with inventive and imagination (and probably also skill) than Kojima will ever be. You can't deny that.

 

[Just Another Gamer]

But wouldn't that describe alot of the indie devs who make their own games?

 

[prowler]

Kojima's a director and has always had large numbers of staffers beneath him who worked on stuff in place of him, he just told them what to do.
Pixel made EVERYTHING from soup to nuts. He's far more blessed with inventive and imagination (and probably also skill) than Kojima will ever be. You can't deny that.

Kojima is more than just a director, he is a designer, developer, writer, etc.

He basically made one of the most influential games in the industry. Pixel is as great, you could say he changed the indie scene massively with Cave Story but to compare him to Kojima... well, that's kinda silly.

Just because he works within a team doesn't make Kojima less of a developer.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

Let me start by saying I've never played a Metal Gear Solid Game. I think Mr. Rodriguez is way out of line, from one "game developer" to another you don't say BS like that, unless the dev is just a horrible shovelware maker.

Also did Nicalis even develop any games? It seems to me that they only publish/port other games. This guys' company didn't do anything for Cave Story that it didn't already have, you can really thank Aeon Genesis for the original translation which was pretty much copied and just edited up a bit to make it seem like they didn't blatantly plagiarize someone else's work. The reason Cave Story saw success was because of Pixel, Aeon Genesis and the Fan community for the game, not a hole in the wall indie publisher.

 

[raulpica]

Kojima's a director and has always had large numbers of staffers beneath him who worked on stuff in place of him, he just told them what to do.
Pixel made EVERYTHING from soup to nuts. He's far more blessed with inventive and imagination (and probably also skill) than Kojima will ever be. You can't deny that.

Kojima is more than just a director, he is a designer, developer, writer, etc.

He basically made one of the most influential games in the industry. Pixel is as great, you could say he changed the indie scene massively with Cave Story but to compare him to Kojima... well, that's kinda silly.

Just because he works within a team doesn't make Kojima less of a developer.

That's what the industry tell us that Kojima does. I can't deny that MGS1 and 3 are GREAT games (didn't like 2 as much, and found Peace Walker and Portable Ops to be outright terrible... and don't get me started on 4), but Kojima already had 2 games behind his back (MG1 and MG2) before making the big hit that MGS was (thus a lot more experience than Pixel will ever have, at least for now). But there's no way for us to know that Kojima is REALLY that essential to the MGS series.

I'm sure that most of the ideas present in the series (and the characters) come from him, though.

 

[Foxi4]

Just adding to what prowler said, Kojima likes to be directly involved in the process of game making, but even assuming that he were not, being a director is not an easy loaf of bread. We can't say that George Lucas or Steven Spielberg are not creative people and yet they haven't personally produced every single effect in their movies. Directing is a collection of tasks - assigning tasks to a multinational team of programmers and artists, proof-reading of the script, adjusting any imperfections, brainstorming with the team, keeping it motivated, watching the same scenes over and over again until you think they're good enough for the player... That's alot of work. Excuse me, but saying that Pixel is a better developer than Kojima Production is like saying that Kim Kardashian is the ideal of feminine beauty compared to Marilyn Monroe.

Edit: Damned T9, messing with my posts. >>;

 

[Carnivean]

I love that the original article was 'Nicalis: Japanese Gaming Doesn't Suck, Indies need to "realize their potential"' and then Jim Sterling just picks out the bits that will get the most hits and reposted.

 

[RupeeClock]

Cave Story 3DS was not exactly a shining beacon of talent, it was poorly realised in a number of ways.
3D models were so poorly animated and textured that using the classic mode with the sprites was easier, and more enjoyable to play, for example.
All kinds of shit like King not even holding a sword when he attacks Balrog, the ending clips just being camera pans of still scenes, etc.

They had to increase the maximum HP from 55 to 100 to compensate for how much harder their graphics made a pixel-perfect engine to play, since it's a lot harder to actually see what is going on with the needlessly convoluted background and scene models.

That being said, the Wii port and Cave Story+ on Steam are actually superb and very much worth playing, because they stick closer to the original game without introducing conflicting elements.

Point is, in saying all of that, I explained why I felt negatively about a game that they produced. The only impression I got from them was that "Japanese designers should not touch the FPS genre", which has truth since they do not care for the genre at all. And yes Hideo Kojima himself is quite a fan of western films, it shows in his works.