MGS Documentaries Response

The MGS2 documentary was mainly focused on their inspiration and idea generating process, and a lot of the things they were inspired by was very fascinating to hear about. When they mentioned idea journals and how the team members would wrote down an idea each day for Kojima to review (and approve if he liked it), it reminded me of other cases where I was encouraged to write daily. For one of my other classes this semester, we're asked to do a free-write for 3 minutes each morning; and for my poetry class last semester, we were also asked to do basically the same thing (write for 10 minutes everyday). I think this helps you not only become more self-aware (since you're writing directly what comes to your mind) but also, in Kojima's team's case, it increases the chances of discovering a REALLY good idea that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise if you hadn't challenged yourself to do so.

I really liked how Kojima and his team found inspiration in what seemed to be completely random, serendipitous situations (which only goes to show that inspo can come from anywhere). For instance, how Vamp was inspired by Joaquin Cortez because he had the right "look," but then they took it one step further and included Spanish flamenco influences in Vamp's theme music. Also using the analogy of Godzilla vs King Kong when writing for Snake and Raiden was super ingenious to me. It helped distinguish the two in a more complex way, gave their characters more depth. Similarly, the fact that some of Rose and Raiden's dialogue was inspired by Kojima and his wife made them more personable. I feel like I don't really draw directly from my personal experiences very often; I usually reference a personal event or emotion I've felt, but hardly ever explicitly depict a personal experience in my art. The only time I've done so is in poetry; but I can't recall ever doing so in visual art. Now realizing this, I might try to do that in the future.

Compared to the MGS2 doc, the MGS4 doc was more about the limits of teamwork, and how you have to find balance between everyone that is involved, rather than the ideation process. The whole director vs programmer (quality vs stability) part made me think about how an idea of yours might not come to fruition exactly how you plan it—ESPECIALLY in game industry, but I'm sure any sort of work/idea from a professional standpoint is the same way—where you have to consider constraints like time and budget, and may be forced to compromise by axing part of your idea(s).

The fact that Kojima continued to want to make changes so far into MGS4's development reminded me of how none of our work is ever truly "done." Even when I "finish" a project, there's still many ways in which I could improve it, yet I never act on those ways; perhaps because, in a similar way to how the MGS team was limited by the game's release date, we—as humans and creators—are limited by our own mortality. Typically, when I complete a project, I'm usually not completely satisfied with it, and I tell myself that I could just work on it again in the future, but I hardly ever do. Part of the reason why may be due to laziness or lack of motivation, but I think part of it is also the underlying awareness time is always fleeting. Maybe that's why most people might prefer to not go back and improve their old works (once they're "done"), but are more keen to produce new ones. Or maybe I just haven't really produced anything that I feel is "worth" going back to improve; but then again, isn't the idea of "worth" based on the fact that we don't have enough time to do everything? In a way, in every choice we make, there is the "cost" of wasting time. This makes me wonder, if we were immortal, would the quality of works that humanity produces improve because we have all the time in the world to better them? Or would they worsen, because we no longer have the constraint of time to motivate us to produce anything at all (procrastination)? Now that I think about it, maybe I don't return to improve my old works because I keep telling myself that I'll could just do it later, in the future. I kind of just went on an unrelated existential tangent (sorry), but this has made me want to consider how I can improve my old works, or maybe remix them somehow.