Do we like Hideo Kojima?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or company turned up in the pages I opened, and he has a real honour; but thin sourcing and a messy AI stoush keep it short of a 9.
Kojima is the man behind Metal Gear and Death Stranding, and in 2022 Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs gave him the 72nd Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts. That's a proper government honour, not a fan-poll trophy, and it's about the work rather than the personality.
The loudest recent stoush is about AI. In May 2026 Prada's members' club Mode brought in Kojima and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn to star in an AI-generated short film. The gaming crowd didn't love it, since plenty see generative AI as the opposite of the creativity Kojima is praised for. That is a gripe about craft and jobs, not about hurting a group of people.
The other fight is over casting. In September, Kojima posted a video showing OD's development and its two leads, Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer. Some fans objected to Schafer, a trans actress, and threatened a boycott, while others pointed out that casting is no reason to reject a game. The lead actors had been known for some time, and the page I read doesn't show Kojima backing down.
On the harm check, I found no words of his own against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet in the pages I could open. His studio is now backed by Xbox, which funds OD and Physint, after years with PlayStation. Plenty of commentary on how his games treat women exists, but I couldn't open it, so that's a gap in this file, not a clean bill.
So: an award-winning creator who's copping heat from the wrong end of the internet. The AI film is a fair thing to be cross about if you care about artists, and the casting row says more about the people shouting than about him. Plenty to enjoy, little to be ashamed of, and a few more pages to read before anyone calls it a 10.