Hideo Kojima is one of the most recognizable names in gaming. Indeed, the director of Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding 2 has not only been at the forefront of every marketing campaign for his games, but he’s even rubbed shoulders with Hollywood celebrities on numerous occasions over the decades, particularly with his upcoming horror (?) film OD.
Francois Coulon, the director of the original 2002 Splinter Cell, believes Hideo Kojima’s celebrity status as an auteur is well-deserved. “It’s hard for me to measure the impact of Mr. Kojima alone versus Kojima and his team, but to be honest, it’s not important,” Coulon said in the latest issue of Retro Gamer magazine. “A creative leader in this industry is someone who can pass on their vision to the other members of the team so that 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, where he first worked as a director, designer, and writer on the cyberpunk visual novel Snatcher, as well as the early isometric Metal Gear games. But his breakout success, the game that catapulted his name into the auteur realm, was Metal Gear Solid, a stealth game with all the anti-war messaging and ambitious, sometimes over-the-top cutscenes that have since become iconic of Kojima’s games.
As modern blockbuster games get bigger and bigger, with sometimes thousands of developers working on a single project, the idea of an auteur is becoming more controversial. It’s easy to attribute the success of an indie game to its solo developer, but when the fingerprints of hundreds of developers are etched all over Death Stranding 2, is it still acceptable to call Kojima an auteur? A creator? To give him all the credit? Coulon certainly thinks Kojima can be considered the primary architect, but it all raises some interesting questions, I think.
The Splinter Cell director also mentioned that Metal Gear Solid’s “clear rules” showed the team “how stealth should be done.”