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In a candid and insightful interview with WIRED, legendary director Hideo Kojima revealed his philosophical vision for his approach to game development and his open-minded ambition that is not constrained by a successful past or ready-made categorizations.
When asked what he considers the “Masterpiece” of his long career, Kojima refused to take sides with his previous works such as the Metal Gear Solid series, explaining that his latest work is always the best from his point of view because it reflects his current creative stage and explicitly emphasized that Death Stranding 2 currently represents the peak of his artistic and technical maturity.
Kojima talked about how he works within Kojima Productions, explaining that not only is he the overall director, but he devotes the last year of development to a meticulous and arduous task that includes playing the game every day from start to finish repeatedly, adjusting the difficulty balance, music timing, camera angles, and the feel of the characters’ movement himself, with direct involvement in the minute details that he feels give the game its own identity.
Kojima believes that this intensive manual supervision is the key factor that makes his games different and difficult to imitate, even within large development teams without his direct presence.
Aside from his current project, Kojima opened the door to his vision for the future, emphasizing his desire to create an entirely new genre and not just work within the known categories of the game industry, and indicated his interest in making a hard science fiction genre set in space as a new step in his career.
He also considered that the next big challenge for the game industry is to break free from the square screen frame, explaining that virtual and augmented reality technologies will radically transform the style of game cinematography and may redefine the way the player interacts with digital worlds.
Kojima’s statements reflect his ongoing philosophy of pushing boundaries as he sees games not just as an entertainment product but as a cutting-edge artistic medium through which he seeks to reinvent the human experience of interacting with technology.
