Hideo Kojima

Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo; born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer, writer, director, and producer. His games are noted for being highly cinematic, the result of a passion for film and literature which began during his childhood, and he is regarded as a pioneering auteur of video games. He is known for the Metal Gear franchise, which remains his most famous and acclaimed work, as well as Death Stranding and its sequel.

Upon joining Konami in 1986, Kojima directed, designed, and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2. The game laid the foundation for the stealth game genre and the renowned Metal Gear franchise, which he continued to helm up to the release of Metal Gear Solid V (2015). During his time at Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as designing and writing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994); these were graphic adventure games that came to be regarded for their cinematic presentation.

Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, and was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Following the controversial cancellation of his project, Silent Hills, and his departure from Konami in 2015, he re-established Kojima Productions as an independent studio and released his first games outside Konami with Death Stranding (2019) and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (2025). The first game received mostly positive reviews, while its sequel received widespread acclaim.

Hideo Kojima was born in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo on August 24, 1963. He has two older siblings. His father, Kingo, was a pharmacist who frequently traveled for business and named his son Hideo as it was the most common name among the doctors he met. He moved with his family to Osaka at the age of four; he later described this stage of his early life as an abrupt change of environment that led him to spend much of his time thereafter indoors, where he would watch television or make figurines. His parents were passionate about cinema—especially European films, horror, and Westerns—and began a nightly tradition of watching a film with their children, who were not allowed to go to bed until the film had finished; his parents also did not limit the type of films the children were allowed to see, regardless of content.

Kojima took an interest in filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to high school and began making films together, charging other children ¥50 to see them. He tricked his parents into funding a four-day trip to an island off the coast of Japan without telling them that he was going there because he wanted to use it as a filming location; however, he instead spent his time there swimming, and changed the film's plot to be about zombies on the final day as this idea would be quicker to shoot. He did not show the film to his parents.

By Kojima's teenage years, the family had moved to the city of Kawanishi, Hyōgo. When he was 13 years old, his father died, and his mother later died in early 2017. In interviews, he has discussed the impact of his father's death and the subsequent financial hardship faced by his family. He studied economics at university, where he decided to join the video game industry. He wrote fiction while studying, even including a short story in his thesis.

While still in university, Kojima was initially searching for a way into the film industry. He hoped that if he were to win awards for his written fiction, he would be approached about directing a film. At that time, he saw Nintendo's Famicom and thought of joining the video game industry. He said he had no friends interested in cinema to encourage him, and his friends were also not supportive when he announced his intention to enter game development. He would frequently lie about his occupation in the early days of his career, when working in video games was seen as a "very low status" job and the word for a video game designer did not exist in the Japanese language, and instead told people he worked for a financial firm; during a wedding reception, the other guests laughed at him when the groom introduced him by saying, "[Kojima's] a very talented and otherwise likeable person. But I am sorry to say that, for some unknown reason, he has decided to join a video game company."

Kojima joined video game publisher Konami's MSX home computer division in 1986. He applied to Konami because it was the only game developer listed on the Japanese stock exchange. He was disappointed with the job initially, hoping to make games for the Famicom, and feeling that the 16 colour palette of the MSX was too restrictive. The first game he worked on was Penguin Adventure, the sequel to Antarctic Adventure, as an assistant director. It significantly expanded upon the gameplay of Antarctic Adventure, adding more action game elements, a greater variety of levels, role-playing elements such as upgrading equipment, and multiple endings. In 2019, Polygon's Julia Lee wrote that for "a game made over 30 years ago, Penguin Adventure had some in-depth features". After Penguin Adventure, Kojima started to design a game called Lost Warld [sic], but the game was canceled when it was found to be too complex to run on the MSX.