Hideo Kojima

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“ A while ago, I was like, ‘there’s no way I can develop anything for this. I’m going to spend every day puking.'

Speaking to IGN at DICE in Las Vegas, Kojima reiterated his thoughts on VR , and expanded upon how excited he is at the possibilities of new VR technology and how far it’s come since the early ideas discussed in the past.“I’ve been interested in VR for a long time now,” Kojima told IGN via a translator. “VR came up over 20 years ago. What was described back then is finally coming to our everyday lives, so I’m very excited about it.”“A few years ago, I tried the development kits, and I’m very susceptible to 3D motion sickness, so I couldn’t do it. And now the latest technology I’ve been trying, it doesn’t produce nearly as much motion sickness. I’m fine with it. A while ago, I was like, ‘there’s no way I can develop anything for this. I’m going to spend every day puking. That’s not worth it.’ But now, with the latest technology, I’m feeling maybe more confident to develop something.”Kojima admitted that the technology still has some difficulties to iron out, particularly the size and appearance of current VR headsets.“It doesn’t look really good when you have a headset mounted on,” he said. “But I’m very confident that the day will come where we’ll have something integrating glasses, where you have a nice combination of AR and VR. I’m really confident in that regard.”Kojima is especially excited at the idea of developing experiences that have previously not been possible in traditional games, especially when it comes to horror.“Let’s say you put the VR headset on and there are a lot of people here, people you’re not familiar with,” he explained. “You’re not being told who you are, why you’re there. That alone is scary. That alone makes you want to look away. For example, when you look away you can have someone come [into the room]. You don’t need to explain anything. That’s something completely different. That alone is so interesting, the possibility of creating that.”“The most impressive thing, let’s suppose this table where I’m sitting is in VR. Before putting [the headset] on, there’s no table here. I put my headset on, and the table is here. In your brain, you’re conscious there’s nothing here, but the moment you put something on, it’s there. In theory, you should be able to stand up, because there’s no table there, but you cannot stand up. That’s something that there was nothing like in video games so far.”Because all of the possibilities VR can offer, Kojima finds the debates about how much it should cost to be “a very stupid discussion.”“With the current technology, the technology we have nowadays, we can make something that is so impactful,” he said. “The stuff that will be out there in 10 years is just amazing. And it won’t only be in games, but also in simulators and in different things. When you think of this, if we can do this now, in 10 plus years, what will we have? The discussion of ‘well, it’s too pricey’ and all that, I just don’t understand why that is even an argument.”Kojima announced his new studio in December , along with a partnership with Sony. For more, be sure to read about the edgy new game he hopes to create Kojima will speak with former Silent Hills collaborator Guillermo del Toro at DICE this afternoon. Stay tuned for news from their talk, as well as more from our interview with Kojima.

Andrew is IGN’s executive editor of news and looks like a doofus in a VR headset. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter