One may argue that it takes a certain level of creativity to design a game that appeals to an audience, nestling them in a world that they'll want to devote a significant portion of their time towards. However, I'd say that it takes an even greater level of creativity to maintain such an audience, all while advancing a complex storyline that includes a myriad of critiques on philosophical themes—something one wouldn't necessarily equate with video games. Herein lies the creative ingenuity of Hideo Kojima, world-renowned designer and auteur of video games.
Hideo Kojima was born on August 24th, 1963, in Tokyo, Japan. At the age of 4, his family moved to Osaka, the sudden change in scenery from the bustle of Tokyo to a more relaxed Osaka had a profound impact on the young Kojima, who began to spend more time indoors creating crude figurines. It was also at this time in Kojima's life where his parents introduced him to the nuanced form of story-telling through film. On a near-daily basis, Kojima and his family would have movie nights together, and he would only be allowed to sleep when the movie finished, not a moment sooner. When he was a little older, his parents would regularly give him money to go and watch movies by himself, provided that he would discuss the film with them afterwards. Kojima himself states that he and his family would spend multiple hours discussing the themes and direction of the films they'd view together. This love for film would come to a head when a 10-year-old Kojima, armed with an eight-millimeter camcorder, would take his high-school friends to a nearby island to shoot their own short movies, each with its own nuanced story ranging from a plane crash on a deserted island to a zombie infestation. These frequent creative experiences instilled a penchant and passion for storytelling in Kojima, something that he would actively continue to expand upon with time.
Kojima would encounter the first of many difficult roadblocks in realizing his dream of storytelling with the death of his father, who was not only a major guiding force for Kojima, but an effective supporting mechanism in helping him pursue his passion in an environment that largely didn't care very much for storytellers. The death of his father also brought many financial hardships on his family, forcing Kojima's hand in choosing a career path as the film industry in Japan was largely nonexistent at the time.
As a college student studying economics, Kojima would write novels, hoping to earn awards for them and eventually be asked to write a screenplay for a movie of his own, but his attempts never quite reached fruition. It was here that Kojima became interested in the video game genre, having first laid eyes—and played— on Nintendo's Famicom disk system. To Kojima, video games began to represent another visual medium where he could express his storytelling ability, a medium that so recently became popular that people couldn't have a pre-existing notion about it like they did with film.
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| Nintendo Famicom Disk System |
Unfortunately, Kojima came to the realization that people have preconceived notions about everything when people he knew—from his lecturers to his close friends—criticized Kojima for announcing that he was switching his career focus to making video games. Reflecting on this in a later interview, Kojima would state, "when I announced my decision, all of my friends and lecturers begged me to reconsider. They thought I was crazy, to be honest. It was only my mother who told me that I could do whatever I wanted to in life. She was the only one." Once again, it was Kojima's family who would continue to stand by his side and push him to realize his dreams. Gardner states that creativity—in part—grows out of the ties between an individual and other people in their lives, with the case of Kojima, his creative process would forever be shaped by his relationships with his mother and father who shaped his love for storytelling, as well as people who antagonized him for choosing the path he did. He would soon join Konami Industries as a video game designer, where he would go on to produce the widely popular Metal Gear series.
At Konami, Kojima was tasked with taking over the Metal Gear Project from an aging associate of Konami, he turned the game, which was geared more towards an action/adventure style, to a more nuanced, stealth-based title called Metal Gear, which was loosely based off of The Great Escape, the 1963 film which Kojima recalled viewing multiple times when he was a child. The game revolved around a special forces operative named Solid Snake tasked with infiltrating a rogue state in an effort to destroy a nuclear-weapons-capable walking bipedal tank. It received largely positive acclaim and is accredited with being one of the earliest purely stealth-based titles to grace the video game world, having been released in 1987.
Compounding on his success, Kojima would go on to create a sequel for Metal Gear, named Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Building off the mechanics introduced in the first game, Metal Gear 2 would add in a sound mechanic to stealth and detection, as well as introduce concepts such as crouching on the ground, and enemies having a measurable field of vision. Kojima would also create his own scripting engine that allowed for him to have greater control over when an animation or music played during a certain moment of the game, a function that was previously delegated to only programmers, this allowed Kojima to have greater creative control over his games themselves.
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Kojima went on to create additional games for the Metal Gear series, and ultimately broke ties with Konami following gross creative disagreements between the two. He has since released his own standalone video game, titled Death Stranding. The game centers around a character played by Norman Reedus, a "deliveryman" of sorts who lives in a world occupied by supernatural beings that can alter time itself. Death Stranding has also generated critical acclaim as a philosophically profound video game, pushing the limits as to which people view loneliness, addiction, and their own personal identity. It is currently available for all major video game consoles as well as PC, and I recommend that anyone interested in Kojima's unique style of storytelling give it a try.
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| Kojima's Latest and Greatest Video Game Title, Death Stranding |
To me, Kojima represents a cross of both middle-C and big-C creativity. In my eyes, he has introduced a profound change in the gaming community that goes beyond just his own personal viewpoint. While introducing such a change, he essentially married his love for western films with that of his own unique style of storytelling, combining the two with innovative gaming mechanics that he employed in his video games to create something wholly new in the gaming world. Regardless, it can be said without a doubt that his creative mindset is what makes him such a powerhouse in the gaming industry, even after he has been in it for upwards of 30 years.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2012/may/23/hideo-kojima-interview-part-1
https://screenrobot.com/hideo-kojima-video-gamings-first-auteur/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/magazine/hideo-kojima-death-stranding-video-game.html
https://www.engadget.com/2017-04-29-hideo-kojima-tribeca-games.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dark-side-psychology/202002/death-stranding-manipulating-the-brain-good#:~:text=In%20Hideo%20Kojima's%20most%20recent,addiction%2C%20loneliness%2C%20and%20identity.
I enjoyed reading this blog post on a creative such as Kojima; many other game designers exist in the field, but Kojima, as you have noted, is definitely one of the pioneers of the field that introduced features that many other games use to this day; the idea of crouching to avoid detection is a concept prominent even in games that do not primarily employ stealth mechanics, and enemies having a range of vision to avoid is a concept almost everyone finds natural; it's a credit to Kojima for making these ideas a video game industry standard.
ReplyDeleteAnother nifty idea I did not know about Kojima is how his childhood influenced the way he managed to think about video games; almost all of Kojima's games, as discussed in the post, have a requirement to think deeply about what the story wishes to tell you and to wrestle with the concepts on your own time. This way of thinking was possible due to Kojima's upbringing and nurtured interest in film, which in turn, fostered a love for storytelling that lead to the success his video games stories have had. Many other creatives have had success in spite of their families disapproval of their passion; Kojima is an example of someone succeeding because of their family, as his mother became the force that encouraged him to seek video games as his career.
Video games, I think, get a rather bad reputation, as you noted in this article, when people think about what they bring to the table. However, it is important to note that people like Kojima are what helps people realize the possibilities held within video games, that like film, television, and the written word in their own times, the world of video games is a new medium for people to show the world their creativity.
To be honest, I know very little about video games. In what little experience I’ve had with gaming, I’ve found that I possess little talent beyond the mini games of Mario Party and the button smashing of Battlefront (although I will venture to say that there are very few who can beat me in Wii bowling).
ReplyDeleteThat being said, the complex and unique story lines of role-playing games have always been so impressive and fascinating to me. Although I rarely played them myself, I would spend hours watching my siblings, friends, and even YouTube videos advance through the newest video game stories. I like it because it really is just like watching a film or TV show; arguably, the game is better because it allows the audience some element of control over the progression of the story line.
It is really interesting to read about Hideo Kojima, for he is seemingly the father of this type of depth in gaming. I certainly took for granted the incorporation of story-telling into the gaming realm; not only does the narrative have to be engaging and easily applicable to a gaming format, but developers also have some degree of responsibility to reflect the philosophical and societal commentaries of the real world within the worlds of their products. This, again, appears to be rooted in Kojima’s initial Metal Gear series.
What I find extremely interesting about Kojima’s creative process is the idea that he possessed this creativity (the ability to develop meaningful and extraordinary stories), but it took him a little while to find exactly which domain it would thrive most in. In this sense, he represents that creativity can be both general- and domain-specific. Perhaps we all have a degree of creativity inherently, but not all of us are able to find the domain in which it works best. It was also intriguing to read about the influence his childhood has had on his story-telling capability. This certainly raises the question as to how much both intrinsic motivation and creativity is influenced by the events of one’s childhood as well as the role of natural talent in the development of creative products.
Now that I know about Hideo Kojima, I will definitely be on the lookout for his new game Death Standing. Who knows, I may even try playing it myself!