The golden rule of working in any industry is to never be a shitty business partner and burn all your bridges down by releasing a tell all, but this seems like a really special case. As Jeff said during the podcast about Keighley's comments about Konami; if there is any company you are going to throw under the bus, it might as well be one that is getting all the way out of video games.

Everyone really wants to know about the development of MGSV, and how much of it was a affected by/a commentary of his time working at Konami. I mean in Ground Zeroes Kojima himself is literally an undercover agent at a prison camp. I don't know much about Kojima personally to determine if he would ever make a move like this, but I feel like it's a really good ace in his pocket if he really wanted to ever create more publicity for his studio's future projects. What do you guys think?

No, never.

I honestly have no idea what he has to gain. May have been a messy end, but Kojima/Konami did some amazing work for decades.

Most likely he will not...but I'd sure has heck buy it if he ever did.

Ha, no.

It is highly unlikely that Kojima has been allowed to leave without placing a non-disparagement agreement on him.

Not for a very very long never.

I think he's legally not supposed to. There might be a probation period but for how long I don't know. I think that Nikkei article that talked about the company's work culture pretty much sums it up.

Pretty much, doesn't seem like the executives or lawyers want to give him the opportunity to do so. I guess non-compete clauses must not exist in the Japanese legal system though?

Maybe in a few years, when Kojima was succesful with his independent startup and Konami is under new management (and now owned by a big media company)...you know, I could see them buying up Kojimas new joint, reintegrate it into their company and...I don't know, put up an interview where all the dirty laundry from way back when gets aired.

The rumors I've read about Konami paint them as a company you do not fuck with. Thank goodness Kojima was able to get out of there.

After he's dead.

Konami seem like the company who would send suited assassins after you if that happened, so hopefully not.

No, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's into talking about people in negative ways. Or to talk about negative things in general. I'm sure he'd rather just move on.

Kojima himself? No.

One of his subordinates? Maybe. But unlikely. Doesn't seem like a Japanese thing to do.

No.

Also, as shitty as Konami is, he's also a well paid employee with a lot of control over his projects. He does not have as much to complain about.

No. He probably signed an NDA. Even without one, that's something not done in Japanese culture -- at least not his generation.

NDA's don't last forever. But I do think he won't say much bad things about Konami out of respect.

Why would Kojima want to insult the company that employed him and let him make his own crazy stuff for nearly thirty years? That's completely insane.

Of course (I wish him long and happy life). But it seems to me that people nowadays confuse "never" with "until tomorrow". Not that it is completely deprived of sense on this quickly moving pale blue dot of ours.

When Konami goes under, which might not happen for awhile. Never say never though.

Probably not, but there might be a 3rd party writing a book based on "anonymous sources" or something like that.

Re-watching the "disclosure" video Jeff and John Davison of Gamespot did when GB started with CBSi (which is here if you have not seen it), it made me put this in perspective and wonder if Kojima also feels like Jeff did in that video (where he expressed that he did not have animosity towards "the company" or want to do it harm - it was a misguided management team that was to blame for his firing). You don't burn a house down because you find a rat in it.

I have a feeling that we'll hear more sooner than most people think but not nearly as soon as we might like. Right now Kojima and associates are probably in the middle of the administrative/financing aspects of running a business and that usually involves talking to a lot of outside investors and partners. That's the worst time to come across as the type of person who strikes back at collaborators if things turn sour. On the other hand though there are so many people involved who are not necessarily beholden to Japanese corporate culture who probably have the leeway to say some factual things that pieced together will give an idea of what happened beyond what we already know and suspect.

Also probably worth considering that as bad as Konami looks right now it's probably the case that Kojima had a role in the split as well that doesn't always look good on his part so it's hard to say how willing he would be to open up about those aspects.

In Japanese corporate culture, it's fairly rare to change jobs so far along in ones career. That's part of how Konami got away with turning game devs into janitors without them immediately quitting and moving on to another company. Something like what is happening with Kojima, while not unprecedented, it extremely uncommon.

That said, when one changes companies, it's generally accepted that you do not discuss any sensitive information about your former company, sometimes your severance pay is contingent on you legally agreeing to keep your mouth shut and you can be sued if you don't. So if it ever happened, which I don't think it ever will, it'll be ten or twenty years from now.

It is either him or someone in his team, it's just a matter of time.

I bet his next game will be riddled with clues. Seems like the Kojima thing to do.

He just did it by retweeting a Japanese article about the theory of TPP being unfinished and rushed on his Japanese twitter account, which is a big step for someone in the Japanese industry to dare to do.

Non compete clauses only work when a company offers you severance.

I'm sure he is contractually prohibited from doing so

Nobody in the industry ever really seems to do that, even when they story seems like a good one. You have some unofficial or official biographies of companies, like "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture" by Kushner. But such books are rare, and often such thing are not discussed until decades later and written by third parties not involved.. In Kojima's case, I'm sure he feel luck to be putting that behind him and moving on.

I'm curious about the behind-the-scenes stuff, but isn't it pretty obvious? In a time when Konami can't make money on video games and doesn't want to fund them, he was incredibly over-schedule and over-budget, they weren't willing to give him time/money, and he is an artist who doesn't compromise on his vision and blames the company? There's not some incredible story there, just some ruthless suits with a limited bank account and a project manager who can't deliver what he's supposed to deliver.

Kojima probably can't. Sort of like how Jeff couldn't talk about old GameSpot, Kane and Lynch, and how he was fired until Giant Bomb was absorbed into CBS/back with GameSpot.