A year after his former employer Konami blocked his award acceptance, Hideo Kojima last night took to the stage to receive his The Game Awards accolade.
Late last year it emerged that Konami had prevented the developer from attending the event, with the pair at the time struggling with a famously acrimonious split.
Last year, I thought I lost everything, but I didn’t,” an emotional Kojima told the crowd. Host Geoff Keighley added: What happened to Hideo Kojima last year was a tragedy, but he never complained. He just sat in an isolated room for months, looked inside himself and focused on his art. He hoped that his love of entertaining us would carry him through the darkest days of his career.”
In an interview with Glixel, Keighley chose to shed more light on Kojima’s treatment toward the end of his Konami era.
"The fact that he finished that game under those circumstances is just amazing,” he explained. He was locked in a separate room on a different floor than his development team for the final six months of development. He couldn’t even talk to them – he had to talk through someone else. That’s how that game was finished."
The event was also used to debut a second trailer for Kojima’s in-development Death Stranding. Those hoping for more answers than were provided in the esoteric first glimpse of the game may be disappointed.