Hideo Kojima

At 60 years old, Hideo Kojima has this physical status:

Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer, writer, director and producer. Regarded as an auteur of video games, he developed a strong passion for action/adventure cinema and literature during his childhood and adolescence.

In 1986, he was hired by Konami, for which he designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, a game that laid the foundations for stealth games and the Metal Gear series, his best known and most appreciated works.

The title that consecrated him as one of the most acclaimed video game designers is Metal Gear Solid (1998) for PlayStation.

He is also known for producing the Zone of the Enders series, as well as writing and designing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation. In 2005, Kojima founded Kojima Productions, a software house controlled by Konami, and by 2011, he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment.In 2015, Kojima Productions split from Konami, becoming an independent studio.

Their first game was Death Stranding, which released in 2019.

Kojima has also contributed to Rolling Stone, writing columns about the similarities and differences between films and video games.On November 10, 2019, Kojima was awarded two Guinness World Records for most followed video game director on Twitter and Instagram.

Early life

Kojima was born on August 24, 1963 in Setagaya, Tokyo. He was the youngest of three children. His father, Kingo, was a pharmacist who frequently travelled on business, and named Kojima after the most common name among doctors he met. When he was four years old, his family moved to Osaka. Describing that stage of his early life, Kojima said it was an abrupt change of environment, and he spent much of his time thereafter indoors, watching television or making figurines. While the family lived in Osaka, his parents began a tradition of the family watching a film together each night, and he was not allowed to go to bed until the film had finished. They were fond of European cinema, westerns, and horror, and did not limit the type of films he was allowed to see.

Kojima took an interest in filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to school. They began filming movies together, charging other children 50 yen to see them. Kojima tricked his parents into funding a trip to an island off the coast of Japan without telling them he wanted to film there. Instead of filming, he spent his time swimming, and on the last day changed the plot to being about zombies. He did not show the film to his parents.

By Kojima's teenage years, the family had moved to Kawanishi, Hyōgo, in the Kansai region of Japan. When he was 13 years old, his father died. Kojima has discussed the impact of his father's death in interviews, and the subsequent financial hardship faced by his family. He enrolled at university to study economics, and it was there that he decided to join the video game industry. He wrote fiction while studying, even including a short story in his thesis.

Personal life

Kojima is private about his personal life. He has at least one brother. His father Kingo Kojima died when he was 13 and his mother died in early 2017. According to his book The Creative Gene, he has two sons; both of which have inspired Kojima to expand his franchises to a more accessible demographic, such as requesting Super Smash Bros director Masahiro Sakurai to implement the character of Solid Snake into the franchise.

Kojima was misidentified in July 2022 as the assassin of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by some news outlets and politicians. Greek news outlet ANT1, Iranian news website Mashregh News and French politician Damien Rieu all mistakenly used pictures of Kojima instead of the killer; Rieu subsequently apologized for the misidentification, and ANT1 took down its YouTube video with the picture. The man suspected by Japanese investigators to be Abe's assassin is Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force veteran. Kojima Productions said that it would be considering legal action in response to the pictorial misidentifications.

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Career

Kojima was looking for a way into film production right from the start of his career. He hoped that, if he were to win prizes for his published fiction, he would be asked about directing a film. Although Kojima said he had no friends or acquaintances interested in cinema to encourage him, his colleagues were not happy when he announced that they did not plan to participate in game development. He would often joke about his work in the early days of a career when a game designer didn't exist in the Japanese language and instead told people he worked for a financial company.

In 1986, Kojima joined Konami's MSX home computer division. He applied to Konami because the only games developer on the Japanese stock exchange was listed. He was initially dissatisfied with his work, wishing to produce games for the Nintendo Entertainment System but finding that the MSX's 16 color scheme was too limited. As an assistant director on Penguin Adventure, the sequel to Antarctic Adventure, he was the first game he worked on. It largely expanded upon the Antarctic Adventure game experience by including more action game features, a larger number of levels, role-playing elements, and multiple endings. Julia Lee of Polygon said in 2019 that Penguin Adventure had some in-depth features for "a game that was more than 30 years ago." Kojima began to create Lost Warld [sic], but the game was cancelled because it was too complicated to be run on a MSX.

A senior associate was asked to manage a project, Metal Gear. The game's hardware limitations hampered the development, and Kojima changed the game's focus to a prisoner fleeing rather than fighting, inspired by The Great Escape. On July 13, 1987, it was announced in Japan for the MSX2 home computer, and on September in the same year for Europe. Solid Snake, the player's codenamed solid Snake, is sent to Outer Heaven to stop a nuclear-equipped walking tank known as "Metal Gear." Metal Gear is one of the first examples of the stealth game genre. In 1987, a Metal Gear port was released for the NES, with updated graphics, difficulty, and an abridged ending without the titular weapon. Kojima has openly sluggish translation and the abridged ending to many of the port's changes, including poor translation and the abridged closure. In an interview, a programmer on the NES version of the game said that his team was expected to complete the port in just three months, but that the NES hardware was not capable of implementing the Metal Gear fight.

On November 26, 1988, his next project was the graphic adventure game Snatcher, which was released for the NEC PC-8801 and MSX2 computer platforms in Japan. Kojima wrote and directed the game. Kojima intended for the game, which is a graphic novel with visual novel elements, to have six chapters, but was told to reduce it to two. The team wanted to write a third chapter but they were unable to finish the game due to a cliffhanger. The cyberpunk-influenced game has a semi-open world layout. Kojima and character designer Tomiharu Kinoshita regarded the project more like a film or anime rather than a game. Satoshi Yoshoioka, a Konami artist who created several of Snatcher's characters, said he was consistently led by Kojima to make the game as cinematic as possible, a feature of his later work. One of his inventions, according to Adrian Chen of The New York Times, was "the way he brought cinematic storytelling to console video games." Snatcher borrows heavily from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and includes enough references that the game strays near copyright infringement. Without Kojima, a port for the Sega CD could be made, but the amount of text and length of the script made localization prohibitive and time-consuming, taking three months. Snatcher was modestly successful in Japan, but the western port was a commercial failure, exporting only a few thousand units. In the west, it has a cult following.

Kojima produced a remake of Snatcher, SD Snatcher, a role-playing video game that adapted the original Snatcher's storyline but introduced significant new details, plot structure, and basic gameplay mechanics in 1990. In Japanese media, the character designs are depicted in a "super deformed" art style, which is another way to refer to chibi character designs, in contrast to the original game's realistic style. It was only in Japan that the original Snatcher computer versions were released. It was abandoned random encounters and replaced it with a first-person turn-based battle system in which the player can aim at specific portions of the enemy's body with weapons. Such a combat system has rarely been used since, but similar ones can be found in the role-playing games Square's Valiant Story (2000), Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3 (2008), and Nippon Ichi's Last Rebellion (2010). "Kojima's decision to stylize the character designs "was some postmodern playfulness from Hideo Kojima [...] downplaying the dramatic aspects of his game and overlaying obvious video game conventions on top of it," J. C. Fletcher of Engadget said in 2007.

The first Metal Gear was a commercial success on the NES, and Konami decided to produce Snake's Revenge, without Kojima's participation. When Kojima was riding his bike in Tokyo, he was told about Snake's Revenge by a colleague who was assisting him in the project, who asked him to make a new Snake game of his own. As a result, Kojima started working on his own sequel, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and the two were both released in 1990. Kojima's game will not be released in North America or Europe until it is included in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (2006). Solid Snake, a commercial success, was a huge success. Retro-reviewers have praised the game. Metal Gear 2 introduced stealth technologies, such as making noise to attract guards, crouching and crawling on the ground, disarming mines, and enemies with view cones, according to IGN.

Kojima began investigating policenauts after memory constraints were compelled him to take a break during the manufacture of Snatcher. He wanted the game to remain in the adventure genre, feeling that this was the only way to say what he wanted with video games. He was also dissatisfied with game creation and wanted to "take creative control back from the programmers." He created a scripting engine after the introduction of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990) in order to choose when animations and music would be performed instead of the programmers. Beyond Beyond, a pioneering step in 1990, began in 1990 and lasted four years.

The PC-9821 was released in Japan on July 29, 1994. Critics in Japan applauded the Policenauts' high level of presentation. Both Sega Saturn Magazine and Famitsu lauded the animation, voice, and its engrossing setting. Retrospective studies have generally regarded the game positively and have sought to contextualize Policenauts within Kojima's body of work as heavily stylized and inspired by films.

Kojima began to plan a 3D sequel to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which was originally planned for release on the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Following the demise of the 3DO, manufacturing moved to the Sony PlayStation. A new engine had to be developed by Kojima and his team in order to switch from 2D to 3D graphics. On day 2 of E3 1997 as a short film, a gameplay demo was first revealed to the public at the 1996 Tokyo Game Show, and it was later shown as a short video. The game was launched with laudation. Multiple outlets praised the game's cinematic qualities and ingenious stealth gameplay. Kojima made a name for himself in video game news, and was shocked when he first began to be recognized in public.

Kojima revealed the first details of the PlayStation 2's successor to Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, in early 2001. The game's richly detailed graphics, physics, and expanded gameplay made it one of the most awaited games at the time. At launch, the game was highly praised and critically acclaimed, with its graphics, simulation, simulation, patricide, the fundamental flaws of democracy, and grandiose as the actuality of reality itself. Although Metal Gear Solid 2 drew gamers with its discussion, the game's bewildering maze of dialogue and plot revelation in the final hours of the game was a disappointment for several gamers, who awaited the sequel's Hollywood-style resolution by its forerunner.

Kojima created Zone of the Enders in 2001, with modest success before Metal Gear Solid 2 was announced. He created Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand, which plays a young vampire hunter whose use of a photometric sensor on the game cartridge makes them play in sunlight in 2003. Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 and its cutscenes were directed by director Ryuhei Kitamura, who was also working on a Konami team. The Twin Snakes, a GameCube enhanced version of the first Metal Gear Solid II, began work on Metal Gear Solid 2 and included all of the game controllers, as well as cutscenes.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was developed and released by Kojima later this year. Unlike previous games in the series, which took place in the near future and concentrated on indoor locations, the game is set in a Soviet jungle during the Cold War in 1964 and includes wilderness survival, camouflage, and James Bond styled espionage. On November 17, 2004, the North American version was released, with the Japanese counterpart following on December 16. On March 4, 2005, the European version was announced. Critical reaction to the game had been highly encouraging. "It took her a whole year to finish Metal Gear Solid 3," Kojima said. She'll ask her friends to help her. "It is finished" after she defeated The End [a player plays off during the game] "It is finished."

Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django for the Game Boy Advance was produced at that time by Kojima. Since being launched in summer 2004, the cartridge's sun sensor makes more efficient use of the cartridge's sunlight sensor and allows players to build various new solar weapons. Metal Gear Acid for the PlayStation Portable handheld was also released. It's less action-oriented than other Metal Gear games and more focused on strategy. On December 16, 2004, it was released in Japan. Metal Gear Acid 2, its sequel, was announced on March 21, 2006.

Kojima wanted Solid Snake to appear in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but Nintendo turned down due to hardware issues. Masahiro Sakurai, a series designer, approached Kojima to assist with Snake and content related to the Metal Gear series, including a stage based on Shadow Moses Island (the main setting of Solid) when Super Smash Bros. Brawl was in production.

Kojima co-directed Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots with Shuyo Murata, who was born in June 2008. Kojima initially did not want to control it, but death threats made the team nervous, so he decided to work with them. At the MTV Game Awards 2008 in Germany, Kojima received a lifetime achievement award. "I must say, even if I received this award, let me say that I will not resign," he said in his address. As long as I live, I will continue to develop games.

Kojima expressed an interest in working with a Western developer before E3 2009, a few years ago. This later turned out to be a joint effort between him and Spanish developer MercurySteam to work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

Although he confirmed that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots would be his last Metal Gear game to be directly involved in, he revealed at E3 2009 that he would return to assist with two Metal Gear games: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance as a writer, producer, and producer. Peace Walker, a producer and engineer, announced at e3 2009. When Kojima spoke at Gamescom 2009, he said he became more involved with Peace Walker because "there was a lot of chaos within the team and it didn't go as I expected it to." "I wanted to jump in and do Peace Walker," I said.

Kojima attended E3 2010 to showcase his team's new venture, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. He was also seen in Nintendo's 3DS interview video, where he talked about making a Metal Gear Solid game for the 3DS and wondered what it would be like in 3D. Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater 3D was a spinoff of Metal Gear Solid 3D. Metal Gear Solid: Rising, a rebranded Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, was released in late 2011, with PlatinumGames and Kojima Productions assisting in the creation of the game. Nonetheless, Kojima is the game's executive producer and expressed an interest in participating in the game's demo. Kojima was happy with the final product and even hinted at the possibility of a sequel if Platinum were to produce it.

Konami Digital Entertainment's Executive Vice President and Corporate Officer was promoted to Executive Vice President and Corporate Officer on April 1, 2011. He introduced his latest innovative gaming equipment at E3 2011, a portmanteau of the verbs transferring and sharing. Gamers can move their game data from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation Portable in a fast data transfer process and take it outside the game.

Later this year, he revealed that he was working on a new intellectual property with Goichi Suda, tentatively labelled Project S, and starting new projects. Kojima revealed on July 8, 2011 that Project S was a radio-show sequel to Snatcher, dubbed Sdatcher as a nodal to the show's producer Suda. Beginning with episode No. 9, the show will air on Fridays on Kojima's bi-weekly Internet radio show. 300, which was broadcast in August 2011, was the same as the first one on television. Kojima revealed in October that he would be working with Suda and 5pb. Chiyomaru Shikura, a film director, is releasing a new adventure game visual novel. It had been expected that this game would be the third entry in 5pb. The Science Adventures series by the University of Science Adventures, but it was later revealed to be a separate product. The game was supposed to have both a foreign release and an anime adaptation. No further details about the project have been given as of 2018.

Kojima was connected to the Silent Hill series in mid-2012 and the years after Kojima stopped working on the Fox Engine. During this period, he expressed an interest in playing a Silent Hill game, and the first time he did so was on August 18, 2012. In a tweet of a snapshot of an image of the DVD for the Silent Hill film, he expressed his excitement about the possibility of the Fox Engine on the eighth generation platforms: later, he added what he had in mind for this game: "Silent Hill is in a closed room environment, and doesn't require complete action so that we can concentrate on the graphic quality." Enemies in the game do not have to be consistent or move quickly. It only needs scarcity by way of graphics and presentation. As a designer, making action games in an open world setting, such a game is enviously popular. If only someone could create this on the Fox Engine." Konami begged him to do so after a while, and as a result of Kojima's obsession with making a Silent Hill game, he obliged him to do so. In an interview with Eurogamer, Kojima shared the tale: "In an interview with Eurogamer, he shared the details.

In addition, when a fan asks "which game do you want to direct or remake?" Geoff Keighley addresses it. Silent Hill, Kojima, was unconcerned. "What do you want to do with Silent Hill?" Keighley chimed in and asked, "What do you want to do with Silent Hill?" "A guy [like myself] that is such a chicken and is so afraid, and it is such a scary game." Kojima said: I'm fairly positive that something scary will come out of it. On the other hand, I would have to prepare myself for nightmares every single day. I hope to be able to work on this sometime in the future, but I would definitely have to be preparing for daily nightmares." PT was announced on the PlayStation Store in August 2014 that Kojima was directing Silent Hills, alongside Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro. The playable teaser was removed in April 2015 and the game was cancelled.

Kojima premiered Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, his last Metal Gear game, stating that this time, unlike previous reports that he had stopped working on the series, he was extremely concerned about moving; it was preceded by Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, a shorter game that was released in 2014 and serving as a prelude to The Phantom Pain. Since the introduction of The Phantom Pain in March 2015, rumors began to surface that Kojima will split with long-time publisher Konami. Konami revealed that they were looking for new people for future Metal Gear titles and that Kojima's name was taken out of the series's marketing material. Despite reports that Kojima left the company in October 2015, a Konami spokesperson confirmed that he was "taking a long time off work." Metal Gear Solid V received the awards for Best Action Game and Best Score/Soundtrack at The Game Awards 2015, but Kojima did not attend the event because Konami had apparently forbidden everyone from attending. Instead, Kiefer Sutherland received the award on behalf of him. Konami had closed Kojima Productions on July 10, 2015, according to regular Kojima collaborator Akio tsuka.

Kojima Productions would re-establish as an independent studio partnered with Sony Computer Entertainment, and the first game will be exclusive to PlayStation 4. In a trailer at E3 2016, Kojima introduced the game's name as Death Stranding. Norman Reedus, whom Kojima had previously worked with in the defunct Silent Hills, was included in the trailer.

In 2016, Kojima started his own YouTube channel, where he and film critic Kenji Yano discuss their favorite films and topics relating to Kojima's studio. Kojima started contributing to Rolling Stone in 2017, regularly addressing new film launches and occasionally comparing his own works to his own works.

Death Stranding was announced on November 8, 2019, received mostly positive feedback and was a commercial success. It also received a variety of accolades, including "Best Game Direction" and "Best Score/Music" at The Game Awards 2019.

In November 2019, when speaking to BBC Newsbeat as part of a film about Death Stranding, Kojima said, "In the future, Kojima Productions will start making films." If you can do one thing well, you will do well." Thanks to streaming technology, Kojima continued to claim that he sees that movies, TV shows, and games will all be competing in the future, as well as new formats. "I'm really excited in the new game style that will be available on their website, and that's what I want to take on," Kojima said.

Kojima and Microsoft revealed in June 2022 that Kojima Productions would be working on a game with Xbox Game Studios that would use Microsoft's cloud-based technology. Norman Reedus revealed in an interview that the production of a sequel to Death Stranding had started.

Hideo Kojima presents Brain Structure, a Spotify podcast that was launched in 2022. The podcast, hosted by Kojima with regular appearances from Geoff Keighley, discusses Kojima's gaming heritage, as well as his obsessions with movies, music, and cinema.

Kojima has cryptically teased the casting of a new game being produced by Kojima Productions in 2022, with Elle Fanning confirmed to act. It's unclear if the game is related to the aforementioned Xbox collaboration or something else.

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