Hideo Kojima is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer and writer who is best known as the creator of the Metal Gear series.  He began his career with Konami in 1986 in Konami’s MSX home computer division as a designer and planner.  His first assignment was Penguin Adventure, the sequel to Antarctic Adventure where he acted as the assistant designer.  In 1987 Konami asked Kojima to take over a new project called “Metal Gear”, from a senior associate.

Metal Gear was intended to be an action game that featured modern military combat but due to hardware limitations of the MSX2 Kojima felt that the performance of the combat gameplay was hindered by the limited number of on-screen bullets and enemies the system could handle.  Inspired by The Great Escape, he revised the focus of the gameplay from an action paced shooting experience to a stealth based mechanic with the goal to avoid capture.  The game released in 1987 for the MSX2 home computer in Japan and parts of Europe.

His next project allowed him to incorporate story elements that created a unique film like experience for the player, something Kojima would continue to implement in his games going forward. Released for the NEC PC-8801 and MSX2 computer platforms Snatcher was a graphic adventure game influenced by cyberpunk science fiction works such as Blade Runner and The Terminator.

In 1990, Kojima developed a sequel to Metal Gear for the MSX2 after his dissatisfaction with the Nintendo Entertainment System port of Metal Gear and its sequel Snake’s Revenge. The game was released exclusively in Japan for the MSX2 and further evolved the stealth elements found in the original game by adding additional features such as crouching, crawling into hiding spots and air ducts, distracting guards by knocking on surfaces and using a radar to plan ahead.  Along with the new stealth elements improvements to the enemy’s artificial intelligence (AI) were incorporated by adding a 45-degree field of vision, the detection of various noises and being able to move from screen to screen.

In 1994, Kojima released Policenauts, a film noir-science fiction-themed adventure game set in a space colony before beginning development on a 3D sequel to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake in 1994.  Development for the game began in mid-1995 with the goal in mind to make it as accurate and realistic as possible while making the game enjoyable and tense.  The success of Metal Gear Solid spawned the creation of numerous sequels and spinoffs, creating one of the most successful video game franchises.  Konami would appoint Kojima to the series for the following two decades.  After the completion of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Kojima founded Kojima Productions in 2005.  Kojima Productions was a development studio controlled by Konami and established as a subsidiary of Konami.

In August 2014, PT was released on the PlayStation Store revealing that a new game in the Silent Hill franchise was under development and being directed by Kojima alongside Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro for the PlayStation 4.  In April 2015, the playable teaser was removed from the PlayStation store and the game was cancelled.  Kojima and Konami’s vision for game development drifted in different directions and Kojima revealed that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would be his final Metal Gear game and that he would be departing from Konami after its completion.

On December 16, 2015 Kojima Productions split from Konami, reforming the company as an independent development studio in Shinagawa, Japan.  The newly reformed company quickly established a partnership with Sony Computer Entertainment to develop a new intellectual property (IP) for the PlayStation 4.  During Sony’s 2016 E3 press conference the studio revealed a trailer for Death Stranding.  Published by Sony Interactive Entertainment the game released as a console exclusive in 2019 for the PlayStation 4 and a PC version was released by 505 Games for Windows based computers.