Hideo Kojima says he makes games because an HR person told him to be creative after he decided job-hunting is “a place where lies meet lies”: “I was a Showa era detective trying to solve a murder case”
By Ashley Bardhan
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Hideo Kojima says he makes games because an HR person told him to be creative after he decided job-hunting is “a place where lies meet lies”: “I was a Showa era detective trying to solve a murder case”
Ashley Bardhan
9 September 2025
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(Image credit: Mega64)
There is nothing I am more sure of in this weak, unhappy world that job hunting is a practice inflicted on us by the Devil himself, though I am surprised that Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima agrees with me. But the Kojima Productions founder and, once, Konami’s wunderkind didn’t exactly lead a charmed existence before landing in the video game industry.
An Automaton translation of an essay Kojima wrote for An-an Web tells us the director doesn’t think much of his young adulthood, describing himself as having attended a second-rate university. He’d tell job interviewers that he wrote novels, and they’d laugh in his face.
“My job hunting made me feel like I was a Showa era detective trying to solve a murder case,” he says gravely, and he’d wander from one opportunity to another, to a phone call, to another interview until there were holes in his shoes.
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Finally, Kojima received a job offer from a medical equipment manufacturer’s HR director – who he felt compelled to spill his guts to. They must have been performing some kind of HR director magic.
In any case, Kojima told them he yearned to be in a creative industry and, to his surprise, they encouraged him to pursue exactly that. He ultimately began working at Konami.
But he still thinks finding a job sucks. Kojima remembers that, “Two years after becoming a working adult, I became the one sitting at the interviewer’s desk, listening to the students’ lies.”
“By the way, those who conduct interviews also lie,” he adds. “They’re representing the company, not their personal alignment. A place where lies meet lies.”
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Despite directing Resident Evil 2, Hideki Kamiya says “I hate horror,” but he still wants to see Hideo Kojima make a game “in the same style” as P.T.
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Hideo Kojima
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer
Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She’s been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she’s written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she’s not covering gaming news, she’s usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.
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Hideo Kojima learned “so many ways to kill people” in training, says it’s “kind of sad” many devs “don’t know how to dismantle a gun or shoot a gun” despite making military games
Despite directing Resident Evil 2, Hideki Kamiya says “I hate horror,” but he still wants to see Hideo Kojima make a game “in the same style” as P.T.
Hideo Kojima only plays “maybe one game a year” because “games take a lot of time” and “what’s happening outside the game world is more important to me to incorporate into my game”
Death Stranding 2 and risky game connoisseur Hideo Kojima says too many AAA games play it safe: “If there is no risk, there won’t be any good things that would be born”
Nier creator Yoko Taro reckons “there’s less ‘weird people'” making games nowadays although he’s not sure if it’s “something that’s happening to the world as a whole”
“Make games and die. That’s my plan”: Coincidence’s Zach Barth on making games about making things, a year of teaching, and being in it for the long haul
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