For the first 58 years of his life, Hideo Kojima did not think about the fact that one day, he will die. As a boy, growing up in Japan in the 1960s, time seemed still. Even after he turned 30 and created Metal Gear Solid—the 1998 PlayStation classic that pioneered cinematic storytelling in games—he remembers thinking his next three decades would feel just as long as the first three. Instead, they went in a flash. Then, in 2020, isolated during Covid as he neared 60, he fell seriously ill. “I thought that I could never recover,” he says. “I felt like I might not ever be able to create a game again.”
It was the first time he’d ever thought about his lifespan; that there were things he would never get to make. Games, sure, but also films, and perhaps other things entirely. “I had all these ideas,” he says. “I had all these ideas,” he says. “So I wrote them down and passed them to my PA, as if it were my will.” He had visions of becoming a ghost—unable to create for eternity. “I kind of understood why people commit suicide. It was the end of the world.”
Around the same time, Kojima had worsening eye pain. He couldn’t go outside. Worse still: “I couldn’t watch movies or TV.” He likes to watch at least one film a day. He was struggling to see well enough to develop Death Stranding 2: on the Beach. In his haste to recover, he elected to have eye surgery that then damaged his optical muscles—the part of the eye that lets you focus. At one point, just before he served on the jury at the Venice Film Festival, he was alternating between 10 pairs of glasses. “The doctor kept saying that the brain would adjust,” he says. “I was not convinced.”
The first time I met Kojima, on a humid April lunchtime, he nervously shook my hand before walking off. He muttered something about worrying he’d say the same things he always says. When we finally speak properly, later that evening, in an all-white room, he talks about things I’ve never heard him discuss before. We are at his kingdom, Kojima Productions, in the Shinagawa Season Terrace building—a “seismically isolated” Tokyo skyscraper Kojima was only able to rent because the owner was a fan of his games. The interior is inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. One room is a blindingly lit mirrored chamber that’s home to nothing but a life-size sculpture of an armored spacesuit. Another contains a mold of Norman Reedus’s head.
“People think I just want to be famous, right?” Kojima tells me at one point. “But no—I want to raise the bar for gaming, and game creators.” On a studio-spanning black wall, there are Polaroids and messages from the chosen few he has brought into his world. Nicolas Cage. Guillermo Del Toro. Ari Aster. Hunter Schafer. Mads Mikkelsen. Timothée Chalamet. “Awesome place,” wrote Warfare director Alex Garland. “And weird.”
Kojima, who will be 62 in August, could still pass for 50—a jet-black mop of hair proves a stark contrast to a pair of pink Nike Air Prestos (the Acronym collab, for the sneakerheads) and a white Close film tee. He is a proud fan; if he likes what you do, he will wear it. As for his health ordeal, he has all but physically recovered—at least from what he lets on—but the impact of that period is permanent. He fantasizes about his consciousness being transported into an AI, or becoming a cyborg. “Maybe I might find a vampire in Romania or something,” he jokes. “They bite me, I become one.”
This is all to say: Kojima knows the end is inevitable, so he is quickening his pace. “I might cry after I finish Death Stranding 2,” he says. “Maybe I won’t…I have the next project.” That would be OD, his collaboration with Jordan Peele, the American writer-director behind Get Out and Nope, and other like-minded creatives. After that, there is Physint, the Sony-exclusive espionage game being hailed as a return to his Metal Gear roots. There are also his forthcoming movies, including a Death Stranding adaptation with A24. Sounds like a bucket list? It is. Kojima famously used to say he wanted to die watching movies. The last few years changed his mind: “I want to die making something.”
Hideo Kojima: So-so. There are so many things I still want to change. I want, like, six more months. Today, I might be satisfied. But tomorrow, when I play the same place again, you have a different sense. I have to set the line myself, where I stop.
I can’t really say this, but there used to be a master [disc] and that was it. Now it’s like, OK, I’ll let it go this time, and do it for a patch, or something.
It was good, these 10 years. But the most important thing is time. Time is really what I’m scared of the most. I keep forgetting things. The scariest thing is, I don’t realize what I’m forgetting. I became independent when I was 52. I’m 61 now. Also, there was Covid. I was trying to shoot the beginning scene of Death Stranding 2, where Léa [Seydoux] comes to you, in the spring of 2020. The game would’ve been released in 2023, but I couldn’t scan actors, I couldn’t do the new casting.
I feel nervous. I feel rushed. I still have a lot of things I want to do—that I need to do. I thought I could do anything if I was independent, but the reality is that I can’t. I always think of other, more weird stuff to make. But if I do that, and it doesn’t sell, my studio will go bankrupt. I know all the staff. I know the families of the staff. I have this burden on my shoulders.
I’d feel more relieved if I could make a game in a year. If you think about 10 years, you can do three games. You have to make a decision. You’re always thinking, “What is correct?”
After my father died, I wondered, What kind of dad was he? Then I lost my mother in 2017. My mother raised me. She didn’t know about games. She played Metal Gear Solid 3, and it took six months—she had to cheat! When she passed away, [I spent time thinking] “How was she?” I wondered about the side of her that I didn’t see. But I started to find out, all after I lost her. The Japanese always say, if you’re in a situation that you think you’re doomed, you say, “Dad or granddad who already passed away: Save me!” Same with the Mexican people as well—they have their relatives closer, even after they pass.
Good movie.
Letterboxd?
[I show him the app. He says he must have it.]
If Scorsese’s doing it, I can’t criticize Scorsese. He’s the second god. The first is George Miller.
I say I can’t answer this all the time. It changes. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Taxi Driver. Mad Max 2. Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. I keep a memo.
[He shows me his film diary on iOS Notes. A thumbs up emoji or two = a like or love. An eye emoji = no comment. A heart emoji = he watched with his sons.]
It’s like the baton or the loop of life—at first, the kids are the center of the family. There’s a point where you don’t have the center of gravity. And sometimes people get divorced because they lose that. I still have the center of gravity called work.
When I was single in my 20s, I just worked and worked. 20 hours a day, even on the weekend. It was so fun. When you have a family, you can’t. That’s the most important time—put everything into those ten years. All the other years, they’ll start to ignore you. [Laughs.] Now, my sons are independent, I’m back in my 20s again. But time is running short. I feel like one hour really goes by quickly. One day really goes by quickly.
The older son, yes. The younger son just reads books!
Coincidence and traveling are very important to living creatures. For example, migratory birds may carry disease as they travel, but by traveling, they are able to evolve. And so if we just connect via the internet, we will lose that.
I’m not negative towards AI, but I’m not sure how much life will change because of it.
I go to the museums almost every weekend. And you see, like [he imitates a brushstroke with a flick of his hand] a brush. I could do that when I’m 90. But with games, you kind of have to burn your brains out. How old will I be after I finish Physint? Late sixties? I haven’t really said anything about the future projects—I do have ideas—but I’m thinking I should direct a film after Physint because I’ll be too old in the future.
Yes, that’s my ideal. “Hey, go create the game,” and I go off and shoot. And when I come back, I’ll do another new project.
I had all these flops when I did that at Konami. I won’t name titles. If it’s a sequel, that’s quite easy. But a game that no one has ever seen before? Even if I write something, people won’t understand it.
I am not going to pass the baton to anyone. I will rather crush the baton… [Laughs.] I don’t need to give “Hideo Kojima” to anyone. If I pass the baton to my staff and tell them to make things the same way I do, the company will not succeed and will go out of business.
Every day, if I tweet something that I like, a director or an actor or a musician contacts me. They say, “I’m a creator because of your games.” But they didn’t receive the baton of Hideo Kojima. They received my small fire. They’re not copying me. They’re not trying to be me. They have this fire, and they light up their own. And they’ll probably give that to someone else. There were legendary comic book artists when I was a boy. I didn’t become a comic book artist—I was inspired by them, I was influenced.
Exactly.
This conversation was edited for brevity and clarity. A version of the story has appeared in various global GQ magazines.
Photography by Kazuhiro Fujita
Styling by Kentaro Takasugi
Grooming by Nanako Azuma
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