Hideo Kojima
is known for being one of the most enthusiastic game developers around, who always tries to use his craziest (and wonderful, of course) ideas not only in his games, but also in marketing stunts.
I mean, we are talking about the crazy genius who decided to create a fake trailer when everyone else in the industry was worried about making
the most epic trailers
to showcase players exactly what their game is all about. Surely, he does not lack courage – and that is why we love and praise his creations so much.
It is also curious how Kojima is always so invested in every game he creates, especially at a time when gaming projects involve numerous time-consuming and demanding stages. He likes to actively participate in practically every phase, even marketing stuff like editing trailers, putting together posters, and so on.
That has led to remarkable announcements throughout his career, since he is always eager to fool players about his games. So we decided to look back at the five times that Kojima got too carried away (and thank God for that) with his marketing ideas, causing a buzz in the industry.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Fancy A QR Code?
We live today in the Information Age, where news, rumors, and leaks only take a few seconds to reach the whole world. But even so, Kojima found a way to create an unusual marketing stunt with modern technologies.
At PAX Australia 2022 in Melbourne, Australia, there were a bunch of QR codes scattered around the event that, when scanned, opened a page on Kojima Productions’ official website. It displayed a mysterious red poster featuring actress Elle Fanning, along with white strings and strange phrases, such as “Who am I?” and “A game by Hideo Kojima”.
At that time,
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
had not been announced yet, so that was the very first poster for the game (with the confirmation of one more famous movie star as a bonus), but we had no idea of that.
It was only later that we discovered everything when the game was officially announced in December 2022 at The Game Awards with a trailer.
Sure, this one is kind of a simple marketing stunt in comparison to the other contenders on this list, but we have to give the guy some credit for at least trying something different, since releasing that mysterious poster caused what I love the most about any Kojima game: how they unite and connect us to discuss the
craziest fan theories
.
Silent Hills (P.T.)
Hardest Playable Teaser Ever
At this point, we all know that Kojima is not happy with announcing his games in a traditional way. A simple and quick trailer online? Nah. What about an incredibly hard playable teaser that rewards you with a new game announcement? Hell yeah!
If you lived through August 12, 2014, I know that you still remember that day very well. We all do. It was the day that Konami shadow dropped P.T., a playable demo for
Silent Hills
– that, unfortunately, was abruptly canceled later, but that is a story for another list.
Anyway, players needed to play and finish P.T. (an acronym for “playable teaser”, by the way), which was a short but incredibly challenging demo for a new
Japanese horror game
that nobody knew what it was about.
It literally was the topic of the day, where almost every gamer in the world was hooked by the mystery, since the demo itself was a very frightening, hard, and striking experience about a man trying to escape from a cursed house, where a massacre took place. And, despite being only a glimpse of the game, most of the players took several hours to finish it.
To fuel (even more) the mystery, it was released under the name of a new studio called 7780s Studio – and, not coincidentally, “7780” is a geographical reference to Shizuoka, a region in Japan. But it gets more interesting: “Shizuoka” is also Japanese gamer slang for the Silent Hill series, meaning that “7780s”, in plural, consequently stands for “Silent Hills”.
By the end of the demo (if you were capable of finishing it), it was revealed that Hideo Kojima was developing a Silent Hill game in partnership with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and actor Norman Reedus.
Sadly,
we never had the chance to play
Silent Hills (I am not crying, you are), but that does not erase what P.T. meant – and still means – to the industry.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Hidden Letters And Fake Studio
The Phantom Pain was a game announced by Moby Dick Studio, an apparently new game developer from Sweden, during the Spike Video Game Awards event in 2012, with a thrilling trailer about an unknown man escaping from a burning hospital. However, except for the content of the trailer, all the other information was not true.
That game was none other than
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
, but instead of putting it plain and simple, Kojima decided to create a fake studio (it seems that he is
very
into that) and give a few hints in the trailer for players to try to decode the mystery.
Most of the hints were visual similarities between the video and specific details from the Metal Gear franchise, such as Snake’s scar, enemies using similar equipment, and so on.
But the biggest and most interesting clue was the weird white strings on The Phantom Pain’s logo, which looked like an erased phrase… because it actually was. If you draw lines on it correctly, it forms the title “Metal Gear Solid V” right above it, so there you go.
It didn’t take long for Hideo Kojima’s fans to figure it all out and, within days,
theories flooded gaming forums
. The move was intended to attract the attention of gamers from all around the world, and, undoubtedly, it succeeded.
Moby Dick Studio
Fake CEO Interview
Players were already suspicious that The Phantom Pain was the next entry in the Metal Gear Solid franchise (because of the logo hint), but Hideo Kojima was pretty invested in making the game really stand out before its release.
So, in addition to the mysterious announcement trailer, he also planned a fake interview for the GDC event in 2013, which resulted in a weird, mysterious guy called Joakim Mogren claiming that he was the CEO of Moby Dick Studios.
Mogren was interviewed in a video by Kojima’s close friend and journalist, Geoff Keighley, but he was covered in bandages and did not answer the questions in a way that we would expect from a gaming developer.
By the end of the conversation, a conceptual art piece was revealed, giving another hint: the logo for the Fox Engine, the engine used by Konami at that time, at the bottom of the image.
Aside from that, some fans even noticed that “Joakim” was another hint hidden in plain sight, since it is an anagram for “Kojima”.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
Fake Trailer, Fake Protagonist
The very first Metal Gear Solid was released in 1998 and did really well on PlayStation 1, being a hit among players and critics. So, when a sequel was announced, everyone was excited to take control of Snake once again, but nobody knew that Hideo Kojima had different plans.
During the E3 2000 event,
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
was announced with its very first trailer, supposedly showcasing its story and gameplay. Nine minutes long, the trailer showed intense action scenes and, naturally, with Snake as the protagonist. But not everything was true.
Only when the game was released did players discover that the trailer was actually kind of fake: Raiden, who we would come to know as a child soldier known as “Jack the Ripper”, was the real protagonist. In all the scenes in the trailer with Snake, it was actually Raiden.
Also, if we carefully watch the trailer, there are a bunch of scenes where it is not possible to see the protagonist’s face, and you can even notice at some moments that the gloved hand holding the gun is Raiden’s, not Snake’s – so there were some hidden clues that no one noticed at the time.
Kojima played everyone like a damn fiddle, and started being considered a genius by doing so, since Metal Gear Solid 2 was also an insane leap from the first game. Who knew we could not even trust an official trailer?