Note
This was originally written for OSV Field Notes
Death Stranding drops you into an America that has come apart. Rain ages whatever it touches, spectral figures drift over the landscape. You play as Sam Porter Bridges (mo-capped by Norman Reedus), a courier tasked with moving packages across the fractured landscape. The game world is littered with strange things: babies in jars which connect to the ghostly plane, eccentric characters with insane style.
And yet, for all its weirdness, it’s a game about belonging and rebuilding.
Most big-budget games are built by committee to minimize risk. Death Stranding feels different. It’s barely a game (some people have called it ‘a walking simulator’). But the cutscenes are marvelously done, and the world feels rich. Maybe it’s a relic of a different time, when games could be AAA in scope, and be philosophical.
And I couldn’t help but wonder about the game’s creator Hideo Kojima, who has spent his career trying to make bold games like these. Is there room for stuff like this now?
Death Stranding came out in 2019. Just four years earlier Kojima had been kicked out of his longtime company Konami, where he had turned the Metal Gear game series into a world-class IP. The times were changing. As The New Yorker reports, Free-to-play games had remade the Japanese market, and Konami was turning toward these cheap, high-margin mobile games. Kojima disagreed. “If you’re only focussed on the profits immediately in front of you,” Kojima said, “the times will leave you behind.”
So his game studio Kojima Productions became independent. And he found a willing patron in Sony, to back his next game which became Death Stranding.
Kojima’s story is a microcosm of what’s been happening in entertainment. Capital is betting on the tried and true, while bold swings are pushed aside. As one of Kojima’s colleagues said: “Why risk producing pricey and sophisticated games in an age that favors indulgence in shallow, convenient entertainment?”
This is a question consistently on my mind. And while I ponder on it, I’ll continue to be immersed in Kojima’s brilliant world.
Readings
🎮 Death Stranding, Kojima Productions, 2019
📘 “Why Did Hideo Kojima Leave Konami?” by Simon Parkin, The New Yorker, Oct 19, 2015
📘 “The Blockbuster Video Game That Wants to ‘Make America Whole Again’” by Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker, Nov 20, 2019