Why Hideo Kojima Matters

A controversial but essential voice of the industry

If you exist in the gaming sphere, I'd wager you have come across the name Hideo Kojima at least once. And if somehow you haven't, I'm sure the name Metal Gear Solid might ring a bell. The famous auteur is a figure who is known arguably just as much for his own person as he is for the games that he creates, which is saying a hell of a lot when you consider how influential his work has been for the entire medium. I was a late bloomer to his games. Metal Gear is a cultural mainstay at this point, so while I was of course completely aware of its existence, it wasn't until Metal Gear Solid V came out where the gameplay caught my eye enough to finally reel me in. And while I enjoyed my time with that game, it still wasn't until COVID where I finally dove into the rest of the franchise from the beginning, and the rest is history. So, in an industry where the creators and teams of designers behind your favorite games tend to be unknown background figures, what is it about Kojima that captures my and the world's attention? And what is it that makes his work so special?

To answer that question, let's first take a look at the man's influences. Kojima isn't someone who talks very much about his own life in interviews, but the one thing that's abundantly clear is his reverence for Western media. One of the few things we do know directly comes from his book of essays, The Creative Gene. He and his family had always been huge movie watchers, but after his father died when he was 13 years old he doubled down on the solace he got in movies, books, and television. As a result, he consumed tons of media from Japan but also America, which he found a deep love for, to the point that it became his primary obsession. Armed with a desire to become a filmmaker, he found himself at the next best medium. Video games.

Right from the beginning you can see Kojima's aptitude for innovation. On his first gig, he gets assigned to lead a project called Metal Gear, which was supposed to be a military action game for the MSX2. The system's hardware was fairly limited and it was making development of this kind of game difficult. Armed with inspiration stemming from the 1963 film The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen, he pitches a different kind of game focused on sneaking rather than shooting. In a reversal of the traditional shoot 'em up genre, he envisioned it more as a puzzle game about how to get around these situations, instead of engaging them, which was unique for the time and was a clever way to avoid the technical issues they were running into. So in a moment's notice, he basically pioneered the entire concept of stealth in video games and produced a hit for Konami.

Every thread that runs through his productions can be seen forming here at the start. First is his seemingly innate penchant for innovation, able to come up with new systems and ideas at every turn. Second is his love of Western cinema and how it directly influences just about everything he does. Last is the complete control he executes on his productions in order to deliver his singular vision.

I think that Kojima's love of Western pop culture is one of the things that endears him the most in the public eye. If I didn't convince you of this yet, maybe I can now. Metal Gear's titular character, Solid Snake? A reference to Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken character from the films Escape From L.A. and Escape From New York. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater? One giant homage to the cold-war era James Bond films. I mean, listen to the theme song for god's sake. The cassette player you get in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain? Full of as many American 80s hits that Kojima could fit.

What about Death Stranding? Well this game contains fully motion captured performances from every American celebrity he could convince: Norman Reedus, Lea Seydoux, Mads Mikkelsen, Margaret Qualley, Guillermo del Toro, even Conan O'Brien. The sequel coming out this year is only adding more to the roster. Look at his social media, and you'll find daily pictures of the songs he's listening to, the movies he's watching, even celebrities coming to visit his studio seemingly every other week, like Timothee Chalamet. Starting to get the picture?

From an outside perspective, it doesn't even really make sense how he's obtained this kind of fame in an industry of mostly unknowns. And this is part of the charm. Some people see this as him cozying up to Hollywood since he has made it clear a million times that he loves movies and always wanted to make them. While I can see why people might feel that way, I don't agree because of the next point I want to make, which is his uncompromising visions.

Yes, it's true that he's been bringing in every big name celebrity he can get into his games. But if he wanted to attract even more and use it as a stepping stone into Hollywood, he could easily produce something more accessible, but he doesn't. He remains uncompromisingly weird and himself. We live in a time where more and more games, honestly just media in general, feels like it gets made by a board of directors. Dictated by what is needed to make a profit or attract the widest audience it can. That's why we still need creatives like Hideo Kojima. He has a complete vision of what he wants to make and follows it through to the end. Despite how weird, and even not quite understood Death Stranding remains, it supposedly still turned a profit. At least enough to allow for a full sequel to be made, as well as letting him greenlight two other projects, "OD" and "Physint" which we don't know much about yet.

The most common opposition to how I feel comes from those who find this weirdness pretentious, or that his games have an air of being overly self important when it's nonsense. There have always been those who thought this around the time of the original trilogy of Metal Gear games, grew much louder by the time of Metal Gear Solid 4, and definitely hit its most vocal with Death Stranding. And once again, this is fair. Metal Gear Solid 4 is famous for having around 9 hours of cutscenes, with the final one lasting 71 minutes, enough to garner a Guiness World Record. This is easy bait for those on the whole "Kojima just wants to make movies" train.

I want to break for a second to talk about another prominent auteur, the late and great David Lynch, who you might know for Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and so many others. Lynch is one of my all time favorite film directors, and he falls into that same polarizing category of artist where his work is either viewed as the greatest pieces of fiction or incomprehensible nonsense. Also similar to Kojima, the man is widely adored as one of the kindest, caring, and freely artistic minds ever. Pretty much every actor he has ever worked with has praised him as a friend and collaborator. Yet even with all of that heaped onto him, Kyle MachLachlan, the star of Twin Peaks, has himself said he doesn't fully understand what the show is about on a literal level.

The thing is though, it almost doesn't matter. What he excels at is expressing feeling. Sometimes the actual plots or events you're watching unfold are weird and nonsensical, but that story and imagery evokes a vivid feeling in the audience that drives home his messages and themes. There are always people who are going to say this is pretentious and that you're looking for meaning where there is none, and those people aren't necessarily wrong for having that opinion, but they're missing the point.

This mirrors exactly how I feel about Hideo Kojima. He isn't the strongest "writer". Death Stranding had a ton of huge info dump cut-scenes where characters spout about the history of the world and vomit vocab words about "bridge babies", "the beach", "chiral networks", "cryptobiotes", and on and on and on. Sometimes it can be too much, and I admit that this got a lot worse by the time of Death Stranding, but one thing is clear: the feelings that he can evoke through this world are sublime. It's unlike anything I've experienced before.

Kojima uses this strange, post-apocalyptic mailman game to get across themes of connection, hope, humanity, and rebuilding. And what is so impressive is that you could skip every cinematic in the game and still receive this message through your actions in the gameplay, because it's seeped into every facet of the experience. This is also why, at least in Death Stranding, it's fair to criticize some of the writing, because you don't need characters to talk about "reconnecting" every other sentence. I think this is a symptom of having his own studio where there is nobody to reel him in at all anymore, which is the flip side of having that much freedom.

Sometimes it feels like he gets worried that people won't get it, and so his characters will often monologue pretty blatantly about what things mean. This is why to some, it can come off as preachy, but I think it's balanced out by his sense of self-awareness. I mean, after Death Stranding gets going, the first song that comes on while you approach your delivery point is titled, "Don't Be So Serious" by Low Roar. Metal Gear Solid has always had a tone that would balance out extremely serious topics with obvious tongue in cheek camp, and I think people forget how much this really has been prevalent in his stories since the beginning.

Even though his games are full of cinematics that do sometimes border on being too long, there are fantastic, revolutionary games in there too that still feel new. As far as Death Stranding, I don't know if I would agree with Kojima 100% about it being an all new genre of game, but I strongly believe that those leveling the "walking simulator" insults at it just didn't play enough. The game itself is extremely unique and the traversal mechanics and pseudo-multiplayer system are definitely something we hadn't seen before.

It's polarizing, a theme that I have constantly repeated throughout this video, and I can get why to some this wasn't the "game" that they expected, but he's still the same innovative auteur that he was since Metal Gear on the MSX. Some people don't want a movie mixed in with their video game, and that's fine. But this interesting media hybrid style that he has was instrumental in basically launching the video games as art sentiment alongside Bioshock. And to that point, I think it's unfair how much Kojima will now get criticized for these things, although I do think he could use an editor or partner to bounce off of in a very George Lucas way. Now let me wrap it around to the beginning to answer the initial questions that I posed about why the games of Hideo Kojima matter.

Not everything he's going to make will hit a home run, and that's part of what's great. He's willing to create new things: original worlds and stories, new styles of gameplay, bringing in celebrities to use crazy experimental levels of motion capture, mixing in film level cinematics, and no matter how weird or offbeat it may be, he sticks with it and releases it to the world. I understand that his level of fame is what lets him do this, and I of course wish that every developer equally had this opportunity, but unfortunately that isn't the way things work. For example, Sam Lake is another auteur like this who deserves his own discussion.

We live in a time where the games market is dominated by titles like Starfield, Avowed, yearly Call of Duty releases, and new Fortnite modes. And for the record, I have played and enjoyed everything that I listed. But lately we have been getting used to new releases that are just safe versions of things we have seen a million times before because studios don't want to take chances. I know there are indie titles that fill this niche and that deserve to be supported, but Kojima is one of the few that gets to do this at a AAA level. Even the discussions about whether he's profound or pretentious prove my point in of itself, he creates conversation and discussion about new things we haven't seen before. So the fact that Death Stranding has been so polarizing was a refreshing dialogue to be part of. That's what art is all about.

The purpose of this wasn't to defend every little thing and explain why his work is immune to criticisms. Everything people say is perfectly valid, and if you find things like his name being plastered into every set of rolling credits pretentious, I'm not going to change your mind. Sometimes it's okay to play something that challenges your expectations. You might come away not enjoying it, but still finding the merit in what was brought to your screen. To me this is the fun of Hideo Kojima productions. At the end of the day, there is a place for both Fortnite and Death Stranding in your repertoire, because they are both pieces of art that just offer different things. I only wish the latter would get the same kind of funding.

For me though, he combines a level of production, style, cinematic language, and innovation that just scratches this very particular itch. Not to mention music that is always spectacular, whether licensed or the score. I will forever remain seated for what he cooks up next. His experiences are unforgettable packages, the likes of which you can't get anywhere else, and that is why Hideo Kojima matters.

Check out my video version of this article here!