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.