“There was a sort of legend at Konami, that if you got involved in this project, you'd up demoted or transferred. (laughs) [...] once we got a working build running, and they saw that exclamation mark pop up when the enemy gets surprised, that sold them on the concept.”
In 1999 Kojima recounted the difficult genesis of Metal Gear: Konami initially wanted a war game, and several veteran developers had spent two years on the project creating and discarding ideas without success. There was a company legend that anyone who joined the project ended up demoted or transferred. When the project reached Kojima, he proposed an escape-style game inspired by The Great Escape, but the veterans dismissed the idea as the kind of game that did not exist, and Kojima became so fed up he was prepared to quit Konami. Then an older employee took charge and called everyone to a presentation, and attitudes began to change; although they still doubted whether an escape game would be fun, once they had a working build and saw the exclamation mark appear when an enemy was surprised, that convinced them the concept would work.
“It got to the point where I was so fed up with working at a corporation like this that I was ready to quit Konami altogether. But then I talked with another older employee, and from that conversation, a pathway opened up.”