Reason Why Kojima Will Never Do Deathmatch Games

Hideo Kojima was born on 24th August 1963, he is a renowned Japanese video game designer, producer, director, and writer. He is regarded as an auteur of some of the games he directed. Throughout his life, he had a strong passion for action/adventure stories, especially in his early life.

Eventually, he was hired by Konami in 1986, where he made Metal Gear in 1987 for MSX2, the foundation of stealth games and the Metal Gear series. Some of his other notable titles include Snatcher, Policenauts, and Zone of the Enders.

Kojima founded the Kojima Production in 2005, a software house under Konami. He was appointed as the vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Not long after, Kojima Productions split from Konami, eventually becoming the independent studio that they are currently. As an independent studio, their first game was Death Stranding released in 2019.

One thing we can all notice in his amazing games is that none of them have a Deathmatch mode, where players can fight mindlessly and keep on fighting others. Even though many fans have asked Kojima to add that in his games, he had his own ideas regarding the matter.

Hideo Kojima E3 2003 Interview
July 2003 issue of Game Informer.

This is taken from the interview with Hideo Kojima at E3 2003, which can be found in the July 2003 issue of Game Informer. While addressing the issue, he said:

As a game creator, I guess I have to meet the needs of those fans

He went on to say that while deathmatch in Metal Gear is one of the fans’ wishes, it’s not something he enjoys himself because you are basically just fighting each other, which is really violent. Which might be the reason we haven’t seen him handle any Metal Gear Online games.

He also added that he has explained his idea of an online zombie game to Capcom, where you register as a zombie hunter, and once you are bitten, you turn into a zombie, who can no longer control his character, and can only observe. If the player wishes to continue further, he must re-register and pay the registration money to become a different zombie hunter. Since you have to beat yourself and other zombies, you continue to pay until you have killed them.

While this is a very expensive idea, we can see that Kojima’s main intention is to make the game feel as authentic as possible, where even violence would come at a cost. Nonetheless, we can see the zombie idea being successful in the current times, but it’s almost impossible for us to see that happening now.

If you disagree with some of Kojima’s views, you can let us know below for further discussion, as for us, he is and will always be known for his masterpieces.