Hideo Kojima Exclusive Q&A

Hideo Kojima is one of those rare game designers who need no introduction. The mastermind behind Metal Gear sat down with us for an exclusive chat about his new development studio, Kojima Productions, and the future of its projects.

GameSpot: How did Kojima Productions come about? Why did you decide it was time to go in that direction?

Hideo Kojima: Well, for about 10 years, we had a kind of smaller company called Konami Japan, and in that there was the Kojima team, and we had, we were a publicly listed company, so we had responsibility, a different responsibility, and we had the feed on our own.

Well, in that era, we had a small team, which enabled us to maneuver very quickly, and that was quite good. But at the same time, I was burdened with management work and creative work 50/50. I had to split my time on both management and creativity.

Well, and then back in April, Konami Japan and all the other independent studios merged together by Konami HQ, and we formed Konami Group. And underneath that, we decided to start on Kojima Productions.

Well, since we're now under the Konami Group umbrella, that means we have lots of backup in terms of resources like human resources, or budgeting, costs, and development costs. Therefore, you know, I could totally concentrate on creating good things, or the things, the titles, that could be a hit.

So the main purpose actually going further down is that I will not, therefore, concentrate so much on the business side or the management side. Now I can concentrate totally on the creativity side to create good games, to create high-quality games.

So what, you know, for Kojima Productions, where I would like to aim is not just personally my name, Kojima Hideo by itself, but I decided to name it Kojima Productions because I have the staff working. So think of it like Pixar or maybe DreamWorks. We would like to be recognized in the very near future so that anything that comes out of Kojima Productions will be received as high-level, high-quality titles.

GS: So do you see Kojima Productions as being more of a Pixar, which is more known for a certain style, or DreamWorks, which is broader?

HK: Well, basically, in the past era of the initial game-creating era, there was an era where good games sold and were the hits and were not driven by license or marketing or PR. Of course, it's a hit business market we're in, so I could understand. However, I'm with a team, and most of them worked together for about 10 or so years. So what our goal is, is to maybe revive those good old days to prove that if you create a good game, it will sell. So in that sense, I think it's not for a broad audience maybe; it's maybe more known to more deeper, a very high-quality...we would like to be known as a deep, high-quality production staff.

GS: Once they decided to do Kojima Productions, how did you settle on the logo?

HK: So first when we set up Kojima Productions, you know, we were known worldwide with Metal Gear and Snake, so just like the, you know, the ET logo that they have, we thought of using the Snake as our identification logo.

And we actually thought about creating Snake with a gun silhouette, that kind of logo type, but it really didn't hit the bell to any of our staff. So that's when we thought, "OK, why not take the step a little bit backwards. Where does the Snake belong? Oh yeah, he belongs to [Foxhound], the fox group, so we should try to create a logo based on the fox."

Well a fox, the animal itself, probably has the same reputation worldwide. It's kind of like sneaky or deceiving to people or some animals. So we wanted to put that message in--in good terms actually. We wanted to surprise the people. We wanted to surprise the user, not to deceive but to surprise. So we had that meaning in the fox as well.

GS: How do you see Kojima Productions evolving?

HK: Well, Kojima Productions will keep on creating as many lines as possible. You saw the MGS series, like MGS4, MGS3, Subsistence. Also the [Acid] on the PSP platform. Also another line--that's called the MGS Series. And another series that Kojima Productions creates is the Bok-Tai series, which we will continue creating. And once MGS4 gets rolling, I would really like to start an original title, a totally original new concept title, and steadily I would like to stack up this series lineup in Kojima Productions with innovative and good games and new features.

Well, I don't want to go into a mass production line like, you know, the Hollywood movies these days. I really would like to prioritize the creativity of my staff and myself, including myself, so once we have crazy ideas, we'll see the market, and we'll find out if it fits, if it has room for that, and then we would like to pursue it, meaning we're not going to go after just the sales in creating a title. We would like to really, really prioritize creativity as number one.

If it was titled "Company," we're not allowed to do this, but since it's "Productions," now we're able to do it in this way.