Hideo Kojima reveals his true motivation for making games: “I want players to find joy in life through my stories”
Hideo Kojima kicked off the Death Stranding World Tour 2 at Lucca Comics & Games 2025 in Tuscany over the weekend of October 31 to November 3. There, he mesmerized the audience at a panel discussion, addressing thousands of fans, where he detailed the hurdles in Death Stranding 2’s development and the more profound philosophy behind his creative ventures.
During Death Stranding World Tour 2, he was accompanied by actors Luca Marinelli, who portrayed Neil Vana, and Alissa Jung, who portrayed Lucy. Speaking on the panel, Kojima delved into the challenges of Death Stranding 2’s production, which required remote filming due to the pandemic, forcing actors to perform on green screens.
Later in the interview, Kojima told the audience the key motivator behind his creative endeavors, stating he wants players to find joy in life. Kojima stated:
I grew up watching movies or reading books. When you’re a child, you feel so dark about the world sometimes, but for me, there weren’t really good role models around me, so what helped me was movies. The characters, the dialogues, or the theme of the movie really cheered me up. I thought that gave me energy to live on.
So I want to return that, and that’s one of the reasons I create games. If someone plays my game and, after a few years, feels like I want to live on because I played this game and it cheered me up. That would be the happiest thing that I would feel because I’ve put that thought when creating the game.
There are so many things in entertainment, but games are so immersive, and you play for hundreds of hours on games. So if I ask the person to spend hundreds of hours of their life and they are relieved of stress or whatever, that’s fine too, but I also want to give them something through my game. Like, through Luca and Alyssa’s relationship and the characters of the game, you feel something.
You could use that in your real life and become happy. That’s my goal. And of course, I haven’t reached that point, but that’s how I think when I create my games.
Kojima’s philosophical take on Death Stranding 2 and its ability to give gamers a renewed sense of purpose and life carries weight. Many individuals in online circles have detailed that the game’s themes of connection, perseverance, and indirect cooperation have helped them through difficult points in their lives.
Kojima even noted that over 79% of players continued to play Death Stranding 2 even after completing the main story, which might indirectly correlate with a deeper connection to Hideo Kojima’s take on post-apocalyptic Australia.
