Hideo Kojima

“These games had their own worlds and stories. I felt a certain authorial quality in them.”

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.

Kojima created and directed the video games Metal Gear (1987), Snatcher (1988), Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990), Policenauts (1994), Metal Gear Solid (1998), Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), Peace Walker (2010), Metal Gear Solid V (2014–2015), P.T. (2014), Death Stranding (2019) and Death Stranding 2 (2025); he has OD and Physint in development. He has also produced or supervised other video games such as Zone of the Enders, the Boktai series, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Metal Gear Rising.

Besides Metal Gear, at Konami Kojima produced or supervised other games: he was producer of Zone of the Enders (2001) and of Boktai (2003), executive producer of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (2010) and supervising director of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013).

Kojima’s first games as a director were for MSX and computers: Metal Gear (1987), his directorial debut, with which he established the stealth game genre; Snatcher (1988), a graphic adventure with a cinematic presentation inspired by films like Blade Runner; Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990); and Policenauts (1994), another graphic adventure that he designed, wrote and directed.

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.

Kojima's parents began a nightly tradition of watching a film with their children; the children were not allowed to go to bed until the film had finished.

The Metal Gear Solid saga, which Kojima directed, produced, designed and wrote, runs from Metal Gear Solid (1998, PlayStation) — the jump to 3D that established him — through Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004), Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008), and Peace Walker (2010), to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015). He announced that The Phantom Pain would be his final Metal Gear project.