Hideo Kojima is widely regarded as a legend among gamers around the world. After spending decades at Konami, Kojima founded Kojima Productions and in 2019, the studio’s first-ever game, Death Stranding, was released. Despite being an icon in the gaming industry, Kojima struggled when he first started Kojima Productions.
In a past interview, he explained how he started working on Death Stranding around the same time he founded Kojima Productions. Back then, they didn’t even have a meeting room, so Kojima met a lot of his clients at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles. Due to the shortage of computers, Kojima even created certain designs by hand on paper.
Two years ago, Hideo Kojima sat down with IGN to talk about his first game as the founder of Kojima Productions, Death Stranding. Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, however, he refounded Kojima Productions as an independent studio in 2015 after leaving Konami. The development process of the studio’s first game was not easy as Kojima explained,
I explained the project to Norman Reedus at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles in February 2016 – We were able to rent space in this building a week before the teaser’s release, but we didn’t even have a room for meetings yet. Until December of that year, our daily morning meetings were held inside a small room at a cafe in this building, which we could use so long as we all ordered coffees.
Kojima added that they didn’t have computers initially, so he sat down with Yoji Shinkawa and drew various designs such as the Ludens logo by hand on paper and later used an acquaintance’s design studio to finish it up.
Further in the interview, Kojima added that when he was looking to rent a place to set up Kojima Productions, he was initially turned down but later he got the place because one of the owners was a fan of his games,
Generally speaking, only publicly traded companies are able to rent offices in this building, so we were turned down at first. We were only able to get in because one of the owners was a fan of my games. Even when it came to getting a bank loan, it was only possible because an executive at a major bank had played my games.
Kojima made it clear that Kojima Productions only took off because of the connections as they didn’t have anything initially. As for Death Stranding, he explained that it was like making an independent movie. In the end, all his hard work paid off as the game was a massive success. Kojima Productions is now working on a sequel called Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, which is all set to release for PlayStation 5 in 2025.
Do you think Kojima Productions will be able to pull it off again? Or it is just a one-hit wonder? Share your opinions in the comments!
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