Hideo Kojima is, without doubt, one of the most respected and loved developers in the video game industry. With a huge franchise on his back baring the name of Metal Gear Solid and a most recent demo of a horror game, Sillent Hills, that redefined the horror genre its hard not to think of him as a visionary of his kind.
Recently he wrote an article on Rolling Stone talking about realism in movies and video games where he mostly took inspiration from Planet of the Apes to prove his point. The article got to where Kojima talked about the creation of characters in videogames and how it developed through the years with the use of digital technology. As he stated:
Digital technology must be used to provide users with an experience, story and message. And as with cinema, technology in game development has evolved. Once characters were represented by rudimentary shapes and symbols, but now photogrammetry 3D scanning and performance capture allow real-world performances and movements of actors and actresses to be faithfully recreated in the digital realm.
By his point of view, videogames came to the point where realism is almost essential and this can either be achieved by analog manners or by real-life capture of characters and objects into the game. He then took the time to talk about how he used this in his current project, Death Stranding, and how his studio is trying to breathe some life into it:
In my current project, DEATH STRANDING, we’ve captured real, analog actors Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen, and are recreating them digitally within the game. The ability to control a real actor is unique to the fiction of games, and leads to a more realistic experience; and that is the shared aim of games and movies alike. Digital technologies are the magic ingredient to achieve this goal.
Virtual Reality seems to be a big concern for Hideo Kojima since it creates a whole new experience for the viewer both in movies and video games. The viewer no longer stares at a flat screen but can walk into a space where everything is realistic and gives you the feeling of living in it. When that is combined with the real-life capture of actors and objects it can create a whole new level of entertainment:
VR, with its frameless, 360-degree presentation allows the viewer to experience events and stories with unparalleled realism. Viewers no longer see people, battlefields and events within a frame, but are instead engrossed in an atmosphere that brings them face-to-face with those people, and takes them directly inside the place where it happened. This new perspective is sure to impact fiction as well.
Unlike movies, games are an interactive medium. Combined with VR, games hold the potential to create an entirely new form of entertainment, something that defies the definition of film and games.The film industry is already experimenting beyond traditional film, and I intend to do the same from within the game industry.
So in the long run Hideo Kojima is clearly oriented towards creating a realistic environment through his games. As it seems there is a lot more to be seen from him both in Death Stranding and maybe in some VR title in the future (if what he talked about isn’t a VR version of Death Stranding).
Death Stranding is an upcoming action video game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4. It is still in development and its release date is not yet stated.
