How Metal Gear Solid V’s Design Betrays Its Anti-Nuclear Ideals
Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series has long been celebrated for its anti-war and anti-nuclear metacommentary. However, this legacy faced a peculiar rupture with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (MGSV). According to a recent paper from TSRB’s Ryan Scheiding (Georgia Tech) & Dan Staines (Torrens University), the game's gameplay mechanics and design undercut its thematic intent, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the game’s handling of nuclear disarmament, trophy hunting, and live-service elements.
Anti-Nuclear Commentary and Metagaming
Released in 2015, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Konami) is the final main installment in Kojima’s critically acclaimed series. The game blends stealth-action gameplay with open-world exploration and is set during the Cold War’s twilight in the 1980s. Players take on the role of Venom Snake, the leader of a private military organization tasked with building and managing a base of operations known as Mother Base. The Forward Operating Base (FOB) system extends this concept into the game’s online multiplayer mode. Here, players construct secondary bases, invade others’ bases to steal resources, and defend their bases against enemy players.
MGSV’s FOB mode, central to its multiplayer experience, was designed as a backdrop for anti-nuclear commentary, allowing players to construct nuclear weapons to deter invasions or dismantle stolen nukes. By tying these actions to PlayStation trophies, "Deterrence" and "Disarmament," the game aimed to reflect the geopolitical complexities of nuclear deterrence and disarmament, potentially offering a procedural commentary on the challenges of achieving global disarmament under the specter of mutually assured destruction. However, technical issues, gameplay contradictions, and the influence of metagaming practices significantly undermined this vision, leaving Kojima’s intended message muddled.
For trophy hunters, the anti-nuclear narrative was not a moral challenge but a logistical one. Many bypassed the thematic intentions entirely, choosing to build and immediately dismantle their nuclear weapons, treating the process as a chore rather than engaging with the broader implications. “Personally, I don’t think that the trophies are hindering the player’s experience in MGSV,” says Scheiding. “I believe that they work how trophies typically function, thus providing a compelling challenge for players. I do believe that they undermine the overall anti-war message in the way that they encourage the player to construct nuclear devices.” This contradiction highlights the tension between games as art and as products bound by commercial demands. Moreover, Scheiding points out, “the nuclear weapons in the game do not function as weapons (only as non-functional ‘deterrents’), which further undermines their significance. The nuclear weapons are artifice.” What might have been a profound critique of global geopolitics was reduced to busy work for players chasing completion stats, and this is a recurring issue seen in many games.
Since the first Metal Gear was released in 1987, on a thematic level, the series has always had an anti-nuclear weapons and war stance. In every game, whichever character is the protagonist, the player is always trying to stop an antagonist from destroying the entire planet with a doomsday machine.
Live Service and Capitalistic Contradictions
The live-service nature of MGSV further compounded these issues. As the paper highlights, Konami designed the FOB mode with player retention in mind, embedding microtransactions to expedite progress. The necessity of “Mother Base Coins” for competitive upgrades incentivized prolonged engagement, prioritizing profitability over narrative coherence. This approach echoed the logic of games-as-a-service (GaaS): a completed game is dead, so finality—narrative or otherwise—was deliberately deferred.
The now-infamous “Secret Nuclear Disarmament Event,” which promised a hidden cutscene upon the eradication of all nuclear weapons on a regional server, became a symbol of these contradictions. Players discovered that global disarmament was not just improbable but technically impossible due to phantom nukes tied to inactive accounts. This unresolved bug and extended FOB blockade durations undermined the event’s potential as a collaborative achievement. Instead, it revealed how economic incentives in live service games erode thematic depth.
Is Nuclear Peace Even Possible?
The failure of MGSV’s anti-nuclear message prompts a haunting question: Was this intentional? Did Kojima embed a hidden critique that nuclear peace is unattainable, even in a controlled simulation? Or did the realities of game production, player practices, and corporate greed hijack his vision? The interplay between Kojima's themes and Konami's business model suggests the latter. Peace, as the paper poignantly notes, is not profitable.
In this light, MGSV becomes a meta-commentary on geopolitics and the gaming industry itself. The game’s systems—the trophies and the live-service model—highlight how player retention strategies can warp artistic intentions. While the series has long implicated players in its critiques of warfare, MGSV implicates them in commodifying its message.
A Flawed Masterpiece
MGSV is as much a cautionary tale as a masterpiece. Its design undermines its narrative intent, turning anti-nuclear commentary into a profit-driven feedback loop. Yet, in doing so, it inadvertently achieves a different kind of commentary: a reflection on the contradictions of modern gaming, where the lines between art, commerce, and player agency blur. Scheiding notes, ”We must consider player agency and player practices when assessing game design. While the designer’s intentions are important, games make meaning through the interplay of player and designer.” In this way, MGSV does not merely critique war but also exposes the tensions between artistic vision and commercial imperatives in the gaming industry.
As players build and dismantle virtual nukes for digital trophies, they are left to grapple with the uneasy realization that the systems driving their actions—both in the game and beyond—are just as flawed as the real-world dynamics they simulate. In this sense, MGSV’s unintended message remains as provocative as ever: True peace, in any form, is perhaps the most challenging achievement of all.