Hideo Kojima is a legendary video game designer and director who has made a name for himself with his work on Metal Gear Solid. He first became famous for creating the stealth action series, which helped establish him as one of the most important figures in Japanese gaming history. In a recent interview, Kojima sat down with IGN to discuss his new game Death Stranding. During this interview, he discussed the origins of Death Stranding, how it ties into the Metal Gear franchise, and his experience and relations with Konami.
The Origin of Death Stranding
Kojima started off by explaining that the idea for Death Stranding came from his desire to make a game that combined two things—the first being the original “Metal Gear” series, which is about soldiers fighting in war-torn areas; and the second being Norse mythology, which tells stories about gods and goddesses who come back from death to fight again on earth. He said that as far as he knew, no one had ever tried to combine these two things before.
Kojima Productions and Konami G.C.
Kojima Productions is an independent game developer based in Tokyo. It was founded by Kojima in 2003 and has since released nine games, including Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.
In 2016, Konami announced that it would be acquiring Kojima Productions in exchange for a majority stake in his company and its IPs (intellectual property) – including Death Stranding – as well as several other studios around the world. This was met with concern from fans who felt that this deal was unethical due to the way Konami had treated Kojima over the years. However, this acquisition turned out to be quite beneficial for both parties – especially when it comes down to Death Stranding.
In 2019, he released his latest game, Death Stranding. It was met with mixed reviews and sales, but it did make some waves: Kojima partnered with Sony Interactive Entertainment to develop the game using their new PlayStation 4 console. This marked the first time he’d worked with another company since leaving Konami in 2015.
Kojima’s departure from Konami was highly controversial; many fans believed that he left because of conflicts with management over his creative vision for the future of Metal Gear Solid. Since then, Kojima has been working on Death Stranding full-time at Sony Interactive Entertainment’s studio in Austin, Texas—but this doesn’t mean he’s forgotten about Konami! Despite all speculation around Kojima’s relationship with Konami, we can confirm that there are no plans for any future collaboration between them—at least not when it comes to Death Stranding or any other project.
That was it for this article on Kojima and Konami’s relations and how was Hideo Kojima’s experience like working for Konami. Please check out our other articles in which we discuss the interview more. Thank you for reading this article.