The Case Study of Metal Gear Solid 4

[MGS.]

C14. Finally
Starting with Hideo Kojima himself, the MGS team directors perform strict quality checks. They make no compromises. For example, during production they made four changes just to Snake's face. Of course, since this was performed not in pre-rendering but in real-time processing, there was a risk that specification changes could impact the game system itself. But every team member was determined to raise quality with as many improvements as were possible in terms of time and technology.
Yuji Korekado, the program unit manager, described how they work together. "Instead of creating things systematically, Kojima Productions is more like a gathering of craftsmen who are dedicated to their work. Of course, we use a whole variety of techniques to produce better products, but in the final analysis, we produce our best results when the spirit and courage of our team members come together."

Of course, gamers have a very high expectation of the Metal Gear Solid series, which is so popular all over the world. All the team members knew it was their mission to produce a superb product and could feel the pressure to take the game to the next level. But everyone, both at Konami and at their partner companies, was very enthusiastic about MGS and highly motivated right up to the end of production. It was this that made the project such a success.

Looking back over the project, Mr. Negishi gave us the following final words. "All MGS4 staff members are confident that this is an excellent game that they can send out with pride to fans around the world. I think that being blessed with such an excellent staff was the most important factor in the project's success. But I also think that choosing XSI for the development of this next-generation title, which involves such high quality images and large data sizes, may have been a factor in our success. The flexible and robust XSI architecture, which supports as many quality improvements as time allows, is really wonderful. Useful functions such as Gator and the superior animation editing environment also significantly reduced the amount of work required in development."

The team that was interviewed from Kojima Productions, Konami Digital Entertainment:
Yutaka Negishi, Design Unit Manager
Yoji Shinkawa, Art Direction Manager
Keiichi Umatate, Gun, Item and Machine Production Manager
Hideki Sasaki, Character Facial Setup Manager

Masahiro Yoshinaga, Motion Manager

Mineshi Kimura, Background Production Manager
Takahiro Omori, 2D Production Manager
Masaya Kobayashi, Event Demo Manager
Kunio Takabe, Program Unit Technical Director
Yuji Korekado, Program Unit Manager

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That's the end of the article. Apologies for the many posts but I couldn't add more than 10 images per post. Hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it, learned new things about the MGS4 production and what really those guys were doing 'behind the scenes'. I also hope no questions were raised during reading or anything left unclear due to the nature and content of the article.