14 DAY TRIAL // Apparently, the people who work on bringing Solid Snake to life aren't the vicious, macho men that you might expect. Even more so, Kojima's employees drown themselves in one of their own games, but it has nothing to do with the popular Metal Gear Solid franchise. The title that got these Japanese workers lovesick isn't an action game at all, but a dating sim. "I see them all standing in the shadows looking serious, and I go and see what's up and they're all bragging about their girlfriends – like, 'Oh, she changed her hairstyle for me' and so on. I'm not gonna give his name, but there's one guy who hasn't had a girlfriend for decades and talking about his virtual friend makes him so incredibly happy," Hideo Kojima told gaming magazine Famitsu.
The game in question is Love Plus, a dating sim for the Nintendo DS that was released in Japan earlier this September. Konami's sim stands out from its fellow “gal-games” by focusing less on the “thrill of the hunt” and more on the actual relationship. The game cuts away the endless flirting session found in the other titles and lets the player manage the actual “virtual” relationship in a real-time, 24-hour style, in a system not that different from Animal Crossing.
The game proved to start a bit of a trend in Japan. It sold 124,000 copies on word-of-mouth alone and most of Kojima's employees are part of the madness. "You pretty much never see Konami games becoming popular among the employees of Konami themselves," Kojima said. "I think Love Plus is the first one. You see people sneaking in time with it in the bathrooms and so on.” Now don't jump to the wrong conclusion, it's not what you think. “I guess they don't want to get caught playing it at their desks," he explained.
Among the weirdest things that the game has accomplished so far is a true Kotaku trademark. "I was talking with Goichi Suda earlier, and [he] told me about this guy he saw who went to a movie theater by himself but bought two tickets," Kojima told Famitsu. "Suda was curious, so he went in with him and saw him take his DS out of his backpack, open up the case and place it in the seat next to him. He had his 'girlfriend' on the screen!" OK, that might indeed be a little bit too much. A good game has to be believable and immerse players in it, but no to the point where they confuse reality with fiction. At least, these gamers won't be the ones that confuse what's real and what's not by starting a shooting spree at their local high school. That's reserved for the American players.