Hideo Kojima has announced on his Twitter that he won’t be coming to the Game Awards tonight, but he didn’t explain why. Unfortunately, no Hideo Kojima at the Game Awards likely means that we won’t be getting anything on Death Stranding, which is rumored to be coming out next year.
Kojima has been working on Death Stranding for the past several years ever since he was finally fired from Konami, revealing it at E3 2016. Since then we’ve seen multiple other trailers, each of which was just as incomprehensible as the first one, and we don’t really know what all the game actually involves.
This marks the first time that Kojima hasn’t been at the Game Awards since he was originally fired from Konami in 2015. In the midst of the controversy with Metal Gear Solid 5, Konami forbid Kojima from being at the show to accept the award, a decision that grew a huge amount of booing from the audience when it was announced by Geoff Keighley during the show. Keifer Sutherland, the voice of the game’s version of Solid Snake, accepted the game’s award in his place.
Since then Kojima has been at the 2016 and 2017 Game Awards shows to present trailers for Death Stranding, but that pattern will now be broken this year with no Hideo Kojima at the Game Awards. There’s no telling why Kojima chose not to attend this year, but he’ll likely remain hard at work on the game until the release date.
Hopefully by this time next year, whether we see Hideo Kojima at the Game Awards or not, Death Stranding will be out and be some of Kojima’s greatest work, so that he can really stick it to Konami. But either way, you can watch the Game Awards later tonight and see all of the different games that will be announced.
