Visionary game designer Hideo Kojima has a bold idea for a new type of game. It’s one not to be experienced by humans, but instead, be played by Artificial Intelligence.
AI and its prevalence in the gaming industry has been the talk of the town this year. As tools become more prominent, we’re seeing more and more studios adopt various systems to expedite the game development process.
For the most part, such moves have been met with backlash. Be it for subsequent layoffs of human employees or for the sheer impact on the end product, AI has become a contentious topic. In fact, earlier this week, 2025 Game of the Year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, had two indie game awards rescinded for Sandfall Interactive’s use of generative AI.
Nonetheless, AI is here, and as the legendary Hideo Kojima put it, it’s here to stay. The creative mind behind Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding has, of course, been eyeing the prospect of using AI for his own games, admitting he’s open to the idea to help bolster gameplay systems. However, he’s looking beyond that, suggesting he’d want to make an entire game just for AI to enjoy, not us humans.
Hideo Kojima considers making a game just for AI
“This might be out there, but I think I want to make a game played in weightlessness,” Kojima said during an interview with Japanese outlet Nikkei Xtrend, per a translation from Notebookcheck. “A game that delights an AI.”
In theory, the idea for Kojima’s ‘game,’ if you could even label it such, would be an interactive experience that “could train AI,” as he explained.
“At the moment, AI doesn’t know much, and I think it has to study more. It would be a game that is a teaching material for AI to study.”
Exactly what that would look like is obviously anyone’s guess for the time being. Most prominent AI tools today rely on Large Language Models, meaning they’re trained by absorbing enormous swaths of text, be it from across the internet or from thousands of books that have been illegally pirated.
For an AI program to learn in another capacity, by ‘playing,’ it would surely function quite differently from what we see today, and that’s something Kojima is counting on, explaining how he ‘expects’ “AI to break into many different worlds” within the next five to 10 years.
“When smartphones came out, everyone slated them. But now, there are so many people who can’t live without their smartphones. AI is like that. It’s important to use technology in a way that will make us happy, while considering the correct direction it should take.”
As previously mentioned, Kojima has already been theorizing how a more traditional video game for actual humans might leverage AI tools to push boundaries. In his view, it wouldn’t necessarily be used to generate artwork or assets, but rather, to evolve enemy behaviour.
“In most games, the enemies don’t behave very much like real humans. But by using AI, enemy behaviour could change based on the player’s experience, actions, and patterns. That kind of dynamic response would make much deeper gameplay possible,” Kojima told CNN.
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