My Film Director professor Dr. Amy Darnell might use the word 'auteur' to describe the video game developer Hideo Kojima. While he doesn't have too many different IP's (Interactive Properties) under his belt he is the pioneer in the stealth video game genre having created the Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid series, having wrote and directed 14 of the 31 different games in the series. The series is his creation, his magnum opus, his contribution to human culture. Well, not anymore.

A small history lesson for all of you who don't know. This all really started back in April of 2015. Hideo Kojima, Guillermo Del Toro, the man behind the Hellboy movies and Labyrinth, and Norman Reedus, one of the stars of Walking Dead, collaborated to work on a new entry into the popular video game series, Silent Hill. The fanfare behind the game was incredible, and I could name several people who planned on buying it when it came out. Except it didn't. The company Kojima worked for, Konami, cancelled it in April 2015 without any comment.

Then something odd happened. Public comments from Kojima became more and more infrequent. Eventually we found out why. It was announced that after the most recent edition of Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain that Kojima would be leaving Konami, a company he had been working for since 1986. The reports were mixed: some said Kojima was leaving of his own accord. Others said he had been ousted for senior management from Konami who had been looking for a new project director for Metal Gear Solid for years. The worst report was that Konami wanted to turn Metal Gear Solid into a pachinko machine. For a time Kojima was a shell of his former happy self. He was actually bared by Konami from appearing at the Video Game Awards of 2015 by and when Phantom Pain won Best Action Adventure Game and best Score/Soundtrack, actor Kiefer Sutherland, who played the Protagonist Venom "Big Boss" Snake, accepted the award for him. In the scant interviews since he left or while he was in the process of leaving, Kojima looked downright miserable seen in this picture below. (courtesy of Gamespot.com)

However, things did pick up for Kojima. After Kojima Productions, a subsidiary of Konami was shut down, Andrew House,a business man seen pictured above with Kojima, reached out to Kojima and wanted him to come to work for Sony (the company behind the Playstation 4) directly. Kojima, who at this point owes the rest of his life to House, reformed Kojima Productions as an independent company that produces for Sony. This was seen at E3 2016, a week long venue where video game developers showcase new video games and techonologies, when Kojima made one of his first public appearances since his firing and hiring at Houses urging. The crowd went insane. You can find this here.

Kojima was back in the game industry and got one of the biggest pops of the night by literally saying the words, "I'm back" to which the crowd responded with complete adoration. To top it off, he even got Norman Reedus to be in his game again, this time Death Stranding, where he was seen naked holding a creepy looking baby (but that's for another day). Kojima fell from grace and bounced back and frankly, I'm just happy we didn't lose one of the biggest video veterans in the industry.

Still kind of funny how the alternative title of Death Stranding is Norman Reedus and the Creepy Baby Fetus.