In 2015, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times for Metal Gear. Charles Dickens wrote that (we think), and he was right: It was a weird year for Hideo Kojima, Konami and the Metal Gear franchise. Throughout the year, there were whispers and rumors that things had gone awry between the man who created the stealthy franchise and the company where he'd worked for three decades. It was difficult to see those rumors reflected when Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain arrived in September to critical acclaim. The game even earned a top spot (http://is.gd/BUMKjN) in Polygon's 2015 Game of the Year list. But by mid-December, we learned the truth: Kojima and Konami were no longer partners. What the heck happened? Senior reporter Samit Sarkar dove into years worth of news stories to recount the relationship's devolution (http://is.gd/u4VjLN). And today, he's our very special guest on an episode of our Minimap podcast to talk about the bitter breakup. Welcome to Polygon Minimap: Worldmap Edition, a roundtable discussion about the most interesting stories in gaming, entertainment and pop culture. In today's episode, you'll hear Samit and your host Dave Tach trace the relationship back decades and help make a long and complicated story easy to understand. We'd love to count you as a daily Minimap listener. You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you like with these handy links we've corralled for you: - iTunes: http://itunes.com/minimap - Your podcast player of choice: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PolygonMinimapDaily - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/polygon-minimap - Polygon: http://polygon.com/minimap