Just a little bit different than Konami.
[dropcap size=small]H[/dropcap]ideo Kojima has given more insight about his new game studio and how he wants to run it during an interview with GameReactor. While he wants to release a triple-A title as the first game for the new Kojima Productions he has said that he wants to use a small staff.
At Konami, Kojima said that he had worked with teams of 200 people or larger and that he was not really fan of having a large team like that. Kojima said that “he wants to connect to the developers directly, so around 100 people”. Working with a team half the size of what he is used may be a small growing pain for Kojima but it should be no problem for the award-winning developer.
Kojima has also looked to other companies to borrow ideas for how to run the studio; specifically he looked to Little Big Planet developer Media Molecule for inspiration. He said that they have a smaller staff and it creates a much more intimate atmosphere. Kojima had said that in Japan, the studios are very rigid and structured, similar to how a military would run. The executives at the top would give orders and the people below would follow the orders and there would not be much of a relationship between the two. Since Kojima wants to break away from that way of thinking, modeling after a much smaller company would make sense.
Kojima also put an emphasis having a good kitchen in the studio. He said that at Media Molecule the kitchen was the most important place since many of the developers would gather and share ideas during lunch breaks. Kojima also said that during a tour of the DICE studio he noticed that they had a very large kitchen which seemed very important.
Kojima was not at DICE just to look at their “important” kitchen, he was also there to find ideas for a game engine to run his next game. Kojima has expressed his interest to use a third-party game engine but he is not sure which one he wants to use yet.
Kojima has also said that the project will appeal to fans of adventure series, like Uncharted. There have also been rumors the project will the start of a new franchise that could produce anime, manga, and a toy line.
Kojima has a partnership with Sony, so the project will a PS4 exclusive but it will still be released on PC. With no details out yet about the upcoming game, Kojima has said that he wants to have it out “as soon as possible”. Hopefully we will hear something soon.
