[jessfyi]

I don't know how you can seriously mention Freelancer without mentioning that it was completely taken out of the over-promising grip of Chris Roberts. Great game, but I despise the fact that people attribute the work of those programmers who worked to actually put the thing out (when he got his golden parachute and all they got was more crunch) to that huckster.

[aseipp]

And if you read any of the profiles of Chris Roberts or people talking about working at RSI on Star Citizen (Kotaku did a multi-part series on it years ago), you'll see an image of nothing more than a petty, micromanaging boss who does nothing but interfere in literally everything, resulting in a dysfunctional studio. This isn't surprising; any cursory glance at their roadmaps, their former promises, their history, their delays etc, clearly paints a picture of severe mismanagement, no matter how much fans excuse it.

In fact, one aspect of Freelancer that's been left to history is the fact that when Microsoft bought some equity in his studio before acquiring them entirely, some producers claimed he later used part of that money to fund his failed movie ventures instead of Freelancer, which were also later held afloat by a weird German tax fraud scheme (the mastermind of which later went to jail, which also resulted in German law changing and his whole excursion into the film industry collapsing instantly). His response to this was "it's fine, because it was general equity stake and not earmarked for Freelancer." The fact they had to wrestle Freelancer away from him is absolutely not surprising when he quite literally was dicking around on C-tier shitfilms like Wing Commander while people busted their ass.

People here are mentioning the notion of auteurs, of visionaries, etc. I disagree; that's an insult to actual creatives. Hideo Kojima is creative and has proven himself time and time again with both his repeated success and his wide array of unusual work. Everything I've seen of him indicates to me that Chris Roberts is, essentially, an overly ambitious child of a man and petty boss who was lucky Richard Garriott ever gave him a chance, and has ridden on almost nothing more than his legacy at Origin Systems, and has been desperately attempting to capture that again ever since.

[pdimitar]

I agree with most of your post.

But this part:

> Hideo Kojima is creative and has proven himself time and time again with both his repeated success and his wide array of unusual work.

...I'll disagree with. Kojima seems to be a guy who wants to actively subvert expectations which, with the release of Death Stranding, felt even more like a rebellious teenager wanting to stick it to the system above all else, and not make an actual fun and engaging game. (Not to mention that the premise and general plot have been beaten to death long ago and are well-known for most but the most juvenile of gamers.)

"Unusual work" does not equal "interesting and fun result". In fact I find most modern incarnations of "unusual" to be rebelling against the "norm" just for the sake of it.

But I in general have a beef with a lot of these Japanese "creators". They might be unusual on the background of a lot of the copy-paste Japanese (or generally Asian) works but on the global scale they are nothing special.

In fact they are a running joke in no small amount of circles: "Oh, a Kojima game? I bet now we'll have a crying raven, or a talking baby, or cows will turn out to be the superior race on Earth all along? And I bet there will be a government conspiracy even if most of humanity is already dead? And the protagonist will be just a regular guy who reluctantly saves the world?"

I kid you not, the above is almost word-for-word quote from a table discussion I had with a few other guys and girls when Death Stranding was 2-3 months away from release.

You and others might find this unconstructive and maybe even obnoxious but I'd still like to bring the perspective on you that guys like Kojima are in fact fairly predictable as well, and not in a good way.