Konami has had nothing if not a messy end of the year full of questionable business practices following a ton of turmoil and perceivably bad dealings in separation and dismissal of Metal Gear Solid’s creator and director, Hideo Kojima. Nonetheless, it would seem they’re ready to move forward with previous plans to continue the franchise and have posted the inevitable job openings for the next entry of the series.
The postings on Konami’s official website extends the need for new development staff with experience in high end game development in their Tokyo and LA offices. This is unsurprising considering Hideo’s development studios under Konami were closed in both LA and Tokyo. Seems there’s going to be a lot of empty space to fill on the newest project.
Indeed, any development team that takes the job has some big shoes to fill. Kojima ran the Metal Gear Solid franchise masterfully for years, but problems had growing behind the scenes, culminating in Konami barring Kojima from accepting a deserved award at the Game Awards 2015 for his final illustrious work in the series or even attending the event. He officially left the company on December 15 and has sense formed a new Kojima Productions free of Konami’s politics.
It’s hard to guess what a new non-Kojima Metal Gear Solid will even look like. Will a new team stay true to the original tones or blaze their own path? More importantly, will it be good? One thing is for certain: Whatever new development team has to take up the reins of the Metal Gear Solid series has quite a task ahead of them and is going to be in a highly scrutinized position that no one should envy.
