The world of gaming had changed.
The PlayStation had ushered in a new era of polygonal graphics in home consoles.
For the first time, 3D rendered environments were possible on gaming devices that were
in the homes of millions of people.
Game makers were experimenting with an entirely new dimension as they found ways of making
their games feel more immersive and alive.
Some older 2-dimensional game genres were making the transition a lot more successfully
than others.
Hideo Kojima was excited.
Where many of his colleagues saw the third dimension as an obstacle to overcome, he saw
it as his opportunity to finally create the games he’d always wanted to make.
Hideo, already a noteworthy game creator thanks to his work on the Metal Gear series, was
about to blend video games and movie tropes in a way that had never been done before.
He was going to use the impressive power of the PlayStation to completely revolutionize
the idea of what a video game could be…
Most people, Hideo insists, are made up of at least 70% water.
But not Hideo himself.
Instead, he is made up of 70% film.
Hideo was raised by the television, and he’d always dreamed of making movies, before instead
finding his niche making video games.
Even as an adult and an established video game creator, he still felt the filmmaking
itch.
Whenever he was recording a home movie of his wife and son, he’d imagine he was a
cameraman on a film set, and he’d do his best to incorporate sweeping camera shots
that, he hoped, lent a greater production value to these videos.
Hideo was working on a title called Policenauts when he first heard of the PlayStation’s
technical specifications.
He was blown away.
Realizing just how powerful this machine was, he began to speculate about what games might
look like on this new system.
With the PlayStation, came an opportunity for Hideo to finally live his moviemaking
dream.
What if he created a game that was presented like a film?
With dynamic camera angles, fleshed-out characters, and a strong narrative that kept the player
motivated throughout the action?
These elements weren’t entirely unheard of in gaming up to this point, but Hideo had
lofty goals of tying everything together in a way that would create an interactive movie.
He wanted this game to feel truly cinematic.
While still working on Policenauts, Hideo began dreaming up ideas for this technically
impressive new game.
He decided that he wanted to return to the Metal Gear series, as now, with all the new
graphical power afforded him by the PlayStation, he could make something new and innovative
with this familiar franchise.
He titled his new creation Metal Gear Solid; a reference to his lead character, Solid Snake,
as well as an indication that this game would have dimensionality that was lacking from
earlier titles.
This game was to feel real and tangible thanks to its polygonal design.
It was like moving from a flat 2D square to a 3D cube.
It was also a subtle dig at a rival company.
Hideo worked for Konami, who wanted to surpass Square, the makers of Final Fantasy.
Hideo was going to show his rivals how to really get video game storytelling right.
Cubes and blocks were also literally used in the development of the game.
Where previously, Hideo had only needed to plot out level spaces on a single, flat plane,
he now needed to think about the way players would explore a 3D environment.
He needed to be able to see the various game areas from new angles before committing to
layouts.
The solution was to reach for Lego bricks.
As Hideo plotted out the environments that Solid Snake would sneak around, he constructed
areas in miniature to get a sense of the space.
This made for an interesting office environment.
At one point, Hideo’s son came to visit him at work, and after that, the little boy
was convinced that his daddy’s job was to simply play with Lego all day!
This wasn’t the only way that Hideo tried to make the game world feel more real during
development.
At one point, his team were able to perform research by meeting with a SWAT team at Huntington
Beach in California.
They were shown how tactical espionage takes place in the real world.
The team were given the opportunity to watch and participate in drills featuring battering
rams, explosives, firearms, and tanks.
Hideo took particular glee in firing off rounds from a machine gun for the first time, while
his coworkers viewed him warily.
He also got stuck in with a battering ram at one point, haphazardly chipping away at
a locked door piece by piece rather than managing to break it open instantly.
Finally, when the door lay in ruins, he was treated to some slightly hesitant applause
from onlooking SWAT members.
Even back at work in their office, the team consulted regularly with a military advisor
in order to ensure that Metal Gear Solid accurately portrayed a realistic view of stealth and
espionage.
That said, Hideo refused to stick very rigidly to the reality of modern military rules and
tactics.
This game was to be a science fiction story, and he wanted to play with as many fantastical
elements as possible.
Hideo felt that the world of Metal Gear Solid should feel a lot like people’s idea of
what the 23rd century might look.
He wanted to show that a seemingly faraway, distant future was actually a lot closer than
people thought.
In order to fully capture this, and in order to fill the game with engaging, interesting
and visually distinct characters, Hideo hired a new artist, Yoji Shinkawa.
It was Yoji’s job to breathe life into the characters of Metal Gear Solid.
Hideo’s vision called for a far larger cast of digital actors, and they needed to look
and feel distinct.
Yoji was already a big fan of Hideo’s work, and of the previous Metal Gear games.
He wanted to chew up Solid Snake, digest him, and then produce his own, original version
of the classic character.
Hideo had some suggestions to make as to how Yoji should go about this.
Specifically, Hideo wanted Snake to be bereft of color, with washed out greys.
The logic here was that it would be easier for players to project onto the character
if Snake didn’t have too much to distinguish him from the grey environments of the game.
Plus, it made sense from a stealth perspective.
By contrast, Yoji was given tremendous freedom to experiment with the designs of the rest
of the characters in the games.
Together with Hideo, he came up with a series of weird and wonderful characters that matched
the pseudo serious, occasionally farcical tone of the game.
When the first trailer for Metal Gear Solid debuted at the E3 gaming expo, audiences were
taken by complete surprise, and instantly fell in love.
Hideo was incredulous at the reception.
While his work had always been well regarded, he hadn’t considered himself to be a hugely
big deal in the worldwide gaming industry.
The trailer for Metal Gear Solid was left playing, looping on a screen, throughout the
entire show.
Hideo spotted some people who had been watching it in the morning who were still there at
the end of the day, staring in awe at the footage.
With so much anticipation came a degree of pressure to deliver, but even so, Hideo still
wasn’t aware of just how big of a deal his game was about to become.
He had heard of notable big budget video games selling upwards of a million copies, and he
hoped that his would manage similar numbers.
When it finally released, Metal Gear Solid instead sold over 6 million units.
The game was everywhere, worldwide.
It was a full-blown phenomenon, and many players announced that it was the best game on the
PlayStation.
Hideo found himself catapulted from being a well-respected game developer to suddenly
becoming a fully-fledged superstar.
Everyone wanted to know more about him, not just in Japan, but throughout the rest of
the world.
Hideo was pleased.
His dreams had been realized, and he was now free to push the boundaries between games
and movies even further in his future projects.
The moral of the story is that you should hold onto your daydreams.
We don’t always get to do the things we wanted to when we were little.
Hideo Kojima carried within his heart to make epic cinematic masterpieces, but even as a
game developer, this wasn’t entirely possible.
It was only once technology caught up with Hideo’s vision that he was able to make
the kinds of cinematic games that he wanted to.
What’s more, he was only in a position to make Metal Gear Solid because he’d developed
other talents in different creative media first.
If you have something that you’re passionate about, that doesn’t seem to be quite working
out for you at this time, don’t give up on that dream.
But see what else you can do in the meantime.
Develop different skills and talents, and see what other interests you can pursue.
You never know how these learning opportunities might be useful later in life.
Pursue your dreams.
Try your best.
If you keep working hard, then even if you don’t end up exactly where you expected
in life, you can still feel the joy from doing what you love.