is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer and writer. He is regarded as an auteur of video games. He developed a strong passion for action/adventure cinema and literature during his childhood and adolescence. In 1986, he was hired by Konami, for which he designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, a game that laid the foundations for stealth games and the Metal Gear series, his best known and most appreciated works. He is also known for producing the Zone of the Enders series, as well as writing and designing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation. Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, and he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Kojima Productions split from Konami in 2015, becoming an independent studio. His studio's first game without Konami, Death Stranding, was released in 2019. Early life Kojima was born on August 24, 1963 in Setagaya, Tokyo. He was the youngest of three children. His father, Kingo, was a pharmacist who frequently traveled on business, and named Kojima after the most common name among doctors he met. When he was four years old, his family moved to Osaka. Describing that stage of his early life, Kojima said it was an abrupt change of environment, and he spent much of his time thereafter indoors, watching television or making figurines. While the family lived in Osaka, his parents began a tradition of the family watching a film together each night, and he was not allowed to go to bed until the film had finished. They were fond of European cinema, westerns, and horror, and did not limit the type of films he was allowed to see. Kojima took an interest in filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to school. They began filming movies together, charging other children 50 yen to see them. Kojima tricked his parents into funding a trip to an island off the coast of Japan without telling them he wanted to film there. Instead of filming, he spent his time swimming, and on the last day changed the plot to being about zombies. He did not show the film to his parents. By Kojima's teenage years, the family had moved to Kawanishi, Hyōgo, in the Kansai region of Japan. When he was 13 years old, his father died. Kojima has discussed the impact