Hideo Kojima Refuses to Make Another Horror Game; Here’s Why

Chances of us seeing the what-would-have-been P.T. by Hideo Kojima in the future? Highly unlikely.

Horror games are an art form in itself. It’s easy to create a game filled with jumpscares but it’s never easy to create a game that can make players feel genuine terror throughout. If a horror game is just filled with jumpscares, you’d get immune real fast and it also gets really annoying.

Horror game enthusiasts have been looking for such a masterpiece and they look towards Hideo Kojima. With Silent Hills P.T. cancelled quite some time ago, people were hopeful that Hideo Kojima would actually make a horror game that can give the same rush they enjoyed in P.T. since he started Kojima Production. Here’s what the man himself has to say about it.

Hideo Kojima: “I don’t want to make a horror game”

Hideo Kojima was working on a new Silent Hill game shortly before leaving Konami. Since leaving the company, people began wondering if he would ever do a game similar to the now-cancelled game. In an interview with IGN, Hideo Kojima talked about how he felt about horror games as well as the possibility of creating one:

I get scared very easily. Actually, this is true of Alfred Hitchcock as well as Steven Spielberg. Because they scare easily, because I scare easily, it’s actually easy for us to make something that is scary, because we understand what is scary. But while in that process, we’re constantly imagining, like, terrifying situations so it ends up giving me bad dreams. That’s the reason why I don’t want to make a horror game.

Despite his fear, Hideo Kojima seems to have quite the knack for the horror genre. In that interview, he shared on what he feels would make a significant scare:

I think the most effective way to scare someone is to show them something that’s slightly out of the ordinary. Slightly off, but at first glance, they don’t know what it is about it that is unusual. When you do something like this, it confuses the mind, and that becomes unnerving for the person who sees it.

Also, the unknown. When there’s no information available for something, it’s more frightening. An example would be a bungee jump. If you’ve done it more than one time, it’s never as scary as the first time. Something that no one has any preconceptions about is the scariest thing.

A good example of that is the original Alien. Everyone knows the design now, the famous design by H.R. Giger, but in the original movie, you don’t see it for most of the movie. You just see, like, quick cuts and little pieces, so you don’t know the shape. You don’t know the exact size.  Until you see it at the end, and it’s like ‘oh, it’s shaped like a person. Somebody is wearing, like, an outfit, like a mascot.’ So it’s not scary at that point, but until that point, because it’s this unknown entity. It’s very scary.

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At the moment, Hideo Kojima’s biggest project is Death Stranding. It’s a PS4-exclusive game and it stars Norman Reedus of Walking Dead fame. He has mentioned specifically that Death Stranding is not a horror game.

Pokdepinion: Personally, I feel bad for Kojima. I mean, sure, I want him to create a horror game too since he’s pretty damn good at it. But if it affects him that badly, I personally wouldn’t even bring the topic to him anymore. However, in this gaming industry, never say never. If there’s a huge demand, he might just comply. That’s just the kind of man Hideo Kojima is.