Blocked From Attending Last Year, Hideo Kojima to Receive Award Next Month

After not being permitted to attend last year's show, The Game Awards will present Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima with the "Industry Icon" award on December 1.

Game Awards host Geoff Keighley tweeted the announcement today, alongside a picture of Kojima holding the whole world in his hands--it's actually just a small globe.

Kojima has worked as director on the entire core Metal Gear series and has participated in the development of the vast majority of its spinoffs. He's also worked on video games such as Snatcher, Zone of the Enders, and Boktai. He directed P.T., which is now completely unavailable to download, and was working on Silent Hills before it was cancelled.

In 2015, rumors were abound regarding Konami and Kojima's rocky relationship, which eventually led to Kojima leaving the company. The cancellation of Silent Hills stoked the rumors, while several other events, such as the removal of Kojima's name from The Phantom Pain's boxart, contributed as well. This ultimately culminated when Keighley announced at last year's Game Awards that Konami's lawyers were preventing Kojima from attending the show.

Since last year's awards show, Kojima founded a new studio and announced that he was partnering with Sony for his next game. The new project, Death Stranding, was revealed at E3 earlier this year. The mysterious game stars Norman Reedus, and while we don't know much about the story, you can watch the trailer here.

You can check out the nominees for next month's awards show here.