Hideo Kojima talks about media convergence and oversexualised characters

Hideo Kojima, creator of Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series, has spoken in an interview of how traditional media experiences like video games and movies won’t have a future unless they find a way to integrate together.

He said this in an interview with BBC Newsbeat during a tour of the new Kojima Productions’ studio in Tokyo, where the famous auteur said that the games industry needs to recognise that people are busy and shift its focus towards accommodating the increasingly demanding lives of players.

"In life people are very busy doing lots of things. The time you have to choose what media or entertainment you experience is dwindling, so more and more people are looking at types of media that combine elements together," said Kojima, with his words going through a translator.

The auteur is best known for the Metal Gear Solid franchise of course, which boasts several hours of exposition-laden cutscenes, so it’ll be interesting to see if this leads to a change in tack for the developer with his next game Deaths Stranding.

In other big departures, Kojima mentioned that he wanted to step away from over-sexualised games: “What I really want to avoid is, like you see in some games, characters with big breasts with no back story,” said Kojima. “If I make characters that at first glance might look like this then they’ll have a deep background story to give a specific reason why.”

Of course, Metal Gear Solid’s most infamous character was the character Quiet, who was frequently accused of being over-sexualised. In response to early criticism to the character, Kojima said "you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds", before it turned out that the character was nude so she could photosynthesise.

It seems like there are going to be some big changes to the way Kojima does business.