Hideo Kojima appeared in the (fantastic) Wired tech support series (did you know we're closer in time to Cleopatra than Cleopatra to the beginning of Ancient Egypt?) answering questions – well, mostly about myself.
While the web series has featured game developers in the past, including the creator of Dead Space and co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, Glen Schofield – this interview was purely about Kojima himself and how he goes about writing, creating and even evaluating his own video games.
Kojima had a lot of interesting things to say—including how important it is to feel the “love of the creator” in games and encourage player experimentation—but also talked about his well-documented love of movies, the future of gaming, and how he's trying to create a world that “will want to stay and play.”
He also said he has “no” experts who offer specialized scientific or historical knowledge, so he studies “daily,” reading literature, watching documentaries and news specials, and researching information online or in the library.
“If you're watching and thinking, 'I'm going to be Kojima's right hand!' please contact me,” he joked.
There's also a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how he personally tests and tweaks his games, including listening through headphones and speakers, adjusting difficulty, and “fixing story pacing issues.”
“This is a very important stage,” he said. “I don’t think many people do that.”
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Kojima also appeared Netflix Japan I also recently interviewed the Duffer Brothers at the Kojima Productions office. In it, the brothers admitted how much they were influenced by Japanese culture, especially games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, which “really influenced the whole look and feel of Upside Down and the Other Dimension.”
They also mentioned Metal Gear Solid, but that may have been because Kojima was interviewing them.
“Those [games] everything was discussed in the room,” they said. “It was filtered through the lens of how we remembered seeing them and playing them for the first time when we were young, and filtered through our experiences, but they were just as much a part of Stranger Things.” [as influences from The Big Three, John Carpenter, Spielberg, and Stephen King]”
