Japanese Article Goes Behind the Scenes at Konami

The apparent rift between Konami and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima was one heavily-reported sign that all isn't well at the Japanese developer and publisher. With Kojima's name removed fromMetal Gear Solid V's packaging and marketing and his development team dismantled, it seems like the end of an era both for the franchise and the company as a whole.

Then there's the whole sorry affair of Silent Hills, the collaboration between Kojima and director Guillermo del Toro that Konami abruptly shut down earlier this year. That game's enthusiastically-received playable demo, PT, was mysteriously deleted from PlayStation Store's library back in May.

So what's going on? A new report published by Nikkei might hold the answer. It depicts a quite scary working environment where employees are said to be monitored by cameras in office corridors and publically shamed for spending too long on their lunch breaks. Email addresses are randomized and changed every few months (apparently to prevent headhunting, according to Kotaku).  Some members of staff have reportedly been moved away from game development and onto entirely unrelated jobs like "assembly line work" and "clean-up at fitness clubs."

Further, it appears that Konami's falling out with Hideo Kojima and his internal studio Kojima Productions arose over Metal Gear Solid V's budget, which Nikkei claims has breached the $80m mark. While that isn't an unprecedented amount by the standards of global game development, it seems that it's far more than Konami wanted to pay. As a result, Kojima Productions has now been rebranded, and known internally as Number 8 Production department.

Kojima isn't the only well-known developer to fall out with Konami in recent months, either. In June, Akira Sakuma, the designer behind the long-running Momotaru Dentetsu - a series of transportation games that have been enormously popular in Japan - said that it was "officially done."

"Konami hasn't gotten in touch with me at all," Sakuma wrote on Twitter. "This is how they've tossed me aside for a while now. I'm announcing here that Momatoro Dentetsu is officially done. Ishikawa at Konami squelched everything."

Translations of Nikkei's article suggest that a shift in focus took place in 2010, when a mobile game, Dragon Collection, made an awful lot of money on a relatively small budget. Inspired by this, Konami's bosses have reportedly moved their focus from riskier console titles to mobile - meaning that such titles as Suikoden and Tokimeki Memorialhave fallen by the wayside. Metal Gear aside, Konami's only major title on the horizon is a new Pro Evolution Soccer entry.

Much of the translation is thanks to video game localizer Thomas James, and you can read a compilation of his tweets, which summarize Nikkei's article, here.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is out on the Sept. 1. Where the series - and Konami - goes from here is currently unclear.

NeoGAF