Hideo Kojima wants his games to impress aliens from space in the future

Hideo Kojima says the hallmark of good art and, by extension, good video games, is how future audiences appraise them

Kojima Productions

Hideo Kojima says the hallmark of good art and, by extension, the best video games, is how future audiences appraise them. In true Kojima fashion, the audience he wants to win over is from another planet, several hundred years in the future.

Kojima made the comments in an interview with Anan News (translated by Automaton) when asked what he thinks an artist or creator should strive for.

“I cannot put out a game that I don’t feel convinced by,” Kojima said, before explaining what he meant in more detail.

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“The way art is evaluated changes with the times. Just as paintings are appraised 100 or 200 years after the artist’s death, games and films also remain as objects to be passed down through generations after their creators pass away. If I make something I’m satisfied with, centuries later aliens may come and say ‘that’s awesome,’ I think that’s what it means to leave something behind.”

It might be an unconventional goalpost to set for oneself, but it’s hard to argue with Kojima’s logic there. 

Kojima also said he feels lucky to have landed in the games industry in this life and that he hopes to continue making games in the afterlife to please the dead. He may want to reconsider, though. He previously said he plans on becoming an AI after he dies, which raises the question of how he can split his consciousness between AI Kojima and afterlife Kojima and whether he’ll get burned out twice as fast that way – or, indeed, if spirits even can get burned out. 

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This is starting to sound like the plot of a Kojima game, so it’s probably time to move on. Anyway, Kojima still has plenty to keep him occupied in this life, including two projects that aliens may smile upon someday. One is Death Stranding 2, which looks great and still makes no sense, and the other is an enigmatic horror game called OD which Kojima is creating with Xbox and hopes to make “a totally new style of game – or rather, a new form of media.”