Since then, Kojima has developed and released seven more sequels and various spin offs in the Metal Gear series, building a rigorous mythology around its lead character, the special forces agent Solid Snake, and perfecting the stealth-action genre he spawned two decades ago. Collectively, the franchise has sold close to thirty million games.

Kojima appeared on Saturday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition showcase for The Art of Video Games, where he talked about how his love of Western film has influenced his game design, the future of his franchise, and whether video games can really be considered art.

Here are some of the highlights.

On whether video games can be considered art:

There are many museums dedicated to technology, artistic endeavors, music, and that sort of thing. From that perspective, I think games really do have a place as a kind of collaborative art or a synthesis of all these various aspects into a whole and that in itself can be perceived as art.

One contradiction that I would like to point out is that in traditional art painters can do a portrait and push their views on the viewer. Say you painted something that looks like a banana but said, "Hey, no this is an apple." As a viewer you have no control over that. The painter has total control over what they're showing to the viewer. I think that's what art has been up to this point. For games you can't really do that because they're interactive. Take the example of the car. People are used to driving a car with a round steering wheel but if you were to suddenly change that to a triangular steering wheel, people would have a really hard time driving. I think as someone who's creating a game, you have to keep that interactivity in mind. You can't completely push your vision on the player.

How he almost became a movie director:

To be honest, what I really wanted to become was a movie director. But of course back then it wasn't as easy as filming a movie and editing it digitally like you can do now or distributing it online, so it wasn't very easy for me to film my own works. I remember stressing over this: How can I become successful in the movie industry?

What I decided to do was do what I could do by myself, which was write books. I thought that the best way to do this would be to write a novel of my own and then maybe have it picked up, like with Sylvester Stallone when he wrote Rocky himself and it became very successful. While I was doing this, trying to write my novel, the Famicom (as in, family computer), known here as the Nintendo Entertainment System, was released.

When the Famicom came out, I became addicted to it right away. I started playing all these games and became obsessed with it. It's at that time that I really felt the potential that was hidden in this new medium and I felt that maybe if I can't go to the movies, I can look into this new medium and find success there.