Hideo Kojima, the director behind Metal Gear and Death Stranding, revisited a simple origin story that reads like a game-nerd confession: it was Super Mario Bros. that pulled him into games and convinced him the medium could one day outdo film. He says he played the NES classic for a year while in college, even skipping classes, and that without that stretch of staring at pixelated platforms he probably wouldn't be in the industry at all. More than nostalgia, the experience planted a conviction — even with minimal story and pixel art, a game could feel like an adventure and might one day surpass movies as a storytelling medium.
That anecdote came up while Kojima answered questions on a WIRED video, and it wasn't the only place he looked beyond the obvious. He repeated a line of reasoning he has returned to for years: he does not want to choose an existing genre and perfect it. Instead, he wants to pioneer something new.
Not interested in tidy boxes
Kojima's recent work has already shown this impulse. He pushed back on labels for Death Stranding, coining the idea of a 'Strand Game' and describing its Social Strand System as something built around connection rather than combat or stealth. The director says he doesn't 'focus much' on existing genres because his aim is to create mechanics and experiences that do not yet exist. That approach explains why Death Stranding looked and felt unlike most blockbuster releases — long treks, asynchronous multiplayer tics, and a patience-first rhythm that made some players impatient and others enthralled.
He also teased the kinds of settings he might explore next: hard sci-fi and Westerns ranked high on his list. Both carry a lot of surface baggage, Kojima admitted — classic tropes and expectations — but he sees them as canvases for fresh structural experiments rather than reasons to mimic the past. If he follows through on a space-set game, it would put him in the company of big, genre-defining franchises and conversations around what 'hard' sci-fi can do in an interactive space. Likewise, a Kojima take on Westerns could rework pacing and player agency in ways only a developer willing to break genre rules would attempt.
Where OD and Physint fit in
Kojima Productions is not idle while he thinks. The studio is juggling OD, described as a reinvention of service models, and Physint, a concept Kojima has called both an interactive game and a movie — a hybrid that blends narrative, acting, sound, and fashion into a single experience. Physint's early reveals include cast names and an intentionally foggy description; Kojima is treating it as a laboratory for the same genre-defying instincts he used on Death Stranding.
If you follow Kojima's pattern, these projects aren't just new releases; they're probes. They test ideas about how stories, systems, and social mechanics can be arranged. Sometimes those probes land spectacularly; sometimes they polarize. Either way, they push developers and players to talk differently about what a game can be.
Why it matters
A single anecdote about Mario and a willingness to invent genres might sound like a personal quirk, but it is meaningful because of Kojima's track record. He helped popularize stealth with Metal Gear, reframed what a narrative-heavy AAA game could be with Metal Gear Solid, and then again shook expectations with Death Stranding. When a designer with that record talks about 'pioneering' genres, the industry listens — other studios have already borrowed the strand language and run with it.
The wider context matters too. Nintendo's hardware momentum and the ongoing reshaping of big franchises show there is appetite for bold moves in established spaces, whether that be platforming legacies or sci-fi adventures. For players who prefer console-first premieres, Kojima's platform choices are always part of the conversation — Death Stranding sequels and similar projects have targeted PlayStation as a key home, and if you need hardware that can handle ambitious, cinematic games, some readers still opt for the more powerful PlayStation models like the PlayStation 5 Pro (available on Amazon) to get the best performance.
Kojima's blend of reverence for old pleasures and appetite for structural reinvention is part of why his comments matter: they remind the industry that big-name auteurs still think in terms of possibilities, not safe bets. Whether his next big idea will be hard sci-fi, a Western, or something that doesn't fit any existing label, it will likely arrive with a willingness to reshape how players move, meet, and tell stories in games.
If you want a sense of what other big, genre-rooted projects look like when they resurface, check out how long-running franchises approach reinvention in pieces like the coverage of Metroid Prime 4's recent 'Survive' trailer. And for the broader market forces that keep Nintendo platforms at the center of these conversations, there's useful context in the reporting on Switch 2 sales momentum.
Kojima ended the Q and A not with a plan, but with a posture: curious, stubborn about mechanics over categories, and obviously still in love with the medium that started him — even if that love began with a plumber running left to right across a TV screen.