If you follow Hideo Kojima on Twitter, then you know that Solid Snake's daddy was talking at the University of Southern California last night. But he didn't tweet about what he talked about.


Joystiq's Mike Schramm was in attendance and has a write-up with stories that confirms that Kojima's always been as quirky and driven as his games make him out to be. In a discussion moderated by Game Trailers' Geoff Keighley, the Japanese game design guru revealed that he actually majored in economics and the desire to craft narrative made him an outlier amongst classmates. Kojima also described how his workaholic habits—an average of four hours of sleep a night!—got him in trouble with his wife, courtesy of his son:

He also told the story of his son coming into the office with him while designing Metal Gear Solid, when the designers sometimes used Lego pieces to put the levels together. His son returned to his wife, who was already unhappy with the amount of time Kojima was spending away, only to report that his Dad "plays with Legos [SIC] all day."


Kojima also showed the tech that's going into the his dev team's future work, showing off a jungle level that took only a half-hour to build but that still sported built-in AI and collision, despite the quick build time.

There's more in there about how Kojima views game design so, if you want some insight into what makes one of the medium's most interesting and influential creators tick, head on over to Joystiq and read Schramm's whole piece.

Hideo Kojima talks life, influences at USC presentation [Joystiq]

You can contact Evan Narcisse, the author of this post, at evan@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.