Without question, Death Stranding was one of last year’s most original games. Coming from the mind of veteran Japanese designer Hideo Kojima, the game is set in a ruined post-apocalyptic world. Playing as a character named Sam Porter Bridges, players have to deliver packages from one location to another across the USA in an attempt to reconnect a fractured world.
Actually, the themes of self-isolation and loss of connection with others will likely be familiar to anyone who plays the game now, as the coronavirus epidemic is still ongoing and social distancing remains the order of the day worldwide.
This is something that media celebrity Geoff Keighley raised to Kojima during a Summer Game Fest interview, pointing out the “striking parallel” between his most recent game and the situation society is in right now, as was recently reported on Game Rant.
Some may think Kojima is something of a prophet for creating a game that seems to have foreshadowed the COVID-19 world, even if Kojima admitted in the interview that he “was never expecting anything of this magnitude”.
Kojima also made fun of his supposed prophet status when referring to Death Stranding’s sales. These were slightly disappointing – there was an initial surge in sales and millions of copies were sold, even if millions also ended up gathering dust in warehouses, leaving Sony disappointed that Kojima’s latest magnum opus did not sell more.
“I’ve been asked ‘are you a prophet?’ because in past games as well I’ve kind of had this similar experience. And people ask me about predicting this, if it makes me a prophet. But again, I’d like to just say that I am not a prophet. Because if I was, I would have created a game that would sell more”, said Kojima (you can watch this part of the interview in the clip below – via VG247).
Hideo Kojima says he didn’t predict the pandemic. If he was a prophet, he says would have been able to make a higher selling game. #SummerGameFest pic.twitter.com/5J9m7CgP7x
— Summer Game Fest (@summergamefest) July 13, 2020
Nonetheless, earlier this year Kojima had said in an interview that Death Stranding’s sales on PS4 had actually been pretty good.
“We’ve absolutely crossed the line we needed to cross to be in the black, including recovering development costs, so I’d call it a successful result”, said the veteran Japanese game designer, adding that “there’s no need to worry”.
Death Stranding, though, still has a chance to shift plenty more copies taking into account it recently launched on PC and seems to be doing pretty well too. According to stats site steamspy.com, the game could have sold up to a million copies on Steam already. Its PC launch could also give the PS4 version a boost, meaning Death Stranding could yet turn out to be one of the year’s top selling games when all is said and done.