Digital game designer who sleeps with the TV on at night: Who is Hideo Kojima?

He was once a vice president at Konami. In 2005, he created his own game team and named his company Kojima Productions. While creating the Metal Gear Solid series with his new team, he also served as a producer in the production of games such as Castlevania Lords of Shadow.

Born on August 24, 1963, the father of the successful game producer passed away when Kojima was young. In his interviews, he says that he got used to living alone at an early age and still leaves the television on when he comes home or to his hotel room to suppress his loneliness. He wanted to be an artist when he was a child, but could not realize his dream due to pressure from his family. However, Kojima, who was 13 years old at the time, could not suppress his desire to be an artist and his creativity, and wrote short stories and sent them to Japanese magazines and newspapers. Over time, he strengthened his imagination and writing by preparing joint works with his friends.

Entering the Gaming World

Hideo Kojima, who was studying economics at university, met the Famicom company and took his first step into the gaming world. Kojima, who intended to become a film director, changed his goal in the fourth grade, thinking that being a game designer would make him feel better than being a film director. So he turned to game design and his mother gave him the greatest support. Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario Boss, also had a great influence on this decision, and Kojima especially emphasizes this in his interviews.

Hideo Kojima (born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer, and writer. He is 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. 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.

Kojima, like every developer and producer who wants to step into the game industry, has gone through difficult times. Game design plans were not found to be satisfactory or compelling. Kojima did not give up and was hired by Konami in 1986 as a designer and planning manager. He was not very happy and disappointed in the department he worked for. He wanted to move to Nintendo and work on NCS Arcade-type games and was confident that he would develop the Nintendo Entertainment System. Even though he wanted to leave Konami, he started working on his first project, Penguin Adventure.

He won the appreciation of Konami with Penguin Adventure and then completed the first game he developed, Lost Wald, in 1986. However, this game was rejected by Konami. Kojima, who was working on the Metal Gear project at the time, prepared this game inspired by the movie The Great Escape. Thus, he launched his prison escape-themed game, which includes secret elements. Since there was no project that offered such a gaming experience before, the project received acclaim and started to stand out at Konami.

By the 1990s, Hideo Kojima was working on two different games. While he was working on the new series of his own product, Snatcher, he was also spending the other half of his time on the sequel to Metal Gear Solid. With these projects, he showed his interest in cinema production and combined the game world and cinematic stories. He paid attention to this in Metal Gear 2 and aimed to make this game the best of its kind by taking the story and gameplay to a higher level.

2000s

In early 2001, Metal Gear Solid Sounds Of Liberty was released for PlayStation 2. It took its place among the most popular and played games of the period with its advanced physics engine and detailed visuals. This game, which deals with technology, nuclear engineering, nuclear wars, and human life, was the joint product of Kojima's imagination and cinema culture. He created a different voice with the game Boktai The Sun Is In Your Hand, which he took part in and was released for Gameboy Advance in 2003. In the game, the character was a vampire hunter and hunted vampires with his solar gun. Kojima placed a sunlight-sensitive chip in the standard Gameboy Advance chip so that kids wouldn't have to sit at home all day. The solar gun was charged with the sun's rays, and the children could also get sun rays and fresh air while playing outside.

In 2008, he released Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots, which he co-directed with Shuyo Morata. The interesting part of the story of this game is that Kojima had to prepare this game. Because Kojima, who wanted to release another game other than Metal Gear Solid, received death threats. He took the director's chair in order not to endanger the lives of both his team and himself. He won MTV's Game Awards with this game and stated that he would not retire with this work and would continue to develop games as long as he was alive.

Konami and Kojima Dispute

Before 2009, he started working on a joint project with game developers in the West. Kojima and his team rolled up their sleeves for the necessary preparations for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. However, he had an agreement with Konami for the continuation of the Metal Gear Solid series and he had to work on its continuation. He was forced to produce the sequel series of the game, and Kojima began to see himself as a slave. As we knew before, he received death threats and was being pressured by Konami. In 2011, he was appointed vice president at Konami. In 2014, Kojima developed a game engine called Fox Engine with his team.

The video game PT was released on the PlayStation Store in August 2014, a precursor to the Silent Hills game. However, in 2015, as a result of Kojima's reluctant attitude and Konami's game policy, the PT game was removed and the Silent Hills project was also canceled. Then, Konami disregarded Kojima's efforts and removed the name Hideo Kojima from the promotional videos of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and from the game's box.

He announced that he would be working with Sony Entertainment on December 16, 2015. He founded Kojima Productions again and released the first game they developed, Death Stranding, exclusively for PlayStation 4, on November 8, 2019. Thus, he parted ways with Konami, the company for which he worked for many years and which gave him difficult times in his last years.