LAS VEGAS—Japanese game developer Hideo Kojima and Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro might seem like an odd professional and artistic partnership. In a wide-ranging talk on the DICE stage Thursday, though, both creators detailed a working friendship that has grown out of a shared respect and mutual admiration.

Del Toro and Kojima say they have been fast friends since meeting during del Toro's Japanese promotion of Hellboy 2 in 2008. In addition to a shared "a passion for melancholic ideas," del Toro said much of their connection comes from a surprising shared culture. Del Toro said both he and Kojima grew up with the same Japanese cartoons, which were being imported to Mexico when they were both young in the '60s.

As such, when the pair goes to karaoke together, they can both sing anime theme songs together. "I sing them in Spanish, he sings them in Japanese, we don't understand shit," del Toro said.

Kojima said he has been a big fan of del Toro's work well before they met, and he especially loved a playful yet scary character in Pan's Labyrinth that wears eye balls on the palms of his hands. For del Toro, one moment from Kojima's portfolio stood out above the others: "Psycho Mantis started reading my mind in the original Metal Gear Solid, and I actually got scared. He broke the barrier of the screen. It was so inventive, feeding off data of the console. It was so shocking to me."

Kojima and del Toro's first collaboration, on theproject, was tragically cut short amid Kojima's well-publicized problems with Konami . Since then, del Toro joked that he feels like his efforts to break into working in the game industry are somewhat cursed. "I'm like the Albatross. I go to THQ, they go broke. I go with Kojima, you know what happened. Next time we do his fucking teeth are going to fall out."

But the pair have vowed to do what it takes to work together in the future, regardless of any potential difficulties. "Of course, I'd love to [work with del Toro on something]," Kojima said. "I don't care what it is. It will probably be really tough. A game or a movie, I don't care, we'll do it."

"I'll do whatever the fuck he wants," del Toro added. "The only things I want to work on are the ones that motivate me. The only things I want to do are where I'll have fun, and when we work together we always have fun."

"It's really motivating to work with him," Kojima said. "If you work with the same people, you end up with the same stuff. It's good to get a shake up and change of environment. Working with someone else forces to do some things you usually don't do."

“It's only limited by the bastards with money”

Though del Toro hasn't been able to take much of an active role in game development, he said he's taken plenty of inspiration from a lifetime of hardcore gaming. The saturated colors in Pacific Rim can be partially traced back to the same effect in Bioshock, he said.

Del Toro said he also sees a lot of the same problems restricting creators in both media. "There was a moment where it was the pirate seas, but it's no longer that," he said. "The language becomes very uniform... talking about posters and marketing in movies and boxes in video games. It happens in every big industry. The storytellers look ahead to see what they can discover. The money people look back, for the safe route. There's a tension there."

"It's only limited by the bastards with money," he continued. "What you can do with the medium is amazing. As tools get more democratic and available, we're going to get games without the need for large budgets, like indie movies."

Kojima's next project

After officially leaving Konami, Kojima says he considered taking a year off to work on a smaller project like an indie game, a movie, or a novel. But his friends convinced him that he owed it to his fans to dive back in to a major project worthy of his decades of history in the game industry.

"Lots of people are expecting to see the next big things from you," he recalled his friends saying. "You don't have time for that [smaller project]. I thought 'They have a point,' So I changed my mind and started putting a team together, which is what I'm doing right now."

Post-Konami, Kojima said he feels "extremely free right now," but still daunted by the prospect of "trying to make a big, very edgy game with a very small team... I have no intention of changing anything I'll ever do to sell more. I have to create something I want to play, something I want people to play, and figure out ways that it will be a hit to market. With that in mind, I feel extremely free."