Death Stranding mastermind Hideo Kojima left the office after dark one night last week, tweeting just one word on the way out: "Tired." After a long and influential career in the industry stretching back to the mid-1980s, he's starting to wonder how much time he really has left.
Kojima's latest game, Death Stranding 2, doesn't have a release date yet, but it's slated to arrive sometime in 2025 and that apparently means it's time to crunch at Kojima Productions. "The most demanding period of game development—both physically and mentally—commonly known as 'crunch time'," Kojima wrote atop his initial "tired" post. "On top of mixing and Japanese voice recording, there’s an inevitable pile of other tasks: writing comments, explanations, essays, interviews, discussions, and non-game-related work. It’s incredibly tough."
That's no doubt true, and it's why a lot of game studios have taken steps to eliminate crunch in recent years, or at least talk about doing so in a reasonably convincing tone. Still, it's proven tough to avoid even when genuine best efforts are made, especially on large projects with big budgets, corporate overlords, antsy shareholders, and looming deadlines, and it seems Kojima is starting to feel the miles.
"At this age, I can’t help but think about how much longer I’ll be able to stay 'creative'," he wrote in another post. "I want to keep going for the rest of my life, but is it 10 more years? 20? Every day feels like I’m racing against the clock. Even now, at 87, Ridley Scott is still active. And back when he was past 60—my current stage in life—he created the masterpiece 'Gladiator'."
Gladiator is indeed a great film (although it's no Master and Commander) but it's an apples-to-oranges comparison, and even if you were inclined to view them as essentially equivalent in their fields, I don't think anyone would seriously say Kojima's contribution to videogames stands in any way inferior to Scott's impact on film.
But maybe Kojima's unfortunate case of auteur ennui will have a positive outcome: Perhaps, instead of wondering how long he can maintain the gruelling pace of crunch, he might realize that it's bad for everyone, and take some concrete steps to cut it out completely. And then who knows? Maybe in 25 years, he'll still be a "creative" too.
