@mrbojangles25 said:
@Jag85 said:
@mrbojangles25 said:
I kind of agree but extend this to all "household name" developers or heads of studios.
So not just Kojimas, but your Peter Molyneuxs, your Sid Meiers, Randy Pritchfords, Gabe Newells, etc.
I don't like how people deify these people sometimes. Video games are art, yes, but unlike a painting or what have you where there is a singular artist, it takes a dedicated team of people working together to make these games. If someone came to my place of work and said they wanted to talk to the guy "responsible for it all" and the "lead visionary" a.) no one would really know who they were talking about, and b.) if they went to the CEO that'd be embarrassing.
Same could be said for movies. They're also made by a team of people. But there's always a director who leads the project. Same goes for video games.
Exactly! And the end-result is these overhyped individuals that get egos the size of planets. The thing is, there are A LOT of creative people out there. There's a lot of people with great visions. The only difference is that "the greats" have had the opportunity.
They deserve credit, don't get me wrong...I just think it is important for us to realize they are not unique, and the only difference between them and thousands upon thousands of other creative types is a connection they made, the financial means they had, or some other extenuating circumstance. They aren't special (or rather, no more special than we are), they simply benefited from circumstances that allowed them to prosper.
While modern AAA game productions have large production crews comparable to big-budget Hollywood productions, back in the '80s and '90s, game development teams were way smaller, comparable to indie devs today. Back then, Kojima's team only had several people working on Metal Gear 1-2, Snatcher, and Policenauts, and just over a dozen people working on the first MGS. So Kojima deserves most of the credit for these works. It's only in the 2000s that his team significantly expanded in size.
What really differentiates "the greats" from others is influence. We can speculate all day about how they stumbled upon their creations, how original they really were, or what opportunities they were given. But what ultimately matters is the influence that they had on future generations and shaping history as we know it.
To use an example that illustrates this point really well: Atari's Pong was a rip-off that plagiarized the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis game. Yet it was Atari's Pong that had a massive impact on the video game industry, not the Magnavox game it ripped-off. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter that Pong was a rip-off. What really matters is the massive influence that Pong had on future generations and shaping video game history.
Log in to comment