Hideo Kojima wants someone to send him to space, so he can make a game to play in space
Because of course he does.
After creating Metal Gear Solid, founding his own studio to develop Death Stranding and becoming best pals with most of Hollywood, Hideo Kojima’s next big ambition is apparently to be blasted into space to make a game.
That’s according to the legendary dev himself, who told the crowd assembled at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival to watch Hideo Kojima: Connecting Worlds, the recent documentary about his creative process, that he’d love to create a game playable in space… while in space.
“I wanna go to outer space, right?” Kojima replied when asked by friend and noted summer fan Geoff Keighley what else he’d still like to accomplish in his career as he approaches 60. (Around 22:15 here.)
“I wanna go to outer space and create a game that you can play in space,” Kojima continued. “Because, right now, all games you can’t properly play in outer space, but I wanna create something- I’ll play that. So someone, please, send me up to space.”
While it’s hard to tell exactly how much Kojima was joking, I wouldn’t assume it’s completely in jest. After all, the developer hasn’t been afraid to get experimental in the past, designing sunlight-powered Game Boy Advance roleplaying game Boktai - which included a working solar panel used to charge the player’s vampire-hunting guns in-game - and speaking for many years about his desire to create a game that literally self-destructs on a Game Over.
Of course, that’s in addition to the auteur-ish quirks of his best-known series, which famously included the controller-switching and memory card-reading of the Psycho Mantis fight in Metal Gear Solid 1, the bait-and-switch of Metal Gear Solid 2’s marketing, Death Stranding’s parade of celebrity cameos (feat. Guillermo del Toro with a baby in a jar) and the real-time battle against The End in Metal Gear Solid 3, which could be completed by waiting two weeks for the veteran sniper to pass away from old age. (Whether that makes it into the upcoming remake or the re-release of the OG games - which could mark the first time Snake Eater makes it to PC - remains to be seen.)
In other words, if you’re going to bet against a game developer going to space to develop a game you can play in space whenever he’s done with Death Stranding 2, making a movie and whatever else Kojima Productions has cooking, I wouldn’t bet against Hideo Kojima. Just be assured that, whether he goes, there’s a good chance he’ll take Norman Reedus with him.