Hideo Kojima Talks Challenges And Fears After Leaving Konami

Hideo Kojima is busy editing together the launch trailer for his upcoming Death Stranding. His sight seems firmly fixed on the future, but he hasn’t forgotten his past. In a new interview, the legendary Director talks about the fears and challenges that he faced when leaving his employer years ago that lead him to this point.

If you don’t recall, Kojima and Konami, the company he’d worked exclusively with for over two decades, had a very public falling out during the developer of Metal Gears Solid 5, which led both, to his departure as well as a rushed development on that game. It’s still not entirely clear what happened between the two, and neither side has totally pulled back the veil on the conflict, but in speaking with Famitsu, Kojima recalls the fear and dread he felt after the event. His lack of funds as well as his age put him at a distinct disadvantage in the market, for one, something that both he and the people around him were worried about after leaving Konami.

“It was three years and nine months ago that I struck out on my own,” says Kojima. “At that time, I was 53 years old. That’s an age in which you’d retire, right? My family members were also against the idea [of me setting up a new studio]. I was a 53-year-old middle-aged guy, I didn’t have any money or much of anything else, and it was just me saying I was going to make this open-world game.”

It’s an interesting and frank discussion, especially when he admits there’s a part of him that fears he won’t be able to make a good game on his own without corporate guidance of some kind. The fact that very few major game designers manage to make it big after leaving their respective studios is something he’s painfully aware of, saying,  “The reason for that is that there hasn’t been a single world-famous game designer who has had success after striking out on their own.” (Thanks to DualShockers for translations).

Well, regardless of that all of that, Kojima has managed to make Death Stranding in a pretty incredibly time frame. Whatever the game will be, it’ll be interesting, I’m sure, and with the full Sony marketing machine behind it and Kojima’s knack for creating hype, I imagine it’s going to be a big success for the legendary Director.