Kojima holds first meeting on new game

Hideo Kojima has begun holding daily meetings to discuss "planning, testing, research and scouting" on his next game.

According to the Metal Gear Solid creator's Twitter, the first meeting was last Thursday and 10 people were involved, including some members of the Metal Gear Solid: Rising team, although Kojima is not directing that project.

Kojima said the meetings would be "an open environment to talk about important issues and share our dreams and concept for the project".

Judging by some of Kojima's other tweets last week, we should also expect his next game to take place in an environment that has more in common structurally with western games.

"Japanese creators try to express the game's environment through beautiful artwork, but western developers use technology to draw out the environment," Kojima observed.

"The Japanese make the models and textures carefully to create a world. The West use shaders, lighting, shadows, effects, and programming to create their world.

"For my next project, I'm going to mention to the staff to throw out the old ways of production. Do not create pretty images, create a beautiful world.

"Designers shouldn't focus only on their part, but also borrow the programmer's strength to maximise the quality. We shouldn't measure quality by parts, we will measure by the quality and completion of the entire world."

Not that Kojima has traditionally struggled to make pretty games, obviously - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is still one of the best-looking things on PlayStation 3.

Many Japanese developers and publishers - notably Capcom - are increasing their involvement with western studios and "globalising", and Kojima already has form here too, having been involved in production on the excellent Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, released this month.