Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds

I started thinking about my own stories when I was little.

Ever since I was a child, I was a daydreamer.

I would nearly get run over.

I guess that's just the kind of person I am.

Please join me in welcoming...

- Mr. Hideo Kojima. - Hideo Kojima.

One of the most creative talents in the history of gaming.

Fantastic.

What he creates are not games or films...

They are his worlds.

In the space of gaming, he is the master.

- Absolutely love your work. - Thank you.

You can tell it's a Hideo Kojima game

even if that credit wasn't there.

No way.

Video games are the biggest, most powerful form

of entertainment in the world

and the numbers clearly show that

more than three billion people on the planet play video games.

And Hideo really is probably the most well-known game creator

in the world.

It's kind of like stepping into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory

with Willy Wonka, you know?

You just kind of go along for the ride.

I think that it's the obligation of any artist

to push the boundaries of their canvas.

There isn't some kind of thread from which I pull ideas...

Fragments of ideas appear in my head.

I have these moments in my game-making.

I'm really interested in how people think creatively,

no matter what the discipline.

Any form of artistry, the process is the same almost always.

And that is an interplay between the intellect and the intuition.

He's fighting all the time.

I don't know with whom.

Maybe himself.

If it says "A Hideo Kojima Game",

it means that from start to finish,

I'm involved in everything, that's the declaration.

"A Hideo Kojima Game" means we cannot cut corners.

It's hard work every time, but this time, I was independent.

In my previous company, I was free to do what I wanted, but it wasn't my own brand.

I had my own games

but I had to protect the company's brand

and profits.

In such an environment,

it is very difficult to create something cutting-edge.

The only way is to produce it yourself.

The story from back in the day was that

Hideo wanted to go and pitch a game

but he didn't want to tell anyone what it was.

He really wanted someone to sign up for the game

without hearing what the game was.

And everyone in the Western world was like, "You're crazy."

We know you're Hideo Kojima

but we're not going to sign up your game until we know what you're making.

That's the Sony HQ.

And Sony, as far as I know, basically said,

"We're going to bet on you, Hideo Kojima, as a creator."

We don't even need to know what the game is.

We're just in.

It's bent right? Like this.

Yeah, that looks bad, it should come up like this.

This is a bit long.

Maybe it doesn't look good.

The first game I did with Director Kojima was Policenauts .

And...

Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

He told me at the start that he wanted a new challenge.

With games nowadays,

you're competing against players around the world to see who's the best.

You hit or shoot each other

or you might co-operate with others to shoot an enemy.

This game isn't like this, it's about connections.

You help others you can't see and that will bring you closer.

It's a unique game characteristic.

When I first explained this to my staff,

I got a largely negative response.

They said, "But no one does that..."

"You have to be the strongest, you play because you want to stand out."

"You don't do something for others." Most of them were negative about it.

When Director Kojima first told me about his plan,

he said that the game would be based around "delivery".

Something with a totally new concept of gameplay.

I wondered if it would be accepted.

We started planning at the end of 2015.

At the time, there was a lot of fragmentation and isolation.

It was a time when the world was becoming divided.

Although the world is connected by the Internet 24 hours a day,

it wasn't coming together as one.

I wanted to offer another way,

which is why I made Death Stranding .

He is not someone that just sort of rinses and repeats.

He really tries to, to reinvent how the game is played.

But overarching all that is this view

that he wants to communicate something to the player.

He really has a message that he wants to deliver in every game

that he hopes translates to the player.

Like every game he makes, there's a reason behind making the game.

Firstly, they take on the role of Sam.

At the very start, they will feel a sense of being completely alone

on a very dangerous path.

They feel a sense of loneliness

as they deliver packages and start connecting the world.

The player is the only one making the connections,

so the sense of loneliness is torturous at the start.

Hello!

Hey you!

I'm Sam.

Hey, my name is Sam too!

They begin to realize

that there are others around the world doing the same thing as them.

Those are the other players, the other Sams.

Thanks for the help.

They can't see each other but they start to see traces and realize,

"I'm not the only one who felt this way".

And it opens out from there.

The people she left behind have been hard at work,

setting up Chiral network terminals.

But these terminals are still isolated.

We need you to bring them online.

There are invisible ghosts there,

he can sense them but not see them.

Mr. Kojima always keeps some space for the players to think for themselves.

These people have allergic reactions to the ghosts,

that's why they get tearful or get goosebumps.

I believe there's a moment of awakening that we get from any good work,

I think all of Mr. Kojima's works are like that.

When I was a student, there was a lot going on

and I didn't get along with my school.

I never told my parents about these things.

When I was with my class or my friends, I would be cheerful and outgoing.

I am from Kansai so I like to make people laugh or tease others.

But when I was alone,

I would hold my knees and listen to music and cry.

After my dad passed away, everyone was worried about me.

There was a period of feeling totally isolated and lonely.

The truth is that because my dad died, I was able to get into the game industry.

Games weren't acceptable like they are now.

Game centers were seen as a shady business in those days.

The industry had a negative image.

My mother was the only one who didn't object for some reason.

"If you want to pursue it, that's fine."

My friends and relatives thought my future was down the pan.

That's how I was seen.

If my dad was alive, he'd have been opposed.

He was a very scary man.

When I entered the industry,

I was surprised to find so many people like me.

For the first time,

there were people with a burning passion for making things.

I was having so much fun that I hardly slept at all.

I want to create things that people haven't seen before,

but it can be difficult.

If you say, it's a cross between Robocop and Towering Inferno ,

then one can combine the two existing visuals together.

But if you say, "It's visually different from anything that exists",

they can't visualize it.

I don't know, like, new franchises right now.

I think that it's both, it's really brave and it's really hard.

They're mostly making, like, weird remakes and stuff.

It's, like, really hard to get funding for, like, new work in the modern era.

In the past, when I went pro,

they would just give you 100 million yen,

and you could make whatever you wanted.

But now it costs a few trillion, or tens of trillions of yen,

so if it's a failure, there's a huge risk to the business.

So they try to minimize this risk from all angles

to an extent which is much more than what it was in the past.

When you balance the commerciality expectation

of hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.

At the same time, wanting to stay true not just to your vision,

but to your whole idea of what gaming is.

That's like playing Russian roulette with six bullets.

How can we do it?

For the daily one, not this movement, but...

More like this?

He's trying to make a new narrative experience.

I can imagine the path he takes to achieve this

is very difficult.

I've been making games for over 30 years.

Before, if I was to make a flop, my staff could just go to another department.

They would still have a paycheck.

But now it's my own company...

so if I mess up, there won't be a next project.

Crashed.

He does more work than is required.

If you're just playing,

you perhaps wouldn't even notice how much information is packed in.

It's a whole world that he creates in his work, a virtual world.

In these virtual worlds, he thinks of every single element.

I work as closely as possible to my staff

and make detailed adjustments every day.

Uh...

But I don't think this way of working is common these days.

- Hello everyone. - Hello.

When the camera is rolling, the atmosphere is suddenly positive here.

Let's start with the bugs.

In the Beta version,

we couldn't include two corrections regarding the memory,