[Rant] Konami should bring back P.T.
Make the playable teaser playable again, please.
So, where to begin with this one? How about 7 years ago today, August 12, 2014. Today is the 7th anniversary of P.T. releasing on the Playstation 4. It was quite the odd affair, 7 years ago. A strange new demo emerged during Gamescom, touted by Sony, the creation of a brand new development team. 7780s Studio was the brand, and their game? Something called P.T., a “playable teaser,” that gets shadow dropped to PS4 players with virtually no marketing campaign or build up prior to this moment. Word spread like wildfire and very quickly people were downloading and diving into this sudden new offering. I’m one of those people and I still have a playable copy of P.T. on my old PS4.
Back to 2014 when I load up the demo, pick some settings, and get into the game. Only just beginning and this thing is already kind of bizarre. My first visuals are a cement floor and a dimly lit wooden door in an otherwise dark room. Some dank basement with a cockroach problem, and I'm treated to a first-person perspective of laying on the cold dirty floor. Did I mention the cockroaches are mating?The door creaks open slowly, but no one is there. I remember thinking damn Sony this is creepy, what is this game? My character rises to their feet, but not without a bit of struggle. Their vision is a little blurry. How long have they been in this room, and what the heck is happening here? At least I will be able to find out because I am now in control of the character.
I walk toward the creaked open door and the dim light above the door buzzes more loudly as I approach. The audio is immediately immersive and I’m already feeling a little unsettled by the environment. The door swings open quickly revealing a long narrow corridor that ends at a dark window. Night time? Who puts a window like that in a basement? Is this not basement level? Maybe I was previously in a storage room and this is some kind of roach infested hotel? The setting is seeped in so much mystery. I walk toward the window. Maybe I have to find and talk to some kind of NPC in order to learn more?
Okay, I keep moving down the hall and I see a clock that reads 23:59. Before I can even process what that might mean the silence is broken by a grainy recording of a some kind of newscaster man. His voice starts to fill the room, “We regret to report the murder of a wife and her two children by their husband and father. The father purchased the gun used for the crime at his local gun store two days earlier.” Geez, that's intense. I get to the window and looking to my left I see a wooden chest of drawers with a small shaded lamp, a phone off its hook, some photographs of people, and a lot of trash. There’s a pile of trash all over the floor too that includes a child’s discarded stuffed animal.
The man’s voice continues, “This brutal killing took place while the family was gathered at home on a Sunday afternoon. The day of the crime the father went to the trunk of his car…” This is demo is getting darker and more unsettling by the second. I turn to look the other direction. Another narrow corridor, but this time a closed door on my right and an open door in the distance. A claustrophic feeling overcomes me as if the hallway walls are squeezing me in like some animal in a maze. My anxiety builds and I start to feel somewhat nervous about my next step forward.
My camera turns so slowly it makes me a little nervous. I turn to look back down the hallway I had just come from. Nothing new, but what was I expecting? I have no idea what this game is, but it has me on edge. I just want to move on to the next room so I start moving down the next hallway. The man on the radio grows louder with each step. At the end of the hall there is another very realistic looking photograph of some married couple to my right and the radio is there too. The vibe of the broadcast just gets more and more horrific as it continues to describes how the murder unfolded.
A game developer put this story in the game intentionally to make me feel something. I knew that 7780s Studio was aiming to make me feel uneasy and they were succeeding unfailingly. What is this game? I keep asking myself, but I still didn’t know what was waiting for me later in the demo. The man seems to stop talking so I head through an open door at the end of the hallway and down a small flight of stairs to another wooden door. I open it and walk through. What do I see? The same exact hallway section from the same position I had initial arrived in.
Oh, maybe that was all there is? Perhaps it was only a little exhibit demo that resets when I walk through the door? That was pretty short, so I guess I’ll go around another time and take a better look at the wall paintings. Maybe I missed something interesting. I head back down the hall, inspect a few paintings, take another look at the asset details of the stuff by the window, and then I turn to head to the exit again. Hold on. What? Why is the door closed this time? The relief I felt for a moment while expecting no more big surprises was gone and my anxiety started to rise again.
If you want to know more about the demo content you should watch the rest on YouTube. I don’t want to spoil the experience if you haven’t seen it yet. They have some longplay videos without commentary that won’t disrupt your immersion, but be warned that it’s got some jump scares and some disturbing imagery. If you love horror and have not ever watched it I highly recommend checking it out. That being said, watching isn’t the same as having to push the analog stick yourself. In my opinion there is something more visceral about the experience when you are controlling the character. Sadly that is no longer an option for most people.
Players who finished this incredibly spooky demo by solving its main puzzle were rewarded with a teaser cinematic for a new Silent Hill game called Silent Hills. It turned out that 7780s Studio was a front for none other than Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima, and he had partnered with film director and screenwriter Guillermo del Toro for this new Silent Hill installment. They even revealed the protagonist casting to be actor Norman Reedus who had recently found major success playing the role of Daryl Dixon in AMC’s The Walking Dead.
Just one month after the demo, during Tokyo Game Show 2014, we got a second trailer for Silent Hills and it was amazingly freaky. It made me even more excited for the final game. I had never been a major horror genre enthusiast, but I did play the classics and even found my first real horror love in the original Dead Space. I’m a big fan of video games that set a definitive mood. There is a kind of magic ambiance especially found in the creepiest of horror games that really helps define the tone of the experience. I was never into horror films as I always thought they were often too cheesy, but, despite that, interactive horror experiences in video games really opened me up to horror in general. Resident Evil and Silent Hill were a kind of cultural on-ramp for me.
Moving forward again to April 27, 2015 and we get the official confirmation that Silent Hills has been cancelled. The confirmation follows news that Konami and Hideo Kojima were going to split ways and hints dropped by Guillermo del Toro that the project was dead. Just two days later the free demo was pulled from the online store and only people who still had it installed had access to it. Konami and Kojima had broken up, and Silent Hill fans suffered as a result of their divorce. The pain of this cancellation lingers today within the community and can be seen bubbling to the surface in speculation threads about the identity of Abandoned, a new project by Blue Box Game Studios. Some hope it is an elaborate ARG meant to reveal Kojima returning to finish development on Silent Hills. It very likely isn’t that, but after 7 long years the wound of loss still won’t heal.
We’ve seen the cultural impact of P.T. on the horror game genre. We’ve seen similar vibes carried forward in both AAA and indie projects seeking to emulate aspects of P.T.’s design and style. This a big part of why I am calling for Konami to make the demo available again for free. Here is a concise list of arguments as to why I think this would be a good idea:
If the demo is free there is no need to squabble over distribution of profit based on creative involvement. Hideo Kojima and other parties should be willing to sign off on this if legally necessary, and if they aren’t willing, they should be pressured by the public to do so. Same goes for Konami.
The demo is now a piece of gaming history and the best way to help with cultural and historical preservation is to make it available.
Potential for lots of positive PR. Konami should have pride in what was produced under their brand and share it with Silent Hill and horror game fans. Konami should see P.T. as the success that it was rather than a symbol of failure or controversy from the past. The fans would really appreciate it coming back.
This playable teaser clearly was an inspiration to many horror game developers. In some ways it may have elevated the craft. By making it accessible to future developers to experience it first hand Konami would be creating more possibilities for it to inspire more creations in the future.
I am not saying Konami has to revive the Silent Hills project by licensing it to Kojima Productions. That’d be an amazing and very welcomed outcome, but I am understanding of how complex those deals could be to work out. All I am asking is that P.T. be made available for download on PS4 and PS5 systems for free just as it had been before. Treat it like it was a finished game. Release it as P.T. and take the Silent Hills part out of the ending if that makes it more feasible. Whatever needs to be done to get it back in the hands of players. I don’t think this is really so unreasonable of a request.
Truth be told I am not even a huge Silent Hill fan. I'm more familiar with the first three entries and fell off for everything after. I liked what I had played enough, but at the same time I never really felt gripped by the brand. That changed after playing the P.T. demo. Silent Hill suddenly meant something to me in a way it never had before. My first time with the demo was unforgettable, and I kept going back in for more. I love what P.T. offered and I think it stood on its own legs. Even today, 7 years later, it would be one of my top choices to recommend to any horror fan. It is too powerful of an experience to remain unavailable.
We know I am not the only person who feels this way. Numerous petitions to bring it back pop up on petition websites and people talk about the game all the time online. Some people don’t care either way, but this is important for those of us that do. I would love to play P.T. on my PS5 and I hate how it just sits there in my collection. I can’t bring myself to hide it from view if for no other reason than to keep my hope alive. Konami probably won’t read this, but I hope that somehow they make the right decision and liberate P.T. from the vault. It should be enjoyed again by everyone who loved it before and by all the people who would have the chance to fall in love with it for the first time.
It just sits there now, haunting me.
Edit: If you've read this far and are as interested in making P.T. a reality again as I am, please do what I did. Reach out to influential figures in our industry via their website contact forms and other means to request they make a public statement regarding their desire to see P.T. made playable and available for download again. If a lot of us do this they may actually step up and use their platforms to help make it happen.
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