Hideo Kojima Quotes

I don't know how video game narrative works.

I would say I'm a storyteller first, but game making is very wrapped up in how I think of story. If I were to have a story idea, and I decided to write a novel with it instead, I'd have to very consciously de-couple it from gamedom - for example, deliberately add in things that could not be represented in a game scene.

'Guild Wars 2' is a wider world in that we have a lot of different mechanics available for storytelling. We have our personal story, the story of you, which is tailored for your character. You answer some basic questions; you make some decisions early on, and that follows through.

There's a misunderstanding that I've always tried to address straight on when this question comes up, which is that a 'Half-Life' story can somehow exist outside of a game. It can't. The story is created through the process of trying to figure out how to best use the features of the engine within the interesting set of constraints it poses.

Most games end up with quite caricature scripts because they are just here to serve the game-play mechanics but not to trigger any emotional response.

We're growing into an entertainment medium as opposed to 'We make games. We make Mario jump.' We no longer have to focus so hard on the technical hurdles and can ask, as a player, why am I doing this? Why am I making these choices? Games that don't have that strong foundation stumble.

The technology for radiant stories in 'Skyrim' is phenomenal. We tried and pared it back.

The video game story-development process is incredibly broken.

I have never made a game that wasn't explicitly about empowering players to tell their own story.

Games are advancing in terms of storytelling and trying to create a character, and it's a brand new audience for me.

Ideally, writers and narrative designers should be included much earlier in the process, where they can be of most benefit. However, although the industry is slowly getting used to fitting narrative professionals into games development, we're still going through a bit of a 'square-peg in a round hole' phase.

If you are willing to take the trip through 'Analogue,' you'll be rewarded with some of the best writing in gaming today and a look into the future of what kind of meaningful stories video games are capable of telling.

I think 'Overlord' has definitely benefited because I work with every single level designer, and working where we have space to tell the story. That's what it's all about - getting writers and storytellers involved in the team and being a back and forth process.

The video game market is huge, and the ability to tell stories, and tell different kinds of stories in the gaming space is quickly evolving and changing for the better.

Stories in which the player doesn't inhabit the main character are difficult for games to handle.

The woeful tales of 'Super Mario Bros.' and 'Street Fighter' have taught studios that merely slapping a name to a movie is not enough to bring in the fans of the franchise. Also, the way games now unfold their stories more parallels that of a movie, with characters and plot points actually meaning as much as a high score.

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world.

The kinds of games I'm most interested in are narrative games.

I'm not the expert on the great gameplay. I come in for the character design, monsters, atmosphere. I'm not the technician.

The goal for us to do with Squanchtendo is to approach all of our projects with a goal of adding interesting characters, personality, and a story to interact with in-game. Every game we make will be built from the ground up for whatever hardware it will launch on.

I think you have to serve a lot of masters when you're doing a video game: you're not just telling a linear story or doing something that's all action.

Some media used to talk about video games only to say how violent or addictive they could be. With 'Heavy Rain,' they talked about the story of the game and the emotions they felt while playing.

For narrative games, and also for the sake of the medium, we have to treat performance that way, as actors. You have to have a sense of ownership over it and believe that you're bringing something meaningful to it - because that's what all of the developers are doing, and that's what the story demands.

There are many different ways of telling an interactive story, I think. I don't think there's a right one and a wrong one. There are different games telling different types of stories in different ways.

First of all, I don't dislike direct storytelling - people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I'm just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games.