Hideo Kojima is one of the most recognizable names in gaming, with the Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding 2 director not only being at the forefront of his game’s marketing campaigns, but he’s also met with Hollywood celebrities repeatedly over the decades, most notably with the upcoming horror film (?) OD.
But François Coulon, director of the original Splinter Cell released in 2002, argues that Hideo Kojima’s transformation from director to celebrity is well-deserved. “It’s hard for me to measure Mr. Kojima’s influence alone compared to Kojima and his team, but honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Coulon said in the latest issue of Retro Gamer. “A creative leader in this industry is someone who is able to communicate his vision to the other team members so that they can also bring something to the creative table. I don’t know how Mr. Kojima manages his team, but the result speaks for itself.”
Kojima’s long career dates back to the 1980s, when he first worked as director, designer and writer on the cyberpunk visual novel Snatcher, as well as the first isometric Metal Gear games. But his breakthrough, the game that catapulted his name into the auteur realm, was the slick, slick Metal Gear Solid, with its anti-war messages and ambitiously designed, sometimes over-the-top cutscenes that have since become a Kojima icon.
As modern blockbuster games get bigger and bigger, with thousands of developers sometimes working on a single project, the idea of the auteur has become more controversial. It’s easy to attribute the success of an indie game to its single developer, but when the fingerprints of hundreds of developers are etched into Death Stranding 2, is it still acceptable to call Kojima the auteur? The creator? To heap all the credit on him? Colón certainly believes that Kojima can be considered the chief architect, but all of this raises some interesting questions, I think.
The Splinter Cell game director also stated that the “clear rules” of Metal Gear Solid showed the team “how stealth should be done.”
