'I feel a lot of affection and affinity towards the PC,' says Hideo Kojima

(Image credit: Hideo Kojima)

When Death Stranding arrived on PC in 2020 it came with graphical improvements and ultrawide support, made good use of DLSS, ran smoothly, had an impressive photo mode, and came with a string of sidequests involving characters who are such fans of Valve games they collect Half-Life and Portal memorabilia even after an apocalypse. It felt like a PC-ass PC game, and we gave it Game of the Year.

In a recent interview orchestrated by publisher 505 Games, Death Stranding director, designer, and writer Hideo Kojima discussed the reason for making this port, given that several of his previous games have been console-exclusives.

Introducing our mini #DeathStrandingPC interviews! We're kicking things off with @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN, who gives us an insight into developing DEATH STRANDING for PC.Enjoy -50% OFF on Steam and Epic for a limited time!Steam: https://t.co/XIvvHJWYNz Epic: https://t.co/Sg4CPnJ8SZ pic.twitter.com/IHmqLxNEQjMarch 25, 2021

"When I first started in this industry," he said, "I worked on PC games. It was quite a while before I started to make games for consoles, so I feel a lot of affection and affinity towards the PC. Games are developed on PCs, after all. But PlayStation gamers and core PC users are a different market, and the reason Death Stranding is being released on PC is a simple desire for as many people as possible to be able to play the game. What I'm most proud of is the fact that we created and brushed up the PC version or release ourselves. That's something that's usually outsourced, so it's a point of pride for us."

Kojima also talked about the difficulties of satisfying PC gamers, who he called "pretty vocal and opinionated about games". Most obviously, insuring compatibility with a range of different hardware wasn't easy given the disparity between high- and low-end hardware, so "where to set the baseline was therefore a major issue". Another was getting the mouse controls right. "I'm not really good at playing the game with a mouse," Kojima said, "but the PC version had to support mouse controls, of course, but configuring them was tricky. I left that to our staff, though."

Discussing the game itself, Kojima explained that its inspiration came from the observation that, despite how technology connects us, people are more isolated than ever. "In such a society, I wanted to create lighthearted, positive connections between people within the game. I didn't set out to create a new genre or anything grand like that."

Kojima Productions is currently working on a game that we're expecting to hear more about soon. Right now, Death Stranding is half-price on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.