Hideo always has his 10 minutes on Game Awards, why? Why other game devs don’t get that much recognition or screen time?
Because he invented Hideo games
Because in an industry dominated by yearly rehashed minimum viable products like CoD or AC or Battlefield or the plethora of lootbox infested live services meant to fuck your wallet for easy quick RoI for shareholders, Kojima spends time and resources creating new, novel ideas and taking the artistic medium (yes, games are art despite what capital G Gamers want to say) to new and exciting and interesting places.
This is why Hideo Kojima, Yoko Taro, Fumito Ueda, Hideaki Itsuno, Keiichiro Toyama, Eric Barone, Terry Cavanagh, David Szymanski (etc etc etc, I could go on) all get name recognition.
People always SAY they want games to expand and try new things/don’t want the same game every year, but then when someone actually tries, the games get panned as “gimmicky” or “niche” or “pretentious” “pixel graphics indie garbage” or some other flavor of the month phrase gamers use to instantly discredit something that doesn’t immediately and specifically cater to every single one of their preconceived demands on what a “game” is and/or should be.
Outside japan Sam Lake comes to mind too.
Yeah, I added a few western names too (I’m a bit biased to Japanese devs, growing up on JRPGs and whatnot).
But there’s tons of people over here that get name recognition too, for sure.
He makes good games. Polished ones, too.
Even MGS5, which was pretty clearly pushed out before he wanted it to be and broke him up with Konami, was extremely technically sound, just not filled out as much as it should have been.
More devs make good games, polished ones. Why are they not there then if that is the reason?
Pretty much any one with a comparable track record directing iconic games does have that recognition, though.
The list of developers that known is small because the list of developers that have that level of success is small.
I think this is compounded by his reputation goes past just his fans.
I actually don’t think I’ve ever played a Kojima game and I don’t know that I ever will but even I understand he has a reputation of making extremely solid games even if it means he’s fighting tooth and nail to continue that trend.
Probably because not that many devs have being making good, polished games since the 80s
Why other game devs don’t get that much recognition or screen time?
Probably because Geoff Keighle and Hideo Kojima are great friends. Game Awards announced 30 seconds limit for speeches, but those only apply to everyone else, not friends.
Ads, “world premieres,” and celebrity cameos were certainly the focus of the event.
Let’s not forget that his name sounds good