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Hideo Kojima's studie

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 9:47 am
by MH3M3D
I'm wondering what Kojima-san studied before he went into the game development industrie. Is he someone who works on a computer creating elements of the game himself, or does he just give the designers idea's and make them create it. Is that what a director does? What's the name of the studie that he did???

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 9:51 am
by Rick Deckard
I imagine he played computer games a lot.

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 5:18 pm
by Vicious
He wanted to be a director I think.

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 2:54 am
by MH3M3D
I bet he DID play a lot and DID want to be a director, but what the hell did he do in school to become what he is now??

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 3:32 pm
by OtakupunkX
A director's job is to oversee production of the game or film, give designers ideas, and steer the game or film in the direction he sees fitting. Programmers are the ones that actually go in and program the game to do the stuff the directors, game designers, etc. want it to do.

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 12:26 am
by mindbender
There was an interview from a while back that said he'd "focused on economics for his degree". I don't know what college he went to or anything like that, though.

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 5:24 am
by MH3M3D
I wonder how he started? Did he become the director right away?

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 7:09 am
by Marc
He got his hands pretty dirty when he made Policenauts. He did things like the storyboarding, the flag checking, etc. by himself.

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 8:28 am
by OtakupunkX
MH3M3D wrote:I wonder how he started? Did he become the director right away?
Apparently he worked on a MSX game called Penguin Adventure as assistant director, but usually you don't become the director right away, you work your way up to director.

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 9:51 am
by 87th
It would have been much easier to get a high position in a videogames company in the mid 80s than it is now. There wouldn't have been any college courses that focus on Videogame development, either.

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 3:12 pm
by OtakupunkX
87th wrote:It would have been much easier to get a high position in a videogames company in the mid 80s than it is now. There wouldn't have been any college courses that focus on Videogame development, either.
True, but I'd highly doubt that, even in the mid-80's, they'd let somebody just come in and start directing anything but fecalware.

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 4:16 am
by Snake Plissken
Kojima as any other young Japanese male starting college (or further education), took major and study to the job market, "Economics & Accounting" to be precise, which was anything but common to slip into. But while he was at college and to the mid 80s' his major two interests of writing and creating film bloomed enormously (which was understandable because the 80s' was a melting pot of inspiration for young film makers).

While this was all going on though, he fulfilled his business studies to the end (how else would he have gotten into any filming or software company to the least with his other portfolio of interests. You get your foot in the door by having something secondary stacked). He wanted to take a new grip though on his film endeavors after witnessing a chance discovery of Nintendo's Entertainment System (thus inspiring him to join the game market). Searching for a job at one of the many game companies in Japan, he ended up being hired by Konami and shunted to work on the MSX home computer department. The first game he worked on was Penguin Adventure, as an assistant director. The first game he actually developed was Lost World, in 1986. However, it was cancelled by Konami.

The role of a gaming director has changed over time. People love to misuse the term “director” itself back then when it was actually hardware “peripheral programming” (when games were not movies, but software entertainment components). Back in the day really it was just "planning" and "development." Now days, game directors are in the same relation as actual movie directors! Overseeing and ordering each event, step by step to how they want it all to appear (cut by cut of course with full creative control aside producers.)

Kojima's role from when he started at Konami was nearly "planning," as in probably story ideas and character engineering. Kojima was never really a hand’s on guy until he got his foot in the door and worked on “Snatcher” and “Policenauts” as Osiris said (which were literally his break out games where he could use his own mind to make his first actual interactive movies/games with a flowing story).