Hideo Kojima has discussed a wild ambition to make a video game in space, confirming he’s thought about the act extensively in an interview with The Guardian. Speaking to the outlet during the Sydney Film Festival, Kojima admitted he had ‘Tom Cruise disease,’ which he described as a feeling of wanting to risk your life for art.
‘Tom Cruise finds out his worth when living with his life on the line,’ Kojima said. He believes that in putting his life on the line, it would give him the feeling of ‘really being alive’ in a way that inspires him. It appears this forms part of his motivation for wanting to create a video game in space, to some degree.
Speaking to The Guardian, Kojima described his dream as being long-held (and indeed he’s spoken about the act for years now) with the appeal of space being its novelty, and the idea of being the first person to create a video game in space. Previously, Kojima also mentioned a desire to create a game in space that’s designed to be played in space ‘because right now, all games you probably can’t play in outer space.’
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His ideas have evolved and grown since then, but he does appear to be quite serious about wanting to go into space to create a game, and not just the ‘space’ often visited by celebrities in suborbital travels.
‘That’s not space,’ he told The Guardian. ‘I want to train properly, learn how to do the docking, go to the International Space Station and stay there for a few months … I’m not a scientist, but I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first. There are a lot of astronauts over 60, so I guess it’s possible.’
Kojima also reportedly joked that his back might not be an issue in space, with low gravity possibly giving him the freedom to create without strain.
For now, the idea of creating a video game in space still seems like a pipe dream. There’s so much that would need to be considered in this process, least of all the compute power required to create a video game, or whether any creation would genuinely be a game designed only for space. But anything is possible, and given Hideo Kojima seemingly has the power (and the pull) to make anything happen, it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
At the very least, it is worth noting even Tom Cruise has struggled to get his ambitions to film a movie in space off the ground. We’ll just have to stay patient to see whether this film, and Hideo Kojima’s space game, ever come to fruition.
