How Has Kojima Productions Managed to Develop Death Stranding in Three Years?

In a generation that has had its fair share of huge PlayStation 4 titles, both multi-platform and exclusive, delayed time and time again, Death Stranding feels like an enigma. Developed in the space of three years, Kojima Productions has managed to put out 2019's biggest title probably at least 365 days earlier than anyone thought it would.

[lptmg]

not having to code an engine of your own is a start

[NecrumOddBoy]

Yeah they spent a lot of time on the Fox Engine. Decima is such a beast though.

[UltraNova]

That^ and something called having creative freedom over the entire process without a single corporate suit over your head demanding changes every step of the way.

Plus, the guy had this concept in his mind for years and years so that obviously helped development go smoothly.

[Wasabi]

@Necrum

Here's the Digital Foundry analysis of the tech behind Death Standing if you're interested in knowing more about the engine.

Link below

https://n4g.com/news/230509...

[rainslacker]

It does kind of fly in the face of all the people that said Kojima takes too long to make games, despite the fact that can only be attributed to one game he's made...where he did indeed make an engine for it, which was supposed to be used for other Konami games. Konami also had him work on other projects which were troubled during the development of MGSV. but of course, there were those who didn't believe him when he said he's never missed a deadline.

[isarai]

Japanese devs are a whole different beast, they have very different pipelines and very rarely run into the issues western devs have of constantly adding, subtracting and changing aspects of the game till the last minute. They also dont focus so as heavily on developing NEW technology and instead primarily use tried and true methods and technologies. They are just a lot more efficient generally. Shadow of the colossus was built wuth a team of 23, and the last guardian with about 40 (with final push of getting to gold helped by santa monica studio) thats just how they've always been. Of coarse there are exceptions but generally thats just how they roll.

[Nosferatu_dude]

Wouldn't put last guardian as an example for your praising, it took some years to develop it with many problems in a process...

[isarai]

Wouldnt call it praising, just facts

[Elda]

Tell that to Square Enix.

[isarai]

Like i said, there are exceptions.

[rainslacker]

Depends on which Japanese dev your talking about. Square Enix is well known for making new tech for their games...sometimes to never actually use it past a single game. They have several engines made just for Final Fantasy, that end up not doing anything besides those titles.

MGSV had the Fox Engine created in conjunction with the game that Konami was supposedly going to use going forward with some of their other games.

Smaller devs tend to use readily available engines and tools, and that's probably a better way to go due to how much is required to make a full featured engine.

Other big devs from Japan are fine using readily available tools, with UE4 gaining a lot of popularity in Japan this gen.

I think Japanese devs can get mired down in feature creep, which is basically what you seem to be describing from western devs, but that's more a direction of the studio itself. There are many western devs which understand the scope of their games, and stick to that, and including new things is only done if it makes sense to the production, or makes the game better in a significant way....for the bigger scale stuff at least. The bigger problem you see from western devs though is that the scope of games is too big, and the direction isn't always there to keep everything in hand, which can lead to troubled development. Since a lot of Japanese games have a smaller scope...as in not everything has to be open world...they have an easier time keeping to their vision.

[PhoenixUp]

I wouldn’t call Death Stranding 2019’s biggest title

[ArchangelMike]

Well he's played the game, and he obviously thinks it is... so..

[2pacalypsenow]

What game has had more hype than DS in 2019?

[PhoenixUp]

@ Arch

So because he played it his opinion must be objectively true?

@ 2pac

Are you kidding? Resident Evil 2, Sekiro, Kingdom Hearts 3, Devil May Cry 5, Borderlands 3, Apex Legends, Super Mario Maker 2, Mortal Kombat 11, Control, Gears 5, Days Gone, Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, The Outer Worlds, & Metro Exodus received hype that was equal or greater than the hype for Death Stranding

[ArchangelMike]

In reality, Kojima was probably working on this as a side project while making MGS. From alot of the Death Stranding theory vids that are out there, apparently P.T. aka Silent Hills got reimagined as Death Stranding.

[rainslacker]

I'm sure a lot of the pre-production was done before he left Konami. I doubt any actual assets were created before his departure though. Developers have to be careful about that, because anything made at a company, is technically property of that company, and given how Konami and Kojima seemed to be on bad terms when he left, it's hard to believe they'd just let him keep that work for his own benefit later.

But, a lot of the ideas and discussion about it were probably done before he left. He had a working relationship with DelToro, and likely they were interested in making something like that. I believe this due to how fast the first trailer popped up after his departure from Konami.

Pre-production on a game like this can easily take a year or more, and that's assuming they had funding to go ahead. The first trailer seemed more like a proof of concept to fish for a publisher, which Sony eventually gave them. Otherwise, most of his staff came with him from Konami, and they have been working together a long time, and Kojima is a skilled director, despite what some people want to believe of his abilities.

[Fist4achin]

Amazing what a plan and hard work will do.

[gijsbrecht]

I understand Guerrilla Games also helped with its engine and some 70 people from the studio. But it is indeed impressive what Kojima achieved.

[AK91]

By using an external engine

[zumlauf14]

by cutting corners on gameplay lol. How long should it take you to create a "Fed-ex package delivery simulator"(as coined by an actual reviewer). Not long.

[obidanshinobi]

3 years seems normal for a new game by a talented designer with no microtransaction implementation.
It just shows that Kojima is competent and focused unlike many major AAA developers that spend a long initial phase of development thinking about how to add microtransactions to fleece their customers out of more cash.

It's only incompetence from other developers that makes you think that 3 years is a short time to develop a new game.