The Hottest Mess category was a little frustrating to not hear any pushback on Jeff's Konami defenses. Like, I kinda understand what he was saying, but I don't think you can really put "company denotes huge sections of staff and submits them to embarrassment and gross privacy violations" in a different lens that makes it ok. I think Konami is very obviously shady in how it treated its employees and should be called out on it.
I think Jeff's arguments were solid. Much of that stuff regarding Konami's working conditions were either just hearsay, or crappy company practices that are indicative of Japanese business in that industry.
In my mind, no one in Konami's corporate offices are losing sleep about how all of this went down. The gaming public might be upset about it, but Konami doesn't care. In contrast, the other companies represented on the "Hot Mess" list, definitely lost a lot of sleep this year.
Yeah, agreed.
I think that it's a very subjective matter of opinion. I mean a video game company was almost internally sabotaging it's own project and trying to keep a lid on the whole thing with very blatant "inaccuracies" in their press statements. At some point that whole conversation devolved into a very complex game of semantics. I'm pretty sure most of us here must have been somewhat taken aback after hearing what is happening to Kojima, what is happening to Konami staff and overall where the company is headed. The fact that most of that unsettling conduct was probably all done "according to plan" from Konamis side doesn't make the situation any less of a hot mess when looking on from the outside.
You could make a similar argument that Batman getting taken off Steam wasn't anything weird either. They put out a game, it was getting bad reviews so they pulled it until they could release a fixed version - thats all a very sound business move in the same way that Konami shaming employees and saying Kojima is on vacation is similarly a sound business move for them. The hot mess part shouldn't be judged from the perspective of the offending party but rather from the impact and response of the receiving public.
But hey thats just my opinion on it.
I agree, this is all pretty subjective. I'll also acknowledge that much of this discussion is influenced by how much each of us was personally impacted by the events. I didn't play Batman this year, but I can imagine some of the frustration by those who purchased the game on PC.
What might make the difference is that the people who played MGS V didn't necessarily follow all of the negative press surrounding the Kojima/Konami thing. The game had some minor issues, but the final product was playable at launch. So for some people the Konami mess may not be as much of a factor in their overall experience with the game this year.
If we try to be objective and look at some of the items we can identify as fact, the respective "messes" in the category range considerably in terms of their impact on the end user. Afro Samurai just doesn't exist any more. Batman playability on PC is questionable. Kojima Productions LA studio is shut down, but Metal Gear Online is releasing DLC, which has already been previewed by journalists.
I think the argument for Konami being the Hot Mess of the year hinges on a personal affinity for Kojima and his team. In that sense I'm sympathetic to what happened/allegedly happened, but look at the end result. MGS V shipped, and is probably game of the year for a number of people. The game made a ton of money. Metal Gear Online still exists (for now). Kojima got "fired/dismissed" but got scooped out by Andrew House and is probably getting better treatment/more money/more power and got to bring much of his former team with him.
As far as my personal opinion; I think MGS V got severely chopped by the circumstances at Konami. I think this started to happen over a year ago because "business". Kojima clearly didn't get to make the best game he could, and the game suffered from it in the story department (the engine rocks). For me, it was the most disappointing game I played this year. Having said that, I put 50 hours into it. I don't think I could invest that much time into the other nominated games, even if I wanted to.
The Hottest Mess category was a little frustrating to not hear any pushback on Jeff's Konami defenses. Like, I kinda understand what he was saying, but I don't think you can really put "company denotes huge sections of staff and submits them to embarrassment and gross privacy violations" in a different lens that makes it ok. I think Konami is very obviously shady in how it treated its employees and should be called out on it.
I think Jeff's arguments were solid. Much of that stuff regarding Konami's working conditions were either just hearsay, or crappy company practices that are indicative of Japanese business in that industry.
In my mind, no one in Konami's corporate offices are losing sleep about how all of this went down. The gaming public might be upset about it, but Konami doesn't care. In contrast, the other companies represented on the "Hot Mess" list, definitely lost a lot of sleep this year.
This is a brilliant move by Sony. Regardless of what project results from this new partnership, Sony stock just went up a couple of percentage points. I wonder if that video gets a million hits before noon tomorrow.
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