At Lucca Comics and Games 2025, Hideo Kojima talked less about technology and more about purpose, describing why he builds games and what he wants players to take from them. Speaking alongside actors from Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Kojima framed his work as a way to pay forward the emotional lift he once drew from films and books.
The director said he hopes fans who spend hundreds of hours in his worlds feel renewed rather than drained, that the time commitment becomes a source of strength, stress relief, and, ideally, a lasting push toward happiness.
He positioned this outlook as a guiding star for how his studio thinks about story, performance capture, and the kinds of relationships its games try to model.
“I grew up watching movies and reading books. As a child, the world could feel dark, and I didn’t have many good role models around me. Movies helped, the characters, the dialogue, the themes, they lifted me up and gave me the energy to keep going,” he said.
“That’s something I want to give back, and it’s one of the reasons I make games. If someone plays my game and, years later, thinks, ‘I wanted to keep going because this game cheered me up,’ that would make me happiest, because that’s the intention I put into my work. There’s so much entertainment out there, but games are immersive; you can spend hundreds of hours with them.”
“If I’m asking someone to spend that much time, it’s fine if they’re simply relieved of stress. But I also want to give them something more. Through [Death Stranding 2 characters] Luca and Alyssa’s relationship and the other characters, I hope players feel something they can carry into their real lives and become happier. That’s my goal. I haven’t reached it yet, but it’s what guides me when I create games.”
Placed against the backdrop of Physint, Kojima’s next action-espionage project made with PlayStation, his comments read like a mission statement: tension and spectacle are important, but the endpoint is emotional resonance that outlives the credits.
It also contextualizes the studio’s cross-media instincts (casting, music, touring conversations around DS2) as tools for achieving that human afterglow rather than as brand flourishes. Fans expecting pure nihilism from his dystopias may instead find a deliberate blend: harsh worlds that ultimately argue for connection, endurance, and meaning.
Bottom line: Kojima’s quote isn’t just sentiment. It’s a design thesis. If Physint channels that “energy to live on” ethos, expect a stealth thriller that aims for the gut as much as the adrenaline.
