Death Stranding – Kojima Explains What ‘A Hideo Kojima Game’ Is

There are few people in this industry who exert as much creative control over their games as Hideo Kojima does, and the man lets it all show with each of his games proudly displaying that they’re Hideo Kojima games (unless, you know, Konami). But game development, especially in the AAA space, is handled by a lot more than just one person- so what does it mean when a game is stamped with the iconic “A Hideo Kojima Game” stamp? Kojima recently took to Twitter to explain just that.

Essentially, he did things one way back when development of games used to be a much smaller undertaking, where everything from art to coding to scriptwriting and so much else used to be handle by a very small team of people. With Kojima’s games, it was him who handled those things, and that’s how he continues to do things even today (hell, he even edits trailers for his games himself).

Kojima explains he is involved with everything from story and character design to casting and location scouting and a lot else. In his words, he is “involved with the game creation from upstream to downstream”. And that’s “A Hideo Kojima Game”.

The next Hideo Kojima game, Death Stranding, is out November 8 for the PS4. Interestingly enough, it’s been in development less than three years. Meanwhile, recently, Kojima also explained what “Social Strand System” – which is how he’s classifying the gameplay of the game – even means. Read more on that through here.

33 years ago in Game Industry, the game dev team was formed only 5-6 ppl. Creating the concept ideas, writing the story & specs, drawing the mapon the graph paper, helping dot draw, inputting the data directly, managing the flag, constructing simplified language by logic,

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 15, 2019

compressing binary number image, conducting all the directions and even writing the manual script.
And then I had to do business management, producing, & promoting. Even when the team got bigger and the task was subdivided my way of making game didn’t change, an indies style.

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 15, 2019

I get involved myself with the game creation from upstream to downstream. That’s A HIDEO KOJIMA GAME。

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 15, 2019

I create the theme, the world atmosphere, the story, the character and the game design while making the concept, scheduling, gathering informations, doing location scout, experimenting repeatedly, writing the script, deciding the specs, casting,

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 15, 2019

sound designing, putting my ideas in daily basis and adjusting, solving problems editing trailers and even making the key art. That’s my task.

— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 15, 2019