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Hideo Kojima

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Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫)
Born (1963-08-24) August 24, 1963 (age 61)
Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
OccupationVideo game designer
WebsiteHideo Kojima's Blog Template:Ja icon

Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer originally employed at Konami. Formerly the vice president of Konami Computer Entertainment Japan[1], he is currently the head of Kojima Productions. He is the creator and director of a number of successful games, including the Metal Gear series, Snatcher, and Policenauts. He has also produced both the Zone of the Enders and Boktai series. Kojima is consistently named by fans and industry experts alike as being one of the most influential and innovative Video Game Directors and Writers of all time, as well as being on many all time director top ten lists. Newsweek named Hideo Kojima as one of the top ten people of 2002.[2][3] In 2008, Next-Gen placed him #7 in their list of "Hot 100 Developer 2008."[4]

His Metal Gear series of games contains elements of magical realism and often breaks the fourth wall. He is also well known for a quirky and somewhat irreverent sense of humor, and his frequently disarming and powerful plot twists.

Early life

Born in Setagaya, Tokyo in 1963[1], Kojima moved to western Japan at the age of three. Kojima has said that early on in his life he often had to deal with death.[5]

When he was little the Kojima family moved to a small city called Shiraski.[5] Just as quickly, his family soon moved to the Kansai region.[5] Kojima has noted that growing up he was a latchkey kid, often having to watch television and look after himself when he came home from school.[5] Staying at home by himself in isolation still effects him to this day stating, "[whenever] I travel and stay at a hotel I put the TV on as soon as I enter the room, just to deal with the feeling of loneliness."[5]

Initially wanting to be an artist or illustrator, he was often discouraged by societal norms of Japan which favored finding safe and well paying jobs. He was also discouraged because his uncle was also an artist but suffered from financial difficulties.[5]

He eventually started writing short stories and began to send them to Japanese magazines but was never able to get anything published. He cites that his stories were often 400 pages long while most magazines wanted their short stories to be around 100 pages.[5] Eventually he shifted his focus to making films with his friend who had an 8mm camera.[5]

Career

In an interview on G4's TV series, ICONS,[6][7] Kojima describes much of his earlier career and influences for game design. Kojima grew up early in life watching movies with his parents. While studying economics in college, Kojima found himself playing video games during his free time mainly games on the Famicom. Kojima cites Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros. as the defining influence. In his fourth year in college, Kojima surprised colleagues by announcing his intentions to join the video game industry, despite initially having ambitions of becoming a film director.[8]

1980s

Kojima joined video game publisher Konami's MSX home computer division in 1986 as a designer and 'planner'. Kojima's gameplay ideas were often overlooked initially, and due to his lack of familiarity with programming was repeatedly snubbed for his failures in his initial years at Konami. At one point Kojima considered leaving the company, but stuck on.

The first game he worked on was a sequel to Antarctic Adventure, Penguin Adventure,[5] as an assistant director. The first game he actually developed was Lost Warld (sic), a war-themed platform game starring a masked female wrestler, in Template:Vgy. However, the game was ultimately rejected by Kojima's superiors at Konami.

His first released game was Metal Gear. It was released in 1987, to critical success, on the MSX2 home computer. The MSX system was a huge success in Japan, Europe, Brazil and Soviet Union, but due to its obscurity in the USA and some other nations, many people (especially Americans) did not play the game until it was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, and even then the game went through numerous changes during the conversion process with which Kojima was not directly involved. The game featured Solid Snake, a rookie soldier who has been sent to the fortified state of "Outer Heaven" to stop a nuclear equipped walking tank known as "Metal Gear." The game was unique by being one of the first known stealth games, in which the player is encouraged to avoid visual contact with the enemy as opposed to engaging in direct confrontation. He also released the critically acclaimed Snatcher, a graphic adventure game with a cyberpunk setting and Cold War themes, in 1988.

1990s

In 1990, Kojima released Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX only in Japan. The game was critically acclaimed in Japan for its sophisticated gameplay and intricate storyline, as it introduced many significant changes and additions to the Metal Gear series, most of which were later carried over to Metal Gear Solid. Of particular importance was the significantly improved characterization of the game's cast and the bigger emphasis given to the game's storyline, which was advanced through the use of cut scenes and covered themes regarding the effects of war. Other changes include significant enhancements to the enemy soldiers' behavior and AI, the ability to crawl, and the introduction of the radar, among other improvements. Despite the game's success in Japan, it was never released in the West until its inclusion in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence in 2006.

He remade Snatcher in Template:Vgy for the PC-Engine under title of Snatcher CD-ROMantic (which would then be ported to the Sega CD, the game's only official English-language version) and designed Policenauts, a film noir/sci-fi-themed adventure game set in a space colony (often regarded as a "spiritual sequel" to Snatcher), in Template:Vgy; Snatcher and Policenauts were both huge successes in Japan. Kojima regards Policenauts (according to a translation of the 'introduction' portion of the official Policenauts website) as his "most exhaustive piece of work." He often calls Metal Gear a "blockbuster movie series" while he regards Policenauts as his "independent film." He also produced a series of adventure games based on the Tokimeki Memorial dating sim series dubbed the Drama Series, which were made on the same game engine used by Policenauts.

With the release of Metal Gear Solid in Template:Vgy for the PlayStation, Kojima became an international celebrity among gamers. Metal Gear Solid was the first in the Metal Gear series to use 3D graphics and voice acting, which gave a more cinematic experience to the game. MGS was highly regarded for its well-designed gameplay and for its characters and storyline, which featured themes of nuclear proliferation and genetic engineering.

2000s

In early 2000, Kojima released the first details of the sequel to Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, for the PlayStation 2. The game's highly detailed graphics, physics, and expanded gameplay quickly made it one of the most anticipated games ever. The game was highly successful and critically acclaimed at release, due to its graphics, gameplay and storyline, which dealt with myriad philosophical themes as specific as memes, censorship, manipulation, patricide, the inherent flaws of democracy and as grandiose as the nature of reality itself. While "MGS2" broke ground with the breadth of its subject matter, the lengthy exposition of these issues, particularly in the bewildering maze of dialogue and plot revelation in the final hours of the game, left a sour taste in the mouths of many gamers, who expected the Hollywood-style resolution of its forerunner. The game also received negative fan reaction due to the unexpected introduction of a new protagonist named Raiden, a rookie soldier, the polar opposite in place of the series' taciturn main hero, Solid Snake.

Before MGS2's release, Kojima produced the game and anime franchise Zone of the Enders in 2001 to moderate success. In 2003, he produced Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand for the Game Boy Advance. In this, players take the role of a young vampire hunter who uses a solar weapon which is charged by a photometric sensor on the game cartridge (forcing them to play in sunlight). Another team inside Konami also began work on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, a GameCube remake of the first Metal Gear Solid with all the gameplay features of Metal Gear Solid 2 and with cutscenes redirected by action/horror film director Ryuhei Kitamura. It was released in 2004.

Afterwards, Kojima also designed and released Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PlayStation 2. Unlike the previous games in the series, which took place in the near future and focused on indoor locations, the game is set in a Russian forest area during the year 1964, and involves wilderness survival and camouflaging. The North American version was released on November 17, 2004, with the Japanese counterpart following on December 16. The European version was released on March 4 2005. Critical response to the game was highly favorable.

At that time Kojima also worked on Boktai's sequel, Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django for the Game Boy Advance. Released in summer 2004, it makes more extensive use of the cartridge's sunlight sensor and allows players to combine various new solar weapons.

Also released was Metal Gear Acid for the PlayStation Portable handheld. This turn-based game is less action-oriented than the other Metal Gear games and focuses more on strategy. It was released in Japan on December 16, 2004. Its sequel Metal Gear Ac!d 2 was released on March 21, 2006.

Kojima wanted Solid Snake to appear in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but due to development cycle problems Nintendo was unable to add Snake in. When Super Smash Bros. Brawl was announced, series producer Masahiro Sakurai, contacted Kojima to work Snake into the game. Kojima also worked on Snake's stage for SSBB.[9]

Kojima is currently codirecting Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots with Shuyo Murata. He has announced that this will be the last Metal Gear game he is directly involved in, giving him more freedom to pursue other projects in the future.

Influence from movies

Kojima's love of film is noticeable in his games where he pays homage through his stories and characters, sometimes to the point of pastiche, as in Snatcher.

Examples of influence by films include Solid Snake's codename (named after Snake from Escape from New York)[10] and real name (Dave from 2001: A Space Odyssey),[11] Hal "Otacon" Emmerich (HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey),[11] Sniper Wolf shooting Meryl in Metal Gear Solid (Full Metal Jacket),[10] Psycho Mantis (inspired from the film The Fury)[10] and the whole Metal Gear stealth concept (The Great Escape).[10]

Works

Metal Gear series

Boktai series

Zone of the Enders series

Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series

Snatcher series

Other Games

Movies

References

  1. ^ a b "IGN: Hideo Kojima Biography". Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  2. ^ "Mr. Kojima, Konami Videogame Designer Was Selected One Of Ten "Who's Next?" of NEWSWEEK". 2002-01-22. Retrieved 2008-03-31.
  3. ^ "Newsweek Names the Men and Women of 2002: 10 to Watch". 2001-12-23. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  4. ^ "THE NEXT-GEN HOT 100 DEVELOPERS 2008". 2008-02-19. Retrieved 2008-03-25.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Hideo Kojima Versus the Big Robots". EDGE Magazine (136): 69–74. 2004-04-22.
    An unofficial transcription is available on metalgearsolid.org [1]
  6. ^ "ICONS: Hideo Kojima - Metal Gear Solid". Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  7. ^ "G4TV Icons Hideo Kojima". Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  8. ^ Steven Kent (2003-05-18). "Hideo Kojima Interview: Konami's master game designer talks about the Metal Gear series and where games are going". Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  9. ^ "Super Smash Bros. Brawl revealed for Wii, featuring Solid Snake!". 2006-05-10. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  10. ^ a b c d Steven Kent. "Hideo Kojima: Game Guru, Movie Maniac". Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  11. ^ a b The Making of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty DVD packaged with European version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
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