Message from Hideo Kojima on the Policenauts page (PSone Books)

Kojima wrote that at that time he devoted himself solely to finishing the work, living each day dreaming only of completing Policenauts, and that it was a luxurious period spent purely as a creator; he added that later, once in his role as an executive and producer, his possibilities to create expanded, but he would never again be able to immerse himself for years in a single work as he did then, and that Policenauts can be considered the last work in which he was able to continue producing while looking only at the act of creating.

Kojima wrote that Policenauts was also a meeting place: thanks to that magnetic field he met Shinkawa and the rest of the core staff of what would later become his studio, and many people inside and outside the company who still support him; he concluded it is a road that connects to the present and a past he can no longer return to, but that work still shines with a strong light.

In a text written for Konami's website, Kojima described Policenauts as his most difficult birth: it took four years from planning to the first commercialization and six years in total including later conversions. During that time his department changed three times, and the organization, his position and his work environment changed repeatedly, while the world moved — the Berlin Wall disappeared and the Cold War structure collapsed — and they were also struck by a large, unexpected earthquake.

Kojima wrote that during those six turbulent years he kept creating Policenauts as if possessed, and that although the project many times came close to running aground, curiously he never gave up even once; he added that even today he does not really understand how he could concentrate for so long on a single imaginary world.

Kojima wrote that on Policenauts he did almost everything himself — game design, a massive amount of dialogue, the adventure scripts written in simplified language, the storyboards, hit detection, flag management and even the image and sound calls — and that if Metal Gear Solid, made by a team of 100 people, is a Hollywood commercial film, Policenauts is closer to an independent film: in every sense his own colour shows.