vili's recent activity
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
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Comment on Game testers wanted for science fiction game in ~games
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
vili Link ParentI quite enjoy the battle system as it turns many screens into light puzzles. If I have already encountered an enemy, I more or less know how many hearts it will take from me, so I can plan how...I quite enjoy the battle system as it turns many screens into light puzzles. If I have already encountered an enemy, I more or less know how many hearts it will take from me, so I can plan how much I want to engage. It's basically a game of resource management. And even when I die, death itself is a non-issue, just a small inconvenience.
It was interesting to read in the Yasuhiko Fujii interview that even he considered the game's title weird.
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
vili LinkI've been thinking about what the target audience for Kaeru no tame ni kane wa naru might have been at the time of release. Would I be far off thinking that this was a game primarily targeted at...I've been thinking about what the target audience for Kaeru no tame ni kane wa naru might have been at the time of release. Would I be far off thinking that this was a game primarily targeted at 10-to-12-year-olds?
This is what I gather based on the trailer, the target audience for Game Boy at least in North America at launch apparently having been 9 to 14 year old boys, and the general straightforwardness of the game and its story.
Would anyone here happen to know more about the development background and designers' intentions?
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
vili Link ParentI'm jealous. My brain seems actively hostile against letting any kind of foreign vocabulary move in and enrich my communicative abilities. While I speak and read a handful of languages to various...My brain seems to naturally pick up patterns and vocabulary over time when I immerse myself, even passively, so I'm hoping that consistent exposure will help, much like how a child learns their first language.
I'm jealous. My brain seems actively hostile against letting any kind of foreign vocabulary move in and enrich my communicative abilities. While I speak and read a handful of languages to various degrees of proficiency, it's always been incredibly difficult for me to build up vocabulary.
Speaking of vocabulary though, I have progressed to a point in the game where the title is starting to make sense. Or at least I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it.
Once you learn about the bell in the game, the official translation of カエルの為に鐘は鳴る (Kaeru no tame ni kane wa naru), The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls, makes a lot of sense. It is also worth noting that Japanese nouns don't have separate singular and plural forms, so the title could also be translated as The Frogs for Whom the Bell Tolls. Which, again, makes perfect sense in the context of the game.
A note on の為に (no tame ni). While the phrase has been rendered in English as just "for", there is perhaps a little bit more nuance to it in the original Japanese, as no tame ni carries with it a sense of purpose, goal or benefit. So, I think a more literal translation could be something like The Bell Rings Because of the Frog or The Bell Rings for the Benefit of the Frog(s), which would make perfect sense in the context of the game.
Then there is the word kaeru. It means "frog", and the fact that it is spelled with katakana (カエル) marks it with that meaning. However, there are other Japanese words that are pronounced the same and carry meanings relevant to the game. You can find a list here, but in a nutshell, there is a group of words that has the connotation of return, particularly return home, and another group that carries the meaning of alteration or replacing something with something else. So, we could in theory entertain possibilities such as The Bell Rings for the Sake of Going Back Home or The Bell Rings to Bring About an Alteration. Which, again, would make sense to me based on what I have seen of the game.
I also find it interesting that we are talking about frogs and a spring bell. In Japanese poetry, frogs are often used as markers of spring. In fact, in one of the most famous haikus of all time, the frog elegantly works as its seasonal reference, marking it as a spring poem:
An ancient pond
A frog jumps in
The sound of water
(Matsuo Basho, 1686)Frogs also have the connotation of money and prosperity in Japan. There would be quite a lot to unpack there as well (not least because kane ("bell") happens to be homonymous with the word for "money"), but I've been mainly thinking about how in the game, a considerable amount of progress works through money and the things that the player purchases, and how large amounts of money are additionally used as a plot devices in a couple of places, as well as being something about the protagonist that Richard comments on disapprovingly here and there.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure Schedule: April - September 2026 in ~games
vili Link ParentI'm more than happy to host Space Rogue. I hope I can do half as good a job as everyone who has worn the mantle so far. To be honest, I feel a bit bad now for (over)selling the game to you guys,...I'm more than happy to host Space Rogue. I hope I can do half as good a job as everyone who has worn the mantle so far.
To be honest, I feel a bit bad now for (over)selling the game to you guys, as it means that we miss on something like Zork, or Another World, or Tetris, or Mother 3. Also a bit gutted for The Colonel’s Bequest getting killed entirely! I was very much looking forward to that one as it's one of the few major Sierra titles that I haven't played, and it's also one of the last to use a text parser, and I love me a good graphical text parser game.
On the other hand, what a roster of games we have for the next six months! Wow.
Just a thought about the schedule: Space Rogue and Pirates! are fairly similar games featuring quite similar underlying game loops. As such, they can create a great pair for comparison, so I'm personally all for having them back-to-back if that was the plan, but I just wanted to flag this in case two months of raiding and trading might be too much for some to players, in which case it might be good to have a palette cleanser or two between them.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Voting Topic in ~games
vili Link ParentSounds good to me. Thanks for putting so much of your time and effort and love into this!Sounds good to me. Thanks for putting so much of your time and effort and love into this!
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Comment on What would you do with a video game style inventory? in ~talk
vili LinkI would run tests about quantum entanglement. (Or as I don’t understand quantum entanglement at all, I would have others run the tests.) I would be curious what happens if we put one half of an...I would run tests about quantum entanglement. (Or as I don’t understand quantum entanglement at all, I would have others run the tests.) I would be curious what happens if we put one half of an entangled particle pair into the inventory, where time stops for it, and then measure the other particle. Do both wave functions still collapse, does only the one outside of the inventory do so, or does the “stuck” pair in the inventory prevent the wave function of the non-inventory particle from collapsing.
Like I said, I understand none of this on any level of detail, but I have the feeling that my inventory might answer many questions about physics, and could lead to huge breakthroughs that would benefit us all. Or it might break the laws of physics on a level that crashes the entire universe.
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
vili Link ParentPolygon actually predicted that 2026 would be the year of the frog in gaming.Polygon actually predicted that 2026 would be the year of the frog in gaming.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Voting Topic in ~games
vili Link ParentI took existing points into account in my vote. I didn’t vote for a couple of titles that seemed to be doing well already and I tried to give more points to fewer games rather than spreading my...I took existing points into account in my vote. I didn’t vote for a couple of titles that seemed to be doing well already and I tried to give more points to fewer games rather than spreading my votes too thin. The voting system also affected my choices in the nominations and lobbying rounds.
I’m ok with anything, but for the sake of simplicity would lean more towards proceeding with the system as planned and fine tuning it for the next round. The list is very strong and whatever gets selected is surely worth playing.
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Lobbying Topic in ~games
vili Link ParentOoh, that indeed may not have been the best comparison to throw out there. And for the record, I certainly didn't want to imply that horror and Christianity are somehow directly linked. Christmas...Ooh, that indeed may not have been the best comparison to throw out there. And for the record, I certainly didn't want to imply that horror and Christianity are somehow directly linked. Christmas just happened to be the first holiday to pop into my head.
I'm one of those who would definitely need extra convincing to play a horror game. It's just not a genre that I typically find enjoyable in any form.
And yet, one of my most memorable gaming experiences has actually been the first Dead Space game. It was masterful. I never played the sequels and never had any desire to. The first one was more than enough. But it was absolutely brilliant. As for more retro horror that I enjoyed, the first one that comes to mind is I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. I guess it could be classified as horror? In the nominations thread, @balooga mentioned Yahtzee's game series. I forgot to reply there, but I remember those being genuinely good as well, and quite spooky.
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
vili Link ParentThanks! The green palette it shall be for me, then. I got a little side tracked (how untypical of me), thinking about the unofficial English translation. I've been playing the beginning of the...Thanks! The green palette it shall be for me, then.
I got a little side tracked (how untypical of me), thinking about the unofficial English translation.
I've been playing the beginning of the game in both the original Japanese and in English, just to see how they differ. Not that my Japanese is on a level where I could really say anything meaningful about the differences. So, I've been mainly pondering about the endless! use! of! exclamation! marks! in the English translation. Which actually more or less exist also in the Japanese, yet to me somehow come across as less exclamatory. I'm not sure why. Probably just because, like I said, my Japanese is not on a level that would allow me to say anything meaningful about the differences. Do we have any Japanese speakers in the club?
Also, I don't mean the above as any kind of criticism against the translation. I've liked the English version so far. I'm in awe that people do things like these.
You mentioned that you learnt some Japanese for Animal Crossing. Do you have plans to continue, and did you know that someone has made a full Anki vocabulary deck for Kaeru no tame ni kane wa naru? I don't know if it contains the whole script (2710 entries, so maybe?), but if it does, it looks like the game was very much targeted at a younger audience, as it seems to contain only 94 kanji. Which is very little. I briefly contemplated trying to learn the deck this month, but I think I better just concentrate on enjoying the game. Still, the idea of learning vocabulary this way fascinates me.
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Comment on How far back in time can you understand English? in ~humanities.languages
vili Link ParentAbsolutely. That's sort of what I was trying to say when I wrote that while a modern reader travelling back in time could have had prior contact with previous forms and cultures of English, a...the fact by some definitions, most modern educated readers have been exposed to Chaucer's work already is a big factor, after all!
Absolutely. That's sort of what I was trying to say when I wrote that while a modern reader travelling back in time could have had prior contact with previous forms and cultures of English, a reader travelling forward in time could not have that. (Although, we do already allow time travel, so I don't know why I assume that we don't allow information travel.)
In any case, like you say, in the end it's very much a question of what type of an educated reader, what type of a text, and so on. There are so many variables.
When I (a non-native English speaker) first went to an English speaking country, I had studied English for over a decade and already began my university studies in English philology. I read English books exclusively and watched English (well, American) media. I was pretty much fluent in the language. Or so I thought, until I stepped off the boat in Dover, walked to the railway station and couldn't understand a single word that the ticket seller behind the counter said. Never mind, I thought, they had a really bad loud speaker, the voice was distorted. But then, on the train, the conductor came and, again, I had to ask him to repeat something three times before I understood what he was trying to tell me. Dialects, huh.
Your comment got me thinking about another variant of this topic's question. Who might be the earliest author of a text written in English who would easily recognise their own work if given its modern English translation? Shakespeare certainly would. Chaucer and Langland, probably? Layamon, Geoffrey of Monmouth and other chronicles writing in Early Middle English, I'm not so sure? The Old English authors of The Wanderer, The Seafarer and Beowulf, surely not?
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Comment on CGA-2026-03 🕹️🐸🕌🔔 INSERT CARTRIDGE 🟢 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls) in ~games
vili LinkA brilliant intro, @J-Chiptunator! The background music added nicely to the reading experience. I got the game running with the English patch on my Miyoo Mini Plus, so I'm all set. Now I just need...A brilliant intro, @J-Chiptunator! The background music added nicely to the reading experience.
I got the game running with the English patch on my Miyoo Mini Plus, so I'm all set. Now I just need to decide which colour theme to stick with, rather than switching between them constantly in search of the aesthetically most pleasing option.
Which actually reminds me: I never owned a Game Boy myself (or any Nintendo device for that matter), so I don't really know how things worked. Could someone educate me please: do I understand correctly that the original Game Boy of 1989 had a monochromatic pea soup green palette, the mid-90s Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light offered a monochromatic grayscale palette with white, and the 1998 Game Boy Color was backwards compatible with the original Game Boy and allowed users to select from a list of 12 palettes for those games? The original Kaeru no tame in kane wa naru would have been designed with the green monochrome palette in mind?
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Comment on How far back in time can you understand English? in ~humanities.languages
vili Link ParentLike I mentioned in my comment, I too believe that the best potential for understanding exists sometime after the Norse influence, and a speaker of Old English would likely struggle more. That...Like I mentioned in my comment, I too believe that the best potential for understanding exists sometime after the Norse influence, and a speaker of Old English would likely struggle more. That said, although I did very cursively study both Old English and Middle English at university, I don’t remember enough about the exact timelines to really be able to say where the sweet spot would be. Like you say, most likely after 1066. I tried to play it safe with 1100s and 1200s.
I agree that when we read Chaucer and his contemporaries, let alone Beowulf or Bede, we are typically so removed from the cultural context that we miss a lot and misunderstand plenty. But as Nemoder asked about an educated reader's ability to parse the language, I would guess (and this is purely a guess) that a modern educated reader can still get a better superficial understanding of Chaucer than Chaucer could get reading something from 2026. Much depends on the text itself, of course, but today’s news for instance would likely be quite baffling and difficult to parse for Chaucer even on a surface level, without an interpreter explaining how the world functions and interacts these days.
The question where the line between mutual spoken understanding might exist is also fascinating, but slightly different from Nemoder’s question about educated readers parsing written texts. I share your gut reaction that trying to reach mutual intelligibility with an Old English speaker would be very difficult. My gut also says that the point where a native speaker from the past could more or less immediately understand us is later than it is with written text. Much of course depends on dialects, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say a speaker from the 15th or 16th century might be the earliest plausible candidate.
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Comment on How far back in time can you understand English? in ~humanities.languages
vili Link ParentThis is a really interesting question. On the one hand, a modern English speaker has the advantage that they may already have had exposure to previous forms of English and the various cultural...This is a really interesting question. On the one hand, a modern English speaker has the advantage that they may already have had exposure to previous forms of English and the various cultural landscapes in which it was spoken, so in that sense navigating backwards in time is easier than if you travel into the future, of which you could not know anything about beforehand. Similarly, the present day vocabulary of English builds on what it was in the past, so in theory for a backwards-traveller there is a higher chance of figuring out words and how they may have changed.
On the other hand, many of us travelling back in time seem to start hitting a communicative brick wall around the 1200s and 1100s, when both the vocabulary and the grammar of English become more predominantly Germanic. Meanwhile, a highly educated forward-moving traveller from that era would have the benefit of not only knowing the more Germanic version of English (well, it's just "English" for them), as well as speaking and reading French and Latin, from which later forms of English borrowed a lot of vocabulary. They might be in the sweet spot, as for a forward-moving traveller coming from an even earlier time, the Scandinavian vocabulary that English adopted during the Viking era might become an issue.
As English grammar, or at least morphology, has in many ways become simpler, someone from the 1100s and 1200s might also have an easier time figuring out present day English sentences than the other way around. For them, the English of 2026 might read a bit like our depictions of caveman English: "Tuk want meat, Tuk hungry", lacking the finesse and flexibility of a more inflectional language (but of course having gained in other ways).
They would probably also be more accustomed to interpreting variations in written language than we are, as English spelling really only started to become standardised in the late 15th century with the invention of the printing press. For an educated 13th or 12th century scholar, spelling would have been more phonetic and expressing personal preferences and dialectal differences. Also lucky for them, modern English is sort of spelled like the language was spoken in the 15th century, before much of the Great Vowel Shift rampaged through the English vowel system. If English spelling had been fixed after the Great Vowel Shift, our Norman era scholar would probably be totally lost.
But in the end, the forward-traveller would certainly struggle with the cultural context in which language exists. Our use of language is full of references to things around us, and even for a highly educated 12th century scholar our world would seem quite alien. Not just technology like computers and cars, but also our social and ideological systems and the fact that so much of our world operates on a global scale these days.
This was a long way of me saying "I don't really know", and while I have a background in linguistics, I cannot claim much expertise in the topic. Still, it was a fun thought experiment to try to think about!
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Comment on Colossal Game Adventure: February 2026 Lobbying Topic in ~games
vili Link ParentJust a gentle reminder that not all of us (though I don't know what portion of CGA) live in places where Halloween is a thing. I personally never have, so for me October being associated with...Just a gentle reminder that not all of us (though I don't know what portion of CGA) live in places where Halloween is a thing. I personally never have, so for me October being associated with horror is similar to hearing about the traditions of Chinese new year, Ramadan, Midsummer's Eve or similar. I am aware of them happening every year, but they happen somewhere else. Where I live, the time around Halloween is traditionally more associated with quiet, warm remembrance of loved ones who have passed, rather than horror or costume parties.
Although I do see shops these days trying to push Halloween candies here as well, and last year I saw some decorated yards, so I guess things are changing, and maybe it won't be long before October equating with horror is true here as well.
And none of this course means that I would refuse to play a horror themed game in October if the majority here so wished, only that for me it would be a bit like playing a Christianity themed game in December. I would have no problem with it, but I would be an outsider taking part in someone else's cultural practices and preferences. And if we had one themed month, I'd of course wonder if we should also have others as well.
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Comment on Tell me about your favourite web-based logic puzzles! in ~games
vili LinkI'm loving the suggestions here! I'll add the following: Thinky Games recently published a season of daily puzzles which I quite liked. Light, quick, fun, mainly sudoku-adjacent and line-type. I...I'm loving the suggestions here! I'll add the following:
Thinky Games recently published a season of daily puzzles which I quite liked. Light, quick, fun, mainly sudoku-adjacent and line-type. I believe they are working on getting the second season out soon.
Catfishing is a daily Wikipedia based guessing game. Basically, your task is to guess the title of an article based on its categories. There are ten articles every day. Some are easier, some harder. Once you have attempted all ten, you see how you rank. My only criticisms are that I'd prefer something like 6 articles instead of 10, and the articles selected are quite US centric, or at least focused on the western world.
In recent years, I have fallen in love with cryptic crosswords. It can take a bit of effort to start the journey, but once you get through the first hurdles, they can become addictive if you enjoy word based logic puzzles. If you need help to start, this article gives the basics, and I would strongly recommend watching a video or two from the Cracking the Cryptic YouTube channel, which features a tough cryptic crossword solve every Friday: here's the latest as of writing. After that, Minute Cryptic can be a good daily clue practice, while The Guardian's Quick cryptic and Quiptic are nice free weekly cryptics for beginners, as is The Observer's Everyman, but I often have issues with their website. Outside of those, many publications, including The Guardian, publish daily cryptics and typically the difficulty increases, with Mondays being the easiest and Fridays the most difficult. If you get stuck, as you probably will at the beginning, Fifteensquared offers solutions and other help.
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Comment on A rant about how devices handle users with language backgrounds other than English in ~tech
vili Link ParentThanks for the suggestion! However, either I don't understand how Apple's logic here works, or it doesn't quite work like how you describe it. I'm using the latest iOS version. For me at least,...Thanks for the suggestion! However, either I don't understand how Apple's logic here works, or it doesn't quite work like how you describe it. I'm using the latest iOS version.
For 2 languages you haven’t needed to switch keyboards on iOS for a while, you just set up a bilingual dyad in the keyboard settings and it’ll make suggestions and autocorrect both without changing the layout.
For me at least, this is only true for a small set of languages (admittedly covering a large set of speakers). It works fine if I want, say, English and French, but not for languages like, say, Finnish and Hungarian, which just aren't available in that list. I believe the list of languages covers only those for which Apple offers predictive text.
Note also that the keyboard layouts that this setting offers are based on the two languages that you select. You cannot select, say, English and French, and use them with a standard Swedish/Finnish layout. But you can use a Swedish/Finnish layout if one of the two selected languages is Swedish.
For 3+, you do need to switch but because they’re bilingual keyboards you can have English-Second pairs and always be typing on an English QWERTY or whatever.
Again, I don't think this is quite true for me at least. Let's take Finnish and Hungarian as examples again. If I add Finnish as a keyboard, there are no options for layout whatsoever: if I want to use Finnish, I must use the standard Finnish layout. Meanwhile, Hungarian is quite interesting: it offers three options (QWERTZ, QWERTY and AZERTY), but none of those are strictly speaking standard Hungarian layouts (letters like Ó or Ö or Ő are not directly accessible), but they aren't quite the equivalent English layouts either (the main layout is the same, but the letters accessible from the long-press menus are different and in a different order).
Now, someone might ask why that even matters if there is no predictive text anyway. But it does, because when I change a keyboard, my phone also changes what dictionary it uses for the spell checker. So, while I can't get handy text predictions in Finnish or Hungarian, I do get red lines under words that I have misspelled, as long as I have selected the language that I'm typing.
But, like I said, it could also be that I just haven't understood something about the settings?
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Comment on Anyone get into caffeine (coffee/tea) as an adult? in ~food
vili (edited )LinkI got into coffee in my 40s. I never liked the stuff or really understood why people kept drinking it. But while trying to find a coffee-related birthday gift for my coffee-loving wife, this Tom...I got into coffee in my 40s. I never liked the stuff or really understood why people kept drinking it. But while trying to find a coffee-related birthday gift for my coffee-loving wife, this Tom Scott video with James Hoffmann came out and it started something for me that has become quite a wonderful journey. Me ultimately turning into a coffee lover was probably the best birthday gift that my wife has ever received.
I don't drink coffee for any of the alleged benefits or alertness or any of that. I just like the taste (of some beans and some methods), the ritual and the communality.
As for the effects, I don't really notice any difference in alertness or any of that. Still, I have noticed that I sleep worse if I have coffee later in the day (unless decaf), so I avoid that. And, totally anecdotally, coffee seems to have helped with some migraine episodes that I get occasionally.
Edit: Perhaps worth adding that I have always had plenty of green and oolong tea, and the occasional caffeinated soft drink like Coke or Pepsi, so I did not go into coffee without any background with caffeine.
The Nantendo Fun Center bit reminded me of the kind of self-referential left turns that many Ultima games took, and on which some of the Wizardry games were built, both series that I understand were quite influential on the development of Japanese RPGs. While this kind of whimsy continues in a lot of indie titles today, it feels like major games no longer do it, unless developed by someone like Hideo Kojima.