Hideo Kojima is the king of secrets and the king of creating hype through mystery and utter bewilderment. He did it throughout the Metal Gear Solid series, and he’s doing it with his upcoming game Death Stranding.
That said, the secrecy and mystery around pre-release Kojima games aren’t just a marketing tool or a gimmick, no, there are reasons behind what Kojima does.
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Despite seeing multiple trailers and even a lengthy gameplay presentation, we still know close to nothing about Death Stranding. And the most substantial things we know — or at least the thing we think we know — are a result of a few Internet sleuths rabbit hole diving in different forums and places across the Internet.
So, what’s with the intense amount of secrecy? Well, according to Kojima, it’s a reaction to the modern Internet and living in an era where answers are too readily available.
“We live in a time of social networks,” said Kojima while speaking to Variety. “In this time, people just want immediate answers, but not only answers, they also want to know what they feel. This is good, this is bad. This is a game I should like. This is a game I shouldn’t like. They want answers for what they should think.”
According to the developer, the information-dump, leak-heavy, reveal-your-entire-game-before-it-even-releases approach to pre-release is a bad way to go about things.
“It’s like a math problem, where knowing the answer is not that important,” said Kojima. “The important thing is the process of getting to the answer.”
Kojima continues by noting that the modern day marketing of games is a missed opportunity, with publishers and developers deciding to reveal far too much before release, which in turn destroys the most integral part of what makes a video game a video game: the interactive journey.
“I don’t want to take away the most fun part for the players,” said Kojima.
Death Stranding is in development exclusively for PlayStation 4, and is notably the first release by Kojima since he parted ways with Konami and opened up his own studio. It currently doesn’t have a release date.
