Hideo Kojima’s Legacy May Outlive Him—By His Own Design

Hideo Kojima, the visionary behind Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding, may have already laid the groundwork for his creative legacy to live on long after he's gone. At 60 years old, Kojima continues to innovate in the gaming world, but he's also begun thinking about what will remain when he’s no longer around to direct it all himself.

In a recent conversation with Edge magazine, Kojima revealed that he's handed his assistant a USB drive packed with concepts—an archive of his unproduced ideas. He likened it to a creative will, suggesting that Kojima Productions might continue creating new experiences from those ideas in the future, rather than just preserving existing properties.

His reflections come in the wake of personal health scares, including a serious illness and eye surgery during the pandemic. These events have made him confront his own mortality more directly, prompting him to ponder how many more games or films he realistically has time to make. Though he once considered switching to filmmaking—a childhood dream—friends like Guillermo del Toro and Nicolas Winding Refn convinced him that his true home is in game development.

Despite his growing awareness of time, Kojima shows no signs of slowing down. He's currently leading development on OD, a mysterious Xbox project built around the concept of fear, and another game codenamed Physint, rumored to return to the stealth-action roots that made him famous. Meanwhile, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is officially set for release on June 24.

Kojima even continues to toy with unconventional mechanics, such as a game concept where a character forgets their skills if the player steps away too long—an idea he floated on a Japanese radio show. That’s classic Kojima: always unpredictable, always challenging norms. With a USB full of ideas and an active development slate, his creative spirit may well inspire the industry for generations.