“So I went around to different game companies, and partly because I was living in Hyogo prefecture at the time, but I thought I'd check out Konami.”
Kojima explains that he went around different game companies looking for work, and that he checked out Konami partly because he was living in Hyogo prefecture at the time.
“These games had their own worlds and stories. I felt a certain authorial quality in them.”
“There was a period, before my Father died, where I thought I'd become an artist, but my Father died very suddenly when I was 13. My family was full of artists, you see, and they hadn't been able to make a living off of it.”
“Ever since middle school or thereabouts, for the longest time, I had wanted to make movies.”
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.
“I saw the future. If it weren't for Miyamoto-san I wouldn't be where I am.”