Hideo Kojima, Japanese director, screenwriter, video game designer and video game producer
Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer, and writer. Regarded as an auteur of video games, he developed a strong passion for action/adventure cinema and literature during his childhood and adolescence. In 1986, he was hired by Konami, for which he designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, a game that laid the foundations for stealth games and the Metal Gear series, his best known and most appreciated works. He is also known for producing the Zone of the Enders series, as well as writing and designing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.
In 2005, Kojima founded Kojima Productions, a software house controlled by Konami, and he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. In 2015, Kojima Productions split from Konami, becoming an independent studio. Their first game, Death Stranding, was released in 2019. Kojima has also contributed to Rolling Stone, writing columns about the similarities and differences between films and video games.