Hideo Kojima is one of the most recognizable names in gaming. The director of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding 2 is not only one of the first to stand out in all the marketing campaigns for his games, but he has also collaborated with Hollywood celebrities over the years, most notably with his upcoming horror film (?).
Francois Coulon, the director behind the original 2002 Splinter Cell, argues that Hideo Kojima’s auteur status, which borders on celebrity, is well-deserved. “It’s hard for me to measure the impact of Mr. Kojima alone versus Kojima and his team, but honestly, it’s not important,” Coulon said in the most recent issue of Retro Gamer magazine. “A creative leader in this industry is someone who can communicate his vision to other team members so they can bring something to the creative table as well. I don’t know how Mr. Kojima manages his teams, but the results speak for themselves.”
Kojima’s long career stretches back to the 1980s, when he first served as director, designer, and writer on the cyberpunky visual novel Snatcher, as well as the first isometric Metal Gear games. But his breakout success, the game that catapulted his name into the writing field, was the stealth-laden Metal Gear Solid , with all its anti-war messages and ambitiously framed, sometimes overly indulgent cutscenes that have become emblematic of Kojima’s games ever since.
Though as modern blockbuster games get bigger and bigger, with sometimes thousands of developers working on a single project, the idea of an auteur has become increasingly controversial. It’s easy to attribute the success of an indie game to the solo developer, but when Death Stranding 2 has hundreds of developers’ fingerprints etched into it, is it still okay to label Kojima as the auteur? The creator? To heap all the credit on his lap? Coulon certainly thinks Kojima can be considered the primary architect, but it all raises interesting questions, I think.
The Splinter Cell director also noted that Metal Gear Solid’s “clear rules” showed the team “how stealth should be done.”