Finding The Most Interesting Angle of a News Story - Hideo Kojima and Konami

WHY DID HIDEO KOJIMA LEAVE KONAMI?

Published October 19, 2015

On Friday, October 9th, Hideo Kojima left the Tokyo offices of Konami, the video-game company where he had worked since 1986, for the last time. The departure ceremony, according to one of the hundred or so guests who attended, and who asked that I not use his name, took place at Kojima Productions, the director’s in-house studio, and was “a rather cheerful but also emotional goodbye.” He said that he did not see Konami’s president, Hideki Hayakawa, or its C.E.O., Sadaaki Kaneyoshi, at the party, but some of Kojima’s colleagues from other studios showed up to pay their respects, as did many of the people who worked on his most recent directorial project, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The game, which takes place in mid-nineteen-eighties Afghanistan and Zaire, made a hundred and seventy-nine million dollars on its launch day, in September—more than the two highest-grossing films of the year so far (“Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Jurassic World”) combined. In the past several decades, Kojima’s name has become synonymous with such blockbusters, and with the Konami brand itself. His impending resignation had been rumored as early as March, but the fact of it remains startling—as much as if Shigeru Miyamoto, the originator of Donkey Kong and the Mario brothers, left Nintendo.

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Hideo Kojima Leaves Konami as Company Makes The Switch to Mobile Games and Pachinko Machines.

On Friday, October 9th, Hideo Kojima, famously known for his creation of the Metal Gear video game series, left the company he has worked with since 1986. Since 2007, Konami has shifted their main focuses towards mobile games, which gave them an eighty percent profit increase between 2011 and 2012. Konami has also invested in Pachinko machines, which bring in more money than funding AAA video games. Kojima's last and biggest project, Metal Gear Solid V: The Pantom Pain, took too long to create, and cost more than the company wanted, thus causing a fallout between Kojima and Konami. Today, Kojima has created his own video company, Kojima productions, and is currently working on his next big project: Death Stranding. 


The reason I chose to present the information above as a leading paragraph is because it sums up the situation pretty well. Readers can see why Kojima left Konami (mobile game shift) as well as the reasons that led to the departure. It gives viewers every important bit of the article without going to the statistics of mobile game success. 

Capstone Report 1: New Year, New WSHC

For my capstone I am both running a radio show called "Let's Get Reel" on Shepherd's radio station, 89.7 WSHC, as well as work on the station as Program Director for the semester. The new year came in, and with it, new opportunities for the station. We at the station have had a rough start with staffing the first week of classes, but we've started to gain a few students last week for both DJ positions and both PR and marketing positions. We've kept in contact with a cool app called Slack. It helps us a lot with keeping communication on track. I have been appointed as WSHC's representative for Shepherd's SGA weekly meetings, and from there I hope I can network with other campus organizations to get WSHC on the map at Shepherd.

As for overall public relations and marketing, we're bringing in a graphic designer to help us with our prototype flyers that we wish to post across campus by mid-February. We have also set up both Twitter and Instagram sites for WSHC, that are still on private settings until all functions of both social medias are completed. A new website for WSHC has been created by a fellow student this year, and it is pretty fantastic. With it, we can create bios for Spring 2017's staff, as well a schedule of radio shows we have lined up for the semester. Along with all this, we have a few big plans that we hope to get approval for, so I'm not gonna spoil them now in case they don't happen, but they are pretty neat. 

Tomorrow starts Week 3 of both school and capstone progress. I am meeting with my adviser to make sure I am using my time and resources well so far. Also, between you and me, the physical aspect of the station has been pretty cluttered lately due to lack of sufficient storage for a bunch of useless CDs. So this Friday, a couple staff members and I are clearing room in one of the communication department's basement closest to put all those CDs in. We want to creating an inviting environment at the station, and that can't be made possible until the boxes full of hundreds of CDs are gone.

That's pretty much it for progress on my capstone the past two weeks. I'm pretty proud at how far we're getting the station this early in the year. My dream is to have it fully functioning and staffed by the end of this semester. Who knows, maybe it'll spark a lot more interest next Fall after I graduate. That's a nice a idea that keeps me going on the project some days. 

Wright Brothers Headline

Two Brothers Soar Above the Earth!

By: Jesus Villarreal

On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright did the unimaginable and created a vehicle that could soar. The vehicle flew above 120 feet over a 12 second period on it's first flight. Such a feat wasn't accomplished overnight, yet, the Wright brothers were persistent.

The brother's dream was first thought up in their bicycle shop in 1896.