Hideo Kojima’s Name Means Something Important

If you see Hideo Kojima’s name on a box, he says it means you’re getting a game straight from his brain.

Hideo Kojima, known primarily for creating the Metal Gear Solid series, feels his name is important. Unlike what he calls “imitators,” if you see “A Hideo Kojima Game” on a videogame’s box art, it means that game truly comes from Kojima in almost every way possible.

In Twitter remarks, where it seems Japanese characters allow for more to be said within the 140 character limit, Kojima talked about what it means exactly to see his name on a game. It doesn’t just mean that Kojima brought donuts to a videogame’s staff meeting one day, tap danced on the table, and back-flipped out of the window into a jet fighter.

Kojima said: “‘A Hideo Kojima Game’ is something that I started. That kind of saying doesn’t exist. Lately there have been imitators, but being the one person responsible for planning, game design, writing, producing and directing all alone, that phrase reflects everything that I do. [It] doesn’t belong on something [I] merely produced.”

While he definitely wasn’t the first to put his name on a product, what he appears to be saying is that he believes he started the labeling of a product with a name that truly has a major part in every aspect of a its production. He also thinks that this is tough to keep going through a lengthy series.

“As far as writers are concerned, when they have a single, lengthy story told across a series, keeping things going is particularly difficult,” Kojima wrote. While he says Metal Gear Solid is something he “gave birth to,” he also says it’s “not his property.” Kojima added: “I might leave this business or even leave this world, but it’s like any other popular series. When you authorize Hollywood to turn something into a movie, ‘sequel rights’ are a must. Those are the rights to make a sequel with or without the original author.”

But those sequels are unlikely to have his name on them if he’s no longer alive, unless he’s possessing the arm of a producer. Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow will both have “Kojima-less” covers even though Kojima had a partial hand in their lives. Kojima is a big name in the videogame industry, but he won’t let that name be abused for sales.

Source: 1up