Hideo Kojima: The Art of the Game

When Hideo Kojima was growing up, he wanted to be a film director.

Somewhere along the line, that changed, and he turned his attention to the newly established home video gaming industry. However, his love for and knowledge of cinema came with him, and before too long his work had revolutionised the art of the game.

Hideo Kojima was born in Tokyo, but he spent the first four years of his life in the countryside. When the family – his mother, father, and two older siblings – returned to city life in Osaka, the culture shock was palpable.

Kojima’s parents worked long hours when he started schooling, and so he became a ‘latchkey kid’, spending the hours after school in isolation. The isolation still bothers him to this day. “(Whenever) I travel and stay at a hotel I put the TV on as soon as I enter the room, just to deal with the feeling of loneliness,” Kojima confided to EDGE Magazine.

He found solace in his mind. “”I was constantly making up stories about the things around me. I’d find myself laughing or crying at seemingly random things and people wouldn’t understand why. In Japan, there are storm channels on either side of the main roads. There were so many times when I’d fall into these ditches because I was lost in stories as I was walking along. It’s still dangerous for me to drive. I’ve driven into the gate outside my house numerous times,” he told The Guardian.

Many of his fantasies were fuelled by the family’s evening tradition of watching a movie. Unlike most children, Kojima wasn’t allowed to go to bed until it had completed. It didn’t matter if the film was considered age appropriate or not; it was tradition. By age 10 his parents were giving Kojima money to go to the cinema and see films of his choosing. “I was allowed to go on the condition that I came home and discussed the movie with them afterwards. I had to buy the film brochure and bring it back with me. Then we would talk about the movie’s themes and direction; what I felt.”

Pretty soon, Kojima and a friends were shooting their own short films on an 8mm camcorder.

Tragedy struck when Kojima was 13. His father, Kingo, died, and the resulting financial burden greatly affected the family. He had already been dissuaded from pursuing a career as a writer or illustrator, and now it seemed he would never be the film director he’d hoped to be.

As his schooling neared an end, he considered following in his father’s footsteps as a pharmacist, or perhaps a doctor (he’d been named Hideo because that was the most popular name for the doctors Kingo had professional dealings with).

Eventually, he went to university in order to study economics, where he spent his free time playing games on the Famicom – the Japanese name for the Nintendo Entertainment System, NES. In his graduating year, he exclaimed a desire to enter the video game industry, much to the disapproval of his peers. Memory of the industry crashed of 1983 was fresh, so in a country that valued job security more important than career goals or desires, the idea of becoming a video game developer was considered foolish.

However, Kojima’s mother supported his dream, and that was all the motivation he needed to make it happen.

Initial attempts to pitch games proved unsuccessful, but in 1986 he was hired as a designer and planner for publisher Konami’s MSX home computer. His dislike for the system – which he deemed to restrictive – and lack of familiarity with programming almost made Kojima quit, but he chose to persevere.

“At Konami there was this feeling amongst us all that games were somehow important to the future. We believed in the future of the medium and the drove us to create the best possible work.”

He worked on several games over the year, until a senior associate asked him to take over a project entitled Metal Gear. The game had been suggested by Konami executives as a war title, but hardware limitations hindered the game’s combat. Inspired by one of his favourite films, The Great Escape, Kojima decided to alter the gameplay to focus on stealth elements centred around the protagonist’s efforts to escape from a prison. It released on the MSX2 in Japan and parts of Europe in 1987, with a flawed NES port being completed (without Kojima’s involvement) soon after.

Kojima’s next project was the post-apocalyptic graphic adventure game Snatcher, inspired by sci-fi classics such as Blade Runner and The Terminator. With Kojima and his team having the opportunity to build Snatcher from the ground up, they implemented the kinds of groundbreaking elements that would define Kojima’s later work, including high quality storytelling, professional voice acting, and cinematic cut scenes inspired by the technical guidelines of film production.

These were followed in the early 90s by SD Snatcher – an advanced version of the original game which was one of the first to feature an innovative, first-person turn-based battle system, and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, designed in response to Konami’s decision to produce a poorly received sequel to the original called Snake’s Revenge without the involvement of Kojima himself.

By 1994, Kojima’s work was being created for disc-based media, and was developed via a scripting engine that he’d created to give him more control over the production process. He released Policenauts, a film noir-inspired adventure game that would only see an English release through a fan-made translation patch that came out on August 24, 2009, in order to coincide with Kojima’s 46th birthday.

It was 1998’s Metal Gear Solid that brought Kojima international acclaim. Adapted from the earlier Metal Gear series, its highly refined production design and intricate plot were unlike anything seen in a video game before. The game melded anime-inspired flair with a grounded depiction of its characters, locations, and themes, resulting in one of the Playstation’s best selling games.

Metal Gear Solid’s success had a personal impact on Kojima. Though his mother had initially been supportive of him, over the years she had stopped telling friends what her youngest child was doing with his life, as she watched his former peers rise to prominent positions in more traditional industries. No longer did she need to be embarrassed by her son’s profession.

Never had a video game quite so effectively exemplified the medium as art…but it was only the beginning.

Konami poured massive funding into the game’s sequel, developed for the Playstation 2. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was one of the most highly anticipated games ever, and was extremely successful on release, though the story’s philosophical themes centred around the topics of memes, censorship, child soldiers, and the flaws of democracy were too much for some players.

Kojima responded simply, “Games shouldn’t only be fun. They should teach or spark an interest in other things”.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater launched in 2004. A prequel game with the thrilling intricacies of a James Bond mystery, Snake Eater set a new standard for video gaming as a whole. It also brought an entirely new audience into the franchise, including Kojima’s mother. “It took her an entire year to complete Metal Gear Solid 3. She would get her friends to help her. When she defeated The End, (a boss character who, despite his name, is faced around the mid-point of the game) she called me up and said: ‘It is finished’.”

Around this time, Kojima produced several other games as well, including space-mech action title Zone of the Enders and Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand. The latter, designed for the Game Boy Advance, featured a photometric sensor on the game cartridge that gave the protagonist power. In essence, the idea was to have players soak in some sunlight while still playing a video game.

For Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots – the game that was set to cap off the MGS franchise – Kojima had planned to reduce his involvement in the production, until a slew of death threats from overreacting fans saw him co-direct it with Shuyo Murata.

Following the game’s release in 2008, Kojima received a lifetime achievement award at the MTV Games Awards, where he stated, in English: “I have to say, even though I received this award, let me state that I will not retire. I will continue to create games as long as I live.”

In 2009, he helped reboot Konami’s Castlevania series with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and worked on two spin-offs of the MGS franchise: Metal Gear Solid: Rising, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, due to concerns the teams that had taken over the franchise were not capable of delivering titles worthy of the franchise without his guidance.

By 2014, Kojima’s name was still celebrated across the industry, but rumours of issues with Konami started spreading. When he announced that he would be working alongside film director Guillermo del Toro on a new Silent Hill game, industry and fan response received fever pitch. Eight months later, the game was cancelled.

Then, just prior to the release of 2015’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Kojima’s name was removed from the packaging and all marketing material. Later that year, MGS V won Best Action Game and Best Score/Soundtrack at The Game Awards, but Konami barred Kojima from attending the event. This prompted host Geoff Keighley to make a statement during the ceremony.

“As you noticed,” Keighley started, “Hideo Kojima is not here with us tonight and I want to tell you a little about that. Mr. Kojima had every intention of being with us tonight, but unfortunately he was informed by a lawyer representing Konami just recently that he would not be allowed to travel to tonight’s awards ceremony to accept any awards.”

The crowd booed so loudly that Keighley was forced to stop and wait for the sound to subside.

“He’s still under an employment contract. And it’s disappointing and it’s inconceivable to me that an artist like Hideo would not be allowed to come here and celebrate with his peers and his fellow teammates.”

Was Kojima’s career over?

By December, it was revealed that his non-complete clause had stopped Kojima from engaging with his fans after being let go by Konami earlier in the year for undisclosed reasons.

He returned with the news that he had joined with Sony Computer Entertainment to found an independent studio, and that their first new game was in development for the Playstation 4.

It seems his promise to continue making games holds true, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.