Hideo Kojima was told "games don't need stories" early in his career, so he read 300 books while making a single game to prove them wrong

Metal Gear
(Image credit: Konami)

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Hideo Kojima has opened up about what it was like being an early progenitor of story-focused video games, revealing he once read aroun🐼d 300 🍌books researching story details for a single game.

In a recent episode of TBS Radio's After 6 Junction 2 podcast (timestamped ), Kojima relayed his experience as a young developer, in which he faced opposition against ꦍhis desire to spend time developing stories in video games.

"Th♛ey were 2D with big pixels, and you could only move from side to side," Kojim🧔a said of video games at the time. "But I saw [their] potential. I pushed back against everyone's opposition ... There was no artistry. There was also no real story. So we wanted to be the ones to give it a story."

コジ10(KOJI10) ep.1「小島秀夫の自己紹介」(Eng.sub) - YouTube コジ10(KOJI10) ep.1「小島秀夫の自己紹介」(Eng.sub) - YouTube

Kojima wasn't the first game developer to add stories to games, but he is definitely an early pioneer of exploring real-world themes and issues in games. Regardless, it sounds like a lot of his early days at Konami were spent making the case for the sort of narrative-heavy games he's now knꦺown for.

"We were trying because it didn't exist back then, but it was hard to make it a reality, because everyone was against it. They told me, 'Games don't need ওstories, Kojima.'"

Thankfully, Koღjima persisted, saying he would often visit the library during work hours "to research thi𒈔ngs like plot settings," again facing resistance from co-workers who felt stories weren't important in games.

While Kojima would go on to create the beloved Metal Gear series at Konami, he first had some convincing to do. Not only was he up against resistance to the idea of story-focused games, he also had to convince the higher-ups of his vision for Metal Gear's gameplay. In fact, a recently resurfaced 1999 interview reveals it wasn't until Kojima showed his bosses the famous exclamation 𓃲point feature in Metal Gear that they were sold on the idea. Kojima even said he was ready to quit Konami altogether at one point due to what he called "passive aggr🌜essive resistance."

Hideo Kojima originally had "no plans" for a character like Metal Gear Solid's Cyborg Ninja until Yoji Shinkawa's art had him saying "hell yeah, a ninja cyborg!"

After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the siꦆte's western regional executive branch, AKA my ho𝕴me office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.