Excellent article and analysis Austin (bonus points for talking about Foucault) - keep up the good work!

Super weird, considering Konami is supposed to be developing games people play for FUN.

Having to clock in and out for lunch is hostile? Having cameras watching employees so they aren't slacking is hostile? What planet is this?

Don't understand why people are up in arms about this. If you have worked in an office of a blue chip or fortune 100 company these days then nine of this is out of the ordinary.

Clock in and out for lunch, totally standard. In fact toilet breaks are also monitored in places like call centres and other customer facing areas. Internet and email access is almost always restricted and subject to random spot checks. If your work isn't up to standard you risk redundancy or being fired, no concept of moving to a less demanding role. Finally, say something on a social network site about such company and face a lawsuit.

Seriously, whilst I don't condone this stuff, it's totally nothing out of the norm for the majority of companies out there.

Kinda reminds me of all this stuff:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-illegal-japan-workers-are-sent-to-the-boredom-room.html

http://www2.shizuokanet.ne.jp/sabu/window.html

They don't fire you, they just give you a "window seat" or put you in a "chasing-out room" with nothing to do or something tedious to do, in hopes that you'll quit.

@hamst3r: that's better than most places.

So I'm going to be blunt here, I don't fully understand the outrage here. Konami's offices sound sort of like a military environment. My only experience is from the Canadian army, but...

• Computers which aren't connected to the internet are fairly commonplace, as internal networks are used almost exclusively to handle operational information.
• Being late from any break, such as lunch, is considered a slip in discipline. Even a single missed shift often means corrective action from a superior (normally, extra duties nobody wants to do)
• Cameras are rarely used to monitor the movement of personnel, but other methods - signing in, key cards, armed sentries - essentially achieve this purpose
• Maybe half of enlisted members are given an internal email address, and even then only on the basis of requirement for duties. Even these are sometimes revoked without warning or reason
• Highly qualified members not seen as "useful" are frequently reassigned to trivial, demeaning, or even belittling positions. I see this a lot; buddy annoys an officer, they disappear to a sub unit whose only job is to wait for training. And they stay there for months
• Collective punishment is encouraged, since singling out individuals might be seen as unfair. Merely associating with someone who fails to meet disciplinary standards (online or off) can, and has, been grounds for entire sections or platoons to also be punished

Does it suck? As someone who learned to live with this, in some ways sure, but isn't that the nature of voluntarily entering a hierarchical organization? It's a high price but most recognize that external discipline eventually fosters self discipline, and that is worth a lot in any high-stakes field. I've never worked in the private sector so I have no clue if these ideas carry over, but why would a for-profit company be much different? Their livelihoods are on the line too, right? I just don't get why this seems like a surprise

Very hard to see this one of the oldest and more experienced video game company...

I don't really know what to think

Nice Foucault reference! Respect, Austin.

Also, yeah, this is bullshit. Reminds me of communist countries- constant vigilance and fear of being watched.

@laserbolts: did you miss the part where they demoted devs to janitors for liking a Facebook post?

Damn so many people are completely cool with this. We'll personally, I'm not ok with being herded and thought controlled like fucking livestock. Holy hell.

@zaphoduk: Considering that this was a news story in the Nikkei I wouldn't say that this shit is normal at all. I'm sorry if you've had to work under these conditions, but this shit shouldn't be normalized. Just like crunch or mass layoffs shouldn't be treated as acceptable, inevitable costs of business. When the exploitative is made normal we all lose.

@giantstalker: Most private sector jobs are not at all like military work. All of those restrictions are extreme in the context of an office job. Those people have to meet deadlines and ship games, not prepare to defend their country. Their mistakes are not life and death situations and they likely had no idea that this is what they were signing up for when they started their jobs. I don't think applying military standards to a game development studio is a useful comparison. One is a creative field in the private sector and the other is tasked with defending an entire nation.

@thatpinguino: I think some of the points that are brought up in the article to build the case as Konami being a big bad monster are so weak that it makes the whole claim seem questionable.

Having security cameras is pretty normal at most jobs, if you aren't doing anything wrong, what is the issue?

Showing up late and expecting everything to be ok?

Not having internet access; if it's not required for your job, why does it matter?

All these allegations are coming from a disgruntled employee that is probably very soon if not already out of a job due to Konami no longer making games; don't you think maybe there may be some embellishment going on here?

lmao

-Security cameras are normal in most jobs; however, they are usually pointed at the entrances and exits, not the employees.

-Frequently showing up late isn't ok in most companies; however, monitoring where everyone is at all times and publicly shaming those who don't meet strict standards isn't. In most companies a manager will take you aside and let you know if you're slipping or if you are flagrantly slacking you will be let go. What Konami is doing is setting up a work environment where everyone feels monitored at all times.

-Not having internet access makes sense for some jobs, game development isn't one of them.

My question would be, why do you feel Konami should be given any benefit of the doubt? They've been slashing and burning everything related to their traditional games business for years. They've renamed Kojima Productions and removed the Kojima name from the company website out of spite. Complaints have been leaking out of that sinking ship for months now. What would employees have to gain by embellishing their conditions? Maybe better working conditions and some sympathy? Maybe? On the other hand, they sure have everything to lose by speaking out considering what happened to people who liked a fucking facebook post.

Does Japan not have worker's rights?

I don't, a lot of the stuff in the article is extremely damning, I just don't really give a damn about these employees either, if they had complained about this stuff or done something 10 years ago when the ship wasn't already sinking, maybe something could be done about it, what is the use in crying now?

When it comes right down to it, the product that Konami was selling is the work of these employees, the company's failure is their failure and I can't blame the company for trying to protect itself.

The video game industry needs some labour unions.

@kidavenger: These conditions weren't in place 10 years ago. They seem to be a relatively new occurrence as Konami moves away from AAA game development. This isn't the work environment that a lot of these devs signed up for.

The use in crying now is that there are actual people with families and lives making the games you enjoy and the ones who work for Konami are currently having a rough go of it. The notion of having more sympathy for a corporate entity exploiting workers than the workers who are being exploited is something I can't even fathom. I guess all I can say is that if you care about Konami games, you should care about the people making them if for no other reason than the fact that, if those people quit, you won't get your fun games anymore.

@general_mapache: You're damn right they do.

@giantstalker: maybe it's a bad thing that a video game developer sounds like a military environment

@holycrapitsadam: From what I understand about business and marketing, a company cares more about branding and word of mouth than they do getting monster sales. Go ahead and buy the game, have fun. But if you really want to go after Konami, go on twitter and tweet poorly about them. Becuase god knows it wouldn't be the first time a vocal minority impressed there will on a company through social media.

It's funny all the rage that Kickstarter backers have over Mighty No. 9 being 6 months late then not being able to sympathize with the same rage that Konami would have with their employees over MGS5 being extremely late and overbudget, taking 7 years to make.

It's a bad situation and it seems to be the best for everyone that Konami is shutting this situation down.

7 years? Its less than five. Peace Walker came out in 2010 and was considered during development to be Metal Gear Solid V.

There's been some discussion about socioeconomics and the impossibility and 'unreal' expectation that you would leave a company if they were terrible to you; if there are no other positions in your sector or industry available other than the non-viable position you currently have, how long would you expect your position to exist, and how long do you intend to work it? If investment in games development is diminishing year after year and creating negative growth in the sector, how can you argue one should not investigate other career options or paths, especially people with extremely valuable multi-sector skills like software development experience?

I'm less than surprised to see more sympathy for software engineers and asset creators than miners and factory workers who actually lack options, skills and privileges. Prioritizing one's concern for the least advantaged and most beleaguered of the global economy is now 'bullshit' because it's apparently a slippery slope that leads to human suffering. I'm sorry, but that sounds like self-serving middle-class bourgeois tripe.

To say that slavish devotion to an uncaring company is part of Japanese custom is factual, but perhaps I don't understand criticizing the company for a lack of benevolence (while reinforcing the custom of slavish devotion) rather than criticizing the custom that facilitates dehumanization. When people talk about going out and finding a new job, what they are promoting is a more mercenary and self-valuing ethic as opposed to the custom of deference and submission with the hopes that management becomes inexplicably nicer. I read this old Wired article today, I thought it was relevant.

Japan is beginning very fast - in part because they have begun to downsize without downsizing. You know what I'm saying? They are moving people. The Japanese have practically no unemployment insurance, but they keep people on the employer's payroll even if they don't work. So they are being moved out to suppliers. They are being moved out to dealers. Or they are just kept on the payroll without work. But actually, the Japanese big companies have begun to change very fast. They're moving production to mainland Asia, to America, to Europe.

The German big companies are beginning to move out of Germany because costs are prohibitive. And you have enormous unemployment in Germany, dangerously high.

In Japan, you have a social compact for lifetime employment for one-third of the labor force. In Germany, you have the social compact of the social market economy. Therefore, to lay off people, even to shift them, is very difficult. In those countries, it's very much a social rather than an economic problem.

In this country, the restructuring has caused amazingly few social problems because our labor force is so mobile, so adaptable. Our disorder is a great advantage. The Germans and the Japanese are programmed for order - and it gets in their way.

I find this entire statement hilarious in a morbid way, because we are all discussing this on a board that is an inherent product of Late Capitalism. The words of George Orwell come to mind, here, from his essay on dear Mister Kipling -

But because he identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which 'enlightened' people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing [Asian natives], and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those [Slur for Asians] ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment', demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling's understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases.

But, by all means, if hideous neglect of the software worker of rich and powerful Japan is your entry point into critique of Late Capitalism, then who am I to stop you?

I should clarify, I'm not actually mad at you in particular, or mad at all, really. I just hope that one day, people in the first world will be righteously infuriated enough about the plight of all people under the structures we've overimposed on the world to the point that something can actually change them forever. Of course, that's just fantasy dreaming from a blatant fraud such as myself.

@crembaw: So, if I'm reading this correctly, your answer is to not care about them because to care is hypocritical? Ideological purity over empathy? Or am I misreading? I haven't studied Late Capitalism and I'm not really familiar with the works.

I think the biggest surprise is how relatively recently this all bubbled to the surface. Makes you wonder how long they've been under the thumb like this. Has it just been like this since Kojima pissed the management off or has that been the status quo to begin with?

@shindig: There is reports that say the CEO has acting like a nutcase just recently but must probably there were already seeds of despotic bussiness views and practices before Kojima pissed the higher ups, and I also bet the other studios were not much better. Is probably that the possibility of gambling becoming legal in Japan and mobile being cheap that the higher ups finally feel free to truly piss anybody that they didn't like.

As a huge fan of many Konami published series this article almost made me vomit.

Shame on you Konami... SHAME!

I am curious though... if Kojima productions is no more and and it's former members are "contracted" until release, what happens after the contract is up and they are completely dissolved?

What about post release support for the MGSV? What about Metal Gear Online? (and the LA branch of Kojipro...?)

You're right austin, that is a cool picture of a mech.

Konami just wanted their employees to understand what working for a PMC would be like.

This reminds me a lot of Team Bondi and the L.A.Noire stuff (I really liked L.A. Noire) and Team Bondi were much smaller but there were terrible reports about them and they went under not long after.

I'm teaching in Japan and I talked with one of my students about moral in Japanese workplaces. A conversation about reassigning of workers, even of a higher level, came up the other day. He said that this type of practice is not uncommon. He's in a senior position at his job and said that firing/ laying off people outright is not popular with most companies, so they decide to reassign people to low level jobs in order to decrease their moral and have them subsequently quit.

I feel like you're reading arguments incorrectly. No one is arguing that people should not search for better work than this. The point is that the treatment detailed here is inhumane and should not exist. How the workers respond to it is not the point. The point is ending the inhumane treatment.

And you are misreading what I called "bullshit." Caring and making smart consumer choices (or practicing activism or protests or awareness campaigns) is not so rare a resource that we need to "prioritize" our concern or actions. It's become really fucking easy to look up companies and be a thoughtful, ethical consumer in general. My point is that human suffering exists in many places, and when we learn of examples of it, we are confronted with what we're going to do about that. I would argue that saying that worse examples exist than the one we found is a bad way to deal with it. It's good to educate about other examples and show trends, but do not belittle lesser evil and pretend that because it is lesser it should be ignored for the big fish. That's not how progress happens.

The idea that we should promote individualism and self-worth rather than self-effacing team playerness is probably fine, but I rather like the idea of focusing on improving the attitude of the leaders, too. Companies need to realize that profit margins and long-term growth depend on humane and fair treatment of employees, as well as other major concerns like, say, curbing climate change so humanity doesn't die. What needs to change is the attitudes and approaches of owners who see one-year profits as the point, sacrificing the future in the process. That shortsightedness will doom single employees in the short term and the entire fucking human population in the long term, if it hasn't already.

Wow, that just made my skin crawl. Working for Konami must really suck! Think about the person, let's call him Takeda, who makes his living and supports his family by working at said pachislot factory. How will he feel when Kojima for exemple, a former hotshot in the company, gets demoted to working there because Konami sees Takeda's job as little more than a punishment.

That must really lower the morale for the "normal" people working at the clubs, casinos or pachislot factories that Konami owns.

I doubt that we will ever fully know what caused Konami's sudden attitude or what the specifics were of the spat between Kojima and some of the Konami higher-ups (which may stretch back further than we think, if the rumours about the logo's in the Deja Vu mission in Ground Zeroes are to be believed), but it's clear that Konami wants nothing more to do with gaming outside of mobile stuff and pachislot machines, and have decided to back out as ungracefully as possible.

While I do think that certain aspects of the working conditions have been subject to hyperbole, it is obvious that Konami's workplace is becoming increasingly hostile and seems to be designed to lower morale to force undesirable people to quit.

I have no idea what all this means in the long run for stuff like support for the FOB invasions or MGO3, but I guess we'll see when it comes to it.

I really hope that Kojima is able to keep most of his team together, especially people like Shinkawa or Junji, or even Eyestone. Though many of them aren't big names like those 4, it is clear that there is a serious pool of talent within KojiPro, and I really hope that we get to see some new projects out of some of them after all this is over (especially considering that Del Toro is still willing to do something with Kojima). I'm really keen on seeing Kojima and his team finally get to do something that is no longer tied to MGS, as much as I enjoy it. Shame that they will probably lose the right to develop using the FOX engine, but there's probably a chance that something could be negotiated with Konami. My money is on Sony picking them up, especially considering past history and how Sony seems to be more willing to put the money behind certain projects (such as something like Bloodborne or SFV) but time will tell.

There is no ethical consumption under late capitalism. I do not even disagree with your assessment that we ought to change their situation, but if that attempt at change is rooted in some idealized perspective of capitalism disguised in the veils of good old Social Democracy and voting with one's wallet, I can almost assure you that the changes will be surface level at best.

It feels like the FOB part of MGS 5 would lend it self really well to having it's own mobile app connected to the game, which would make sense considering Konami's newfound fondness for the mobile platfrom.

The 'people' making excuses for this shit might as well go all the way with their worker ant outlook on the the world and lobotomize themselves of any remaining humanity their upbringing hasn't quite squeezed out of them just yet.

A guy I know from another forum told about how his Korean overlords sent out an email in the aftermath of some workers being gassed to death to the effect of, "Don't worry. Production will not be affected."

Remind me never to work for an Asian business.

If a philosophy is inherently self-defeating it should probably be rethought. Ethical consumption is also profit-creating in the long term, so capitalism needs to pursue it in order to maintain its existence. Corporations are not people, but the people in charge of them are, and we've seen those people choose to make ethical decisions sometimes. It's possible.

Jim Sterling is apparently still in contact with some (former) Konami employees:

Found this on Kotaku today regarding Konami's inner workings under it's "Big Brother" methods of control. You can read the full article there, but here is the interesting stuff that was listed:

• Konami has an official division called the “Internal Audit Office” (内部監査室). One Konami employee compared them to the company’s own secret police. This division checks internal communication, such as email, Konami’s closed circuit cameras, and monitors who leaves and enters the company.
• One source said that the Internal Audit Office will even contact the employers of ex-Konami staff to tell the new companies how awful these former workers were.
• There is also a team within Konami called the Monitoring Group (モニタリング課). The team sit in a room that’s filled with monitors showing the internal CCTV feeds from cameras located within Konami. There are cameras in the company’s rooms, corridors and data centers. The Internal Audit Office has access to all this information for employee monitoring.
• Konami employees who want to use the internet must apply via the IT department for an internet VPN. Employees who want to take a laptop home must also apply. If approved, they log in through a VPN. According to one former employee, screenshots of employee computers are randomly taken, which sometimes results in employees getting in trouble for what’s on their monitors.
• There are rules about which entrance and exit employees can use, say current and former staff. When leaving, employees must show their Konami I.D., but then tell the security guard where they are going, whether that is to a nearby convenience store or just stepping out for a smoke break. When employees leave during normal business hours, this is tracked and compiled into a list. Employees who leave too often are reprimanded.
• Current and former staff say that every Monday morning, Konami’s Operating Officers have a meeting which is taped and broadcast on an internal Konami website. All Konami employees must watch this meeting, and this is tracked. Employees who fail to watch the meeting have their name and division announced throughout the company.

Man...how can you work for such a company?

I have already pre ordered the game before I heard about all this news.
It does not change my desire to play the game-if anything it makes me glad that I was able to enjoy the series for such a long time and have so many classic games to cherish before it went bust.

If I had the money and resources I would offer Hideo Kojima a job and let him work on anything he wanted.

So it's almost certain that Konami is a outright front for the Yakuza at this point?

Amazon makes Konami seem like a pretty cool place to work.