In 2008 Kojima’s business card listed “Creative Officer, Konami…

Kojima spent almost three decades at Konami, beginning in 1986. In 2015, amid a bitter split, Konami removed Kojima's name from Metal Gear Solid V marketing; at The Game Awards in December 2015 the game won awards but Kojima did not attend, reportedly barred from attending by Konami. That same month Kojima re-established Kojima Productions as an independent studio partnered with Sony. Silent Hills had been cancelled in April 2015.

In 1993, seven years after joining Konami and at age thirty, Kojima was made associate general manager of Development Group 5, a team of fewer than ten people with few sales. In addition to game design he now handled personnel, administration and budgeting—tasks he was doing for the first time. When he came across Section Chief Kosaku Shima again in a bookstore, Kojima saw in that character a secret support for worries he did not want to show and for the loneliness of being caught between the organization and his work.

Kojima is a video game designer, writer, director, and producer, best known for the Metal Gear franchise and for Death Stranding; he heads his own independent studio, Kojima Productions.

The official biographical profile Konami published on its blog presented Kojima, besides as creator of Metal Gear, Snatcher, Policenauts and Metal Gear Solid, as one of the video game industry’s leading film buffs and noted that he also worked as a commentator and wrote film reviews.

“Every day, if I tweet something that I like, a director or an actor or a musician contacts me. They say, 'I'm a creator because of your games.' But they didn't receive the baton of Hideo Kojima. They received my small fire.”