Post Mortem: Konami Ruined Metal Gear Online

Metal Gear Online was, simply put, one of the best ideas Kojima ever had. Created by taking the system, the rules and the ethos of Metal Gear and then throw it at a competitive online market and see what stuck. The result was something familiar, but yet so refreshing. Competitive tactical stealth action for the whole family, built on the back of the Guns of the Patriots strong gameplay and narrative. Create a character, design them from the ground up and then pit them against every other Metal Gear otaku with a Six Axis — as were the times — in order to become the best elite operator in the business. It was so good, it took me three and a half years to stop playing.

The game came with a myriad of game modes ranging from the standard team deathmatch to more familiar sneaking missions, featuring everyone’s favorite old age pensioner with a 9mm. Competitions were ran weekly for those who could stock up the credit and navigate the market place to buy the add-ons and for a time the community thrived. Metal Gear Online was just the place to be for online competition; a place where the best were the best and the rest took notice.

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It followed the same formula as its Guns of the Patriots counterpart. Third person shooter with stealth elements, only it wasn’t an AI you were fighting. Players could use all the tactics and tricks they would use in the main game to get one over on their online competitors, and if they were having trouble keeping up with the more experienced players then there was always training sessions run by more experienced players to help them along. When you were finally good, or bad, enough then Konami would take note of your outstanding, or unremarkable, performances and see fit to bless you with a title and emblem for your troubles, or tragedies. The truly elite would walk away with Foxhound, while the less impressive had to walk around branded as a sloth, which basically meant you were bullet bait for better players and were to be instantly ejected from the clan. (Kidding!)

You built yourself up from the rookie we all once were, taking refuge in the inexperienced game lobbies before finally stepping into the ring with the real players and getting ripped a new one everyday for a week until you found the pace. When you finally proved your mettle some kind soul would take pity on you, dust the shame off your pulverised posterior, and let you be in his gang. Baptism of fire over, and you were apart of the family.

Build or join a clan, it didn’t matter. War was the game, and you played your part under the banner of your clan. Every week I threw myself at the survival rounds, fighting for credit and a reputation worth bragging about. Eventually it was more about who you represented that meant something, not what you were capable of. That, inevitably, became the problem.

I saw Call of Duty(s) come and go over the years, but MGO was the one vice I just could not kick. Until its community and lack of moderation finally killed it off; turning it into a breeding ground to the very worst kind of gamer. However this was only a symptom, and it would have been treatable were it not for the chronic cause of the problem. The demise of one of gaming’s most under appreciated and most ambitious titles began much earlier than the arrival of competitive scamming, lag switching and inflated egos. It all began on day one; it all began with Konami.

Players will likely remember that in order to access Metal Gear Online they were forced to navigate a sluggish and very frustrating series of websites in order to obtain a Konami ID. I feel like I have to point out that, as far as I know, this has never been heard of or used in gaming since. Apparently, just using the Playstation Network to deal with the registration was much too simple, so Konami made the executive decision to piss off every single one of their consumers before they even had the chance to have a crack at the game itself.

Six million people experienced Snake’s final mission, but not even half that number made it to the online servers. Region locked, difficult to access and unforgivably under promoted; Metal Gear Online had no business getting the numbers it did. But still, despite Konami’s bumbling marketing decisions, Metal Gear Online grew from an online tack on to become one of the most persistent online competitive battlefields gaming had ever seen. Many people draw their own reasons as to why MGO survived as long as it did, but the one reason I think it stood out was because it very easily became a personal matter.

Every character was your own. At the start many people even had their own names, or derivatives, and Kojima Productions gave players no shortage of customizable options. Male or female, skin color, skill sets, clothing, brands and affiliation. Without having ever experienced a massive multiplayer game, I can’t suggest its similarity, but having a recognizable MGO avatar was something gamers could take pride in. And as always, pride came just before the fall.

Players began getting too attached to their reputations to stick it out in survival matches, often quitting if too tough of an opponent presented itself in the lobby. This eventually led to the best—or so many thought—of the players banding together under one banner to avoid losing out. So if you only made it on to Metal Gear Online a year after kick off, then you were out of luck. Survival of the fittest set in, and new players rarely got the chance to face opponents of similar calibre once they started stepping, bleary eyes full of hope, out of the rookie lobbies and into the domain of shit that had become the online community. New players rarely lasted, and with the supply of troops beginning to thin to a trickle the game became the home to a cut throat and elitist breed of gamer.

I’ll stick my hand up, for a time I was part of the problem. I was one of the shameless little bastards who laid in bed with the better players and then had the time of my life kicking the teeth out of the new guys when it came to competitive matches. In my later days I tried to turn against it, trying to grass root younger clans for newer players, but the results were always the same. In a game of skill experience spoke volumes, and nothing I could do would save what little dignity there was left in the community.

Then I suppose in mid 2010, I guess the ‘best’ just got bored of the rules. Exploits, glitches and even scams started becoming more and more common. Getting two kills for the effort of one was easy, and spawn camping was much too simple to begin with. And where were the adjudicators? The people responsible for keeping this sort of thing in check? Nowhere to be found. At least, not when you needed them. Eventually my account fell victim to a hacker, and despite my complaints, it was lost forever and eventually banned when said hacker did … something. I was never informed what, just charged with breaching terms and conditions and exiled from the toxic waste ground for good.

It was then that I realized the source of the problem. Many of these problems would never have happened had Konami just done their job and applied common logic to their approach. The game should have never been region locked, and the community should never have been left to its own devices, because once it had realized that there was no god (catch the Easter egg?), it was free to do as it pleased without thought for consequence. Finally Konami announced that it would be closing the doors to Metal Gear Online for good on June 12th, and gave away all of the DLC packets as a thank you to loyal customers, an extra kick in the teeth at that point.

Obviously, it’s now closed, and I can only hope it’s because they plan on releasing a better version in the future and one that Konami takes an active interest in maintaining. All Metal Gear Online needed was a bit of love, discipline and thought and I could still be slitting throats to this very day. You know, in an environment where nobody actually gets hurt.