Hideo Kojima revealed this during the production of the first one Metal gear solid In the game he asked the staff to stop working nights – to reduce the company’s energy bills.
To take to Twitter/X on the 25th anniversary of the famous game, Kojima revealed and described some details about the game’s development in a long post (via GamesRadar+). It pulled back the curtain on his process and feelings at the time, including the changes he experienced when he first developed a game.
This included cutting costs by changing staff working patterns: “To reduce the monthly electricity bill, I asked the company to stop working at night,” he said. Kojima could make this request if “MGS1 was the first work I made myself.”
Before that, he had “planned, written, designed and directed the game, my superiors were responsible for the production”, so MGS1 was a turning point for the game’s creator, including making such important personnel decisions. If only to reduce the company’s bills.
And while eliminating night work wasn’t a decision to directly avoid crunch — when video game developers work well beyond their normal hours to get a game finished by a certain deadline — it could have been a happy byproduct of the movement.
25 years is a long time, and a lot has changed since the release of the groundbreaking stealth action game. The series remained one of the most progressive and groundbreaking series in the industry, and has now been confirmed Metal Gear Solid3 remake on the horizon as the game approaches its twentieth anniversary, as well as a re-release of the first three M.G.S games (and others) coming out this year.
As for Kojima, he eventually left Konami and returned Death stranding in 2019, with a sequel to that game confirmed and in the works.
The Metal Gear Solid games have a special place in the gaming pantheon, just like some of the others best single player games ever made – check out our picks for similar solo experiences.