Hideo Kojima's book will be published in English this year

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Though not under its original title, 'The Gifted Gene and My Lovable Memes'.

Hideo Kojima
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

The designer, writer, and director of videogames including Snatcher, Policenauts, Death Stranding, and, oh yeah, those Metal Gear Solid things, Hideo Kojima has also written a book. A collection of essays published in Japan in 2019, it's all about about the pop culture that inspired and influenced his approach to games. Plus, it includes a conversation with musician Gen Hoshino, who appears on the Death Stranding soundtrack and whose late-night radio show Kojima was a guest on.

The Japanese edition was published with the English title 'The Gifted Gene and My Lovable Memes'. Which is amusing but perhaps a slight mistranslation, given that the introduction for the paperback edition gave it more sensibly as 'The Memes I Love'. In English Kojima's book will be published with a less quirky title as The Creative Gene, and the subtitle 'How books, movies, and music inspired the creator of Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid'.

Kojima Productions began hiring staff for a new game last year, which may or may not be a sequel to our 2020 Game of the Year, Death Stranding. It probably won't be the horror game collaboration with Junji Ito that was rumored to be in the works.

Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

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.