Among many other things, Hideo Kojima talked about what age means to him and how he would like to make a game in space…
A new documentary about Hideo Kojima, Connecting Worlds, recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. During the screening, Kojima and director Glen Milner sat down for a Q&A.
The questions were, of course asked by Kojima’s best mate Geoff Keighley. The director asked him about his first game in 1986 and what has changed between then and now. “The specs of the hardware were very low,” Kojima said. “I couldn’t express anything. And I did everything from scratch. But now it’s vice versa […] before, with the people in our studio, usually that game was made with six people. Now it’s almost like a factory. For us, it’s different. Any of these movies [at Tribeca], you have to fight with the big budget movies. So that has changed like that, these days of creating games.”
Kojima was asked about the messages of his games and the oft-used “prophet” tag, most recently with the coinciding timing of Death Stranding and Pandemic.
“I’m a human, same as you guys,” said Kojima. “I’m not a prophet, I don’t see the future. I’m living just like you. I see the news and I’m always absorbing that into my games. I’m not a thing.” Kojima went on to point out that games and movies, forms of entertainment, are becoming more and more intertwined. “It’s not like it’s a game or it’s a movie or whatever. It doesn’t really matter to the people anymore. They don’t care about [whether] you eat Japanese food or Western food or Chinese food. Food is food and everyone likes all kinds of food. It’s similar to that.”
Hideo Kojima: Age and Fatalism
One of the strange themes that emerges during the Q&A is Kojima’s rather fatalistic outlook. At the end, when asked when he first felt successful, Kojima says that he feels free and comfortable making games: “I’m still in that moment, and maybe I don’t have so much time to live, but I want to keep doing it as long as I live.” Later, on the subject of filmmaking, Kojima says he is making a game and is “desperate” to somehow make a movie: “But I’ll be 60 this year. See? I’m a little old already.” “And as long as I live – a short life span, maybe – I will always do that.”
“I’m a 59 year old guy, ending-beginning. Passing along, becoming a documentary at Tribeca. Isn’t that something?”
Hideo Kojima’s frequent references to his age eventually lead to a question about what else he wants to achieve. What game would he most like to develop? “I want to go to outer space, and create a game that you can play in space,” said Kojima. “Because right now, all games, you can’t properly play those in outer space. But I want to create something: I’ll play that. So someone, please, send me up to space.”
Source: CinemaDaily
