Free Time Events: Shigeru Kojima (Side C)
EVENT 1: Kojima-san is determined to make a game that's better than any out there.
Kojima-san and I talked about game design for a little while. Despite being a technophile, I had never actually played a video game before, so I found it fascinating.
"I want to ask you something, Nagato," Kojima-san said. "Have you ever looked at a video game or other creative work, and thought 'I could do a lot better'?"
I shook my head.
"Not at all, Kojima-san," I said. "Maybe you'd be better off asking Sasaki-san about romance manga or the twins about J-rock."
"I did," Kojima-san said. "Sasaki modestly said 'I try to do the best I can,' but I know her goal's to be the best. As for Taiga and her sister, they've got their own niche when it comes to music. They're not completely unique, but each of them aims for the top."
That sort of ambition was probably common to all Ultimates, even those whose talents lay in fields where success was determined purely by technical standards, and there was little to no room for creative expression.
"I know they do," I said. "What about you?"
"I'm the same," Kojima-san said, "in that I want to make the best game I can, as well as one that innovates and breaks new ground. If you want to succeed, you need your unique identity, even if it'll probably be similar to something in the past."
"True," I said. "I mean, if you're making something that's similar to a popular game from not too long ago, why would people buy it?"
"That's the question everyone who seeks to practice their skills to make a living needs to be able to answer," Kojima-san said. "Why do you deserve a job at a video game company more than the dozens who are also applying? Why should the company go with your pitch for a new video game? Why should gamers give their time and money for the privilege of playing your company's games? I guess the questions might be different for different fields, but they all boil down to the same principle."
Kojima-san seemed to understand this well, which probably part of what set him apart from the many dreamers who were unable to achieve what he had. As for the rest, it probably boiled down to hard work and skill, showing that the Ultimates were people who dreamed big dreams, and had what they needed to make those dreams reality.
EVENT 2: Kojima-san's magnum opus started when he joined up with his friends in the same club. Together, they accomplished what they couldn't hope to do alone.
Kojima-san and I discussed how he made certain aspects of his game. It was an interesting discussion, although there were some questions he couldn't fully answer.
"I'm curious, Nagato," Kojima-san said. "Do you have any tech support friends or anything like that?"
I shook my head. For a moment, I feared that he'd realized that my title wasn't genuine, but I decided to humor him as best as I could.
"Unfortunately, no, Kojima-san," I said. "You can't staff a call center with one person, but in the end, everyone's responsible for dealing with their individual callers. Besides, I don't have many friends at my old school with similar interests."
"Ah," Kojima-san said. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"I'm guessing it was different for you?" I said.
Kojima-san nodded.
"Back in middle school, I was part of a gaming club full of aspiring game developers," Kojima-san said. "We learned our various trades- programming, graphic design, you name it- and made training projects, such as a shmup or a maze game."
"Ah," I said, "I suppose you had to get started somewhere."
"That's right," Kojima-san said. "It's a bit like how in RPGs, you start off fighting weak monsters, and it takes many hours before you get to the truly exciting battles. In this case, however, it was more like we were sparring with wooden swords, like squires or even pages who are training to become knights. It's an important step to honing your skills, but at the same time, you definitely don't want to be stuck at that step forever."
I had to agree. If I was lucky enough to train to be a knight in a medieval society (assuming my family was of high enough status and the society allowed women to fight), I would humbly follow my knight's commands and diligently apply myself to my training, all dreaming of the day I would be known as Dame Chiyuri and fight for the kingdom. I, too, had ambitions of my own; I just wasn't entirely confident in my ability to achieve them.
"Anyway, I eventually proposed the idea of making our own game," Kojima-san said, "namely, Realm of Three Kings. My proposal didn't include all the small details that the game became known for, because I didn't know whether my friends would consider it an idea worth pursuing, but they did. Our clubmates got together, along with some of our friends from outside the club, and the rest is history."
"I'm glad you all accomplished your goal," I said.
"Yeah, me too," Kojima-san said. "Since it's a team effort, we all had to work well together and make sacrifices, but in the end, each of us was doing it for our own reasons, and personally wanted to see it succeed."
I wondered about some of the people who had similarly grand ideas, but were never able to realize them. Some lacked the talent, others lacked the resources, and still others were unable to win the right people over. It was truly a shame that so many good ideas went unexpressed, even if I didn't know what to do about that.
EVENT 3: Realm of Three Kings was an ambitious undertaking, one Kojima-san couldn't have done alone. Of course, it's still amazing that all those people were able to combine their talents to make something like it.
Kojima-san told me a little about how Realm of Three Kings, specifically some of the smaller details. He kept it simple and easy to understand, but while this meant refraining from going into the more technical aspects, I was amazed by how much effort the project had taken.
"I'm impressed, Kojima-san," I said. "That sounds like a lot of work."
"It was," Kojima-san said, "but it also got a lot more manageable with multiple people working on it. It's a bit like how in a strategy game, a building that takes a minute to construct with one villager working on it might only take ten seconds if you have six villagers working on it, or six seconds if you have ten villagers working on it."
I understood the principle, simplified as it was. Of course, not only did buildings take much more time to build, a construction crew that was too small would struggle to get the job done, while one that was too large would be a logistical nightmare.
"In real life, it doesn't quite work out that way," Kojima-san said, "but having numbers helps, especially when those people bring a lot of different skills to the table. When you're making a video game, you can have different groups of people working on separate projects at the same time, especially when their skills are more specialized to various tasks. Of course, certain tasks have to be completed first- you can't animate a boss monster until that monster has a 3D model, and you can't make the model without a design- but if your crews do their jobs, you won't have to worry about that sort of thing holding you back."
"I guess not," I said. "Then again, it sounds as though there isn't any role someone like me could play in that process."
Kojima-san paused, and shook his head. I guess he wanted to disagree, but couldn't think of anything to say.
"Maybe there isn't," Kojima-san said, "apart from, y'know, getting us coffee or taking out the trash, but we handle that sort of thing ourselves. You could debug the game, but a friend of mine, who's an amateur speedrunner with a knack for finding glitches, has that covered."
"Fair enough," I said. "I don't think there's anything I could do for the gaming industry apart from a generic office job."
The thought of being an office lady for Kojima-san's gaming company and eventually finding a husband among my coworkers wasn't a bad one, but I knew that Kojima-san only had eyes for Azuki-san. I hoped that one day, he'd get over his desire for someone he couldn't have, but I knew that there were more fish in the sea. Besides, it wouldn't be easy for me to simply give up on my dream of becoming a teacher, not even if I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn't achieve it.
"Oh, wait, I do have an idea," Kojima-san said. "You could be the president of our group. You'd come in every day, order the others around, set deadlines and such, and act like a boss. At the end, you'd take the credit for the group's success and get the Ultimate Game Designer title, easy-peasy."
"Really?" I said, somewhat incredulously. Kojima-san's tone had been reasonably serious and he'd kept a straight face while saying. On the other hand, while the idea of my getting credit for my subordinates' hard work was based in reality, I couldn't accept that he was actually suggesting I try it.
Kojima-san then nervously chuckled and shook his head firmly.
"N-Nah, just kidding," Kojima-san said. "I know, it's not a very good joke, but that's why Realm of Three Kings isn't a comedy."
I wasn't laughing, but I knew that it wasn't because the joke wasn't funny- it was because Kojima-san hadn't truly intended for it to be a joke. In his heart of hearts, he questioned whether he'd deserved his title, but didn't feel ready to discuss it out loud, so he claimed he wasn't serious and laughed it off. So I forced a smile, all the while hoping he would confide in me.
EVENT 4: Kojima-san wasn't the only one who made his game a success, but he's the only one who got credit for it. He feels a bit guilty about that, not to mention worried about the future.
When I next saw Kojima-san, he looked troubled, clearly remembering how awkwardly our previous conversation had ended.
"Is something the matter, Kojima-san?" I said. "You've been acting strangely since last time."
Kojima-san sighed, then nodded.
"Let me ask you a question, Nagato," Kojima-san said. "You heard me talk about how important my friends were to finishing the game?"
"That's right," I said. "What about that?"
"Well, here's the next question," Kojima-san said. "Do you see any of them here in our class? You know, the Ultimate Programmer, the Ultimate Character Designer, the Ultimate Video Game Music Composer, the Ultimate Script Writer, you know?"
I shook my head. I didn't know all the people who worked on video games, but Kojima-san was the only person in our class who was in a video game-related job. As for Hope's Peak, I'd heard of a girl who was the Ultimate Gamer, but didn't know about anyone who made video games, let alone any of Kojima-san's friends. Besides, only two pairs of people had attended the same school- one was the twins, and the other was Himemiya-san and Tsukimura-san.
"No," I said. "I take it that's the problem?"
Kojima-san nodded.
"You bet," Kojima-san said. "To be honest, there's more than one problem. First, none of my friends are getting the credit they deserve, even though they played a crucial role to my success. I asked the recruiter about it, and said they'd only decided to invite me to the school. He didn't really elaborate when I pressed him; he just said they weren't good enough, in as many words."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "Didn't the twins get in together?"
"Yeah," Kojima-san said. "Dragon Girl isn't just a good performer, but the songs are well-written, too, so Taiga deserves as much of the credit as Tatsuki does. Sasaki also said that if she was an artist working with a writer, and that writer was high school age, she'd have asked for that person to be invited as an Ultimate, too. She'd also have nominated her assistants, but none of them are in high school."
Very few creative endeavors were one-person productions. While it was, hypothetically speaking, possible for me to write a novel by myself, I'd need an editor's help to refine it enough to get it published. Kojima was vastly more talented at game design than I was (not that it was saying much), but that fact still applied to him.
"So you couldn't make your masterpiece by yourself," I said. "Is there anything wrong with getting help from your talented friends and colleagues?"
"No, but that's related to the second problem," Kojima-san said. "It might sound kinda selfish, and that's probably because it is. But how the hell am I going to keep up my Ultimate Game Designer rep without them?"
I paused to think my answer through. If I tried to act like a know-it-all and commented on something outside of my field of expertise then at best, Kojima-san wouldn't believe me, and at worst, he'd get offended. There were worse things that could happen, but I wanted to help him, so I'd have to choose my words carefully.
"Maybe the school chose you based on how well you made Realm of Three Kings," I said, "but I think that if you were able to manage your friends well enough to bring out the best in them, a bit like the conductor of an orchestra, they saw that you had talent. They probably thought that if you were placed in charge of a team of equally talented strangers, you'd do just as well."
"Yeah, I guess so," Kojima-san said. "I don't know if they actually thought that deeply about it, but let's go with that."
Kojima-san didn't seem completely convinced, but I was relatively confident that my point was well-made, so I was sure that it would eventually sink in. Perhaps someday, once we made it back home he'd be thrust into a situation in which he'd have to succeed or fail by himself, and he'd see it through to the end by virtue of his own talent and determination.
EVENT 5: Kojima-san's determined to do his best to prove that he deserves the title and make even better video games.
Kojima-san invited me to his room, which had a poster of the game he'd published alongside his friends. It had a surprisingly professional appearance, enough so that I was amazed that he hadn't hired some freelancer to draw it.
"I've been thinking, Nagato," Kojima-san said. "Maybe it doesn't matter why I was chosen for the title, but what I do after being selected. You know how I brought up applying for jobs and such, earlier?"
'Yes," I said. "You have to prove that you're better than the competition, and stand out from everyone else."
While the Ultimate positions worked a bit differently due to not having publicized job openings- for example, Kojima-san probably didn't know that the school was looking for an Ultimate Game Designer until they paid him a visit- the same principle still applied. The Ultimates had to be famous and well-respected in their lines of work, since while the talent scouts were thorough, they also had high standards. Unlike job seekers, prospective Ultimates didn't have to submit a job application, so how well they did with that couldn't help (or hurt) their chances, and the interview phase of the application process mainly focused on getting them to demonstrate their talents. In the end, though, victory went to the most deserving, or at least the ones with the decision-makers' favor.
"That's right," Kojima-san said, "but that's only half the battle. Once you get hired, you have to prove that you can do your job, or else they might just fire you."
"I... I see," I said.
While Kojima-san probably hadn't intended to make me uncomfortable, I'd ended up thinking about such things anyway. Talent High School seldom expelled students(which meant revoking their titles) outside of extreme cases that were rather shameful for both the student and the school, but I did question whether there was any way of proving that I deserved my Ultimate Tech Support title.
"Don't worry about me," Kojima-san said. "All I have to do is keep on doing my best and making great games. I never had any desire to be just a one-hit wonder, so I won't rest on my laurels. With or without my friends, I'll make a game that puts Realm of Three Kings to shame."
"Good luck, Kojima-san," I said. "I'm rooting for you."
"Thanks, Nagato," Kojima-san said. "I don't know much about tech support, but I'm sure you'll accomplish great things there, too. If I do find a job I think you could do, I'll let you know."
We shook hands. Kojima-san didn't know me very well, but despite that, chose to put his faith in me. I didn't know how well-founded his belief was, but promised to do my best not to let him down.
Author's Notes
This was one of the first of Chiyuri's Free Time Events that I planned out, but it took a while to get the particulars down. Part of the reason why I planned this out is that Kojima will become relevant again in Chapter V.
