One of the biggest video game controversies of last year had to do with a mysterious game named “Abandoned”, announced in April 2021 by little-known developer Blue Box Game Studios.
A post on the PlayStation Blog revealed details about the survival horror game which was supposed to arrive in the fall, plus a trailer for the game.
It wasn’t long before people began linking Abandoned to Kojima and Silent Hill, though.
They thought the whole thing was a Kojima ruse to promote his upcoming Silent Hill game. For one, Abandoned’s trailer had a Silent Hill vibe to it, plus there were other coincidences such as the fact that Blue Box’s studio head Hasan Kahraman shared initials with Hideo Kojima.
Also, Blue Box added fuel to the fire with tweets saying that the game’s real name began with S and ended with L, a clear reference to Konami’s Silent Hill series.
Of course, Kojima (who’s fond of trolling on Twitter) did not help with some of his tweets, which seemed to be directly referencing Blue Box and Abandoned too…
But now the renowned Japanese designer has finally spoken out about the Abandoned fiasco, making it clear he’s not involved with Abandoned. In a podcast with video game personality Geoff Keighley, Kojima said that he hopes Hasan Kahraman releases Abandoned soon, as was recently reported on VGC (via PC Gamer). Also, the fact people kept sending him pictures of the Blue Box’s studio head was “a nuisance”.
“I have never spoken with Hasan, the game is yet to be released. I don’t think there’s much he can do or say at this point, but if he releases the game, people might understand, so maybe he should just hurry up and release it”, Kojima told Keithley.
However, this is something that may not happen anytime soon. Actually, a report by GameSpot this summer revealed that there might not be a real game behind Abandoned at all – Blue Box Game Studios might have some intention of crafting a playable prologue of the game and release this to cover development costs for the full game, but his may never come out either.
Because truth is that this seems more a case of “smoke and mirrors”. Studio head Hassan Kahraman has been described as being “duplicitous and prone to mood swings”, while the game’s story and concept have varied wildly featuring either a cult or vampires, or neither of these…
We want to thank @Kojima_Hideo for addressing the conspiracies openly. It has been a burden and not cool for both fans and developers. We hope everyone can close this for good. We are working hard on Abandoned and we would like to thank you all for your patience!💙 https://t.co/RX88KyQyUV
— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) November 4, 2022
Also, Blue Box’s Twitter account had been dead since April, but recently sprang to life to tweet about (you guessed it) Kojima and the Abandoned conspiracy, calling it “a burden and not cool for both fans and developers”, and still insisting that they are “working hard on Abandoned”.
Whether gamers now care about Abandoned or see Blue Box and Kahraman as more than a scam is a matter of debate though, but it is understandable that people would fall for this kind of thing taking into account that kojima himself had pulled the trick before. In order to promote Metal Gear Solid V back in 2015, he created a fake studio named Moby Dick, and pretended to be the studio’s head Joakim Mogren (who was heavily bandaged…). He also invented another studio named 7780 for his Silent Hills game, which was later cancelled by Konami.
“When we did that Moby Dick thing, you were in on the whole thing, and that was pretty fun. But people should know I wouldn’t do the same thing twice”, Kojima told Keighley in the podcast mentioned earlier in this article.
The thing is, the Abandoned connection to Silent Hill and Kojima now makes no sense whatsoever, and this was even the case before Kojima addressed the whole thing publicly. This is because Konami’s Silent Hill plans were clarified last month – the company will release a remake of Silent Hill 2, plus a new entry in the franchise named Silent Hill: Ascension, due for release sometime in 2023.
Kojima isn’t involved with either the Silent Hill 2 remake or Silent Hill: Ascension, but he is indeed working on a horror game which could be called Overdose, featuring actresses Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna. It will apparently be an Xbox exclusive, published by Xbox Game Studios as was revealed this summer.
It’s a good thing, nonetheless, that Kojima finally decided to talk about the Abandoned controversy. The matter can finally be put to rest, even if this is a video game conspiracy that gamers won’t soon forget about, that’s for sure.
Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase 2022 (Xbox / YouTube)