Hideo Kojima delivered his GDC keynote this afternoon, and we reported live from the event on this page.
It was the Metal Gear Solid creator's first time talking at the San Francisco event, but his nerves were absent and his message clear: "90 per cent of what is considered impossible is, in fact, possible."
Read on for the full transcript, the earliest post of which is presented first.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
17:25 pm UTCGood morning/afternoon from GDC! It's another perfect day here - San Francisco doesn't seem to do bad weather.
– Robert Purchese
17:26 pm UTCThere wasn't anything like the huge queue that there was for yesterday's Nintendo keynote, but the huge Esplanade Room is filling up fast.
– Robert Purchese
17:27 pm UTCWe've got front-row seats again, and there's a hum of anticipation in here, even though we've heard there'll be no new game announcements. It must be the Kojima Effect.
– Robert Purchese
17:28 pm UTCWe can spot Suda 51 sat just over to our left - officially Japan's nicest videogame developer (and that takes some doing). Also the coolest. Only Suda could rock a black-and-white newsprint hoodie in his 40s and pull it off.
– Robert Purchese
17:29 pm UTCIt's all Daft Punk and Gorillaz and sunglasses on heads in here. Not as many suits about as for Iwata yesterday.
– Robert Purchese
17:31 pm UTCThe lights are coming down and GDC director Meggan is on stage introducing the keynote. Kojima is "renowned as one of the most influential videogame developers in the world".
– Robert Purchese
17:32 pm UTCHere he is! Dressed only as a rock star Japanese developer does - satin jacket and black-and-white spec frames.
– Robert Purchese
17:33 pm UTCHe's talking in Japanese through an interpreter over the PA, and thanking everyone for the Lifetime Achievement award he picked up last night.
– Robert Purchese
17:33 pm UTCHe jokes that he came because E3 has lost its punch over the years - and because they said they'd give him an award if he came.
– Robert Purchese
17:34 pm UTCIt's his first time at GDC - he reckons "the atmosphere is really hot".
– Robert Purchese
17:35 pm UTCHe's not going to talk about the technical side of game design - it's more about his philosophy of game creation. He promises entertainment - but no free games as presents. Boo!
– Robert Purchese
17:36 pm UTCHe asked a couple of his friends what GDC was like. He was told that people leave boring sessions after 10 minutes, but there's nothing else going on right now, so we're stuck with him.
– Robert Purchese
17:37 pm UTCOn with the presentation. He defines Revolutionary Creation as doing something nobody has done before - making the impossible possible (which is the title of his keynote).
– Robert Purchese
17:38 pm UTCIt's a path - with a 2D black-and-white snake walking along it. Obviously. Sometimes you face little obstacles (a black box on the screen).
– Robert Purchese
17:38 pm UTCSnake vaults over it, and here comes a little 8-bit Mario, who jumps over with ease.
– Robert Purchese
17:39 pm UTCNow there's a huge wall. Snake can't make it. Mario comes along, turns into Super Mario and leaps over, much to Snake's dismay.
– Robert Purchese
17:39 pm UTCSnake thinks, he's not Mario and he can't jump over. Poor Snake.
– Robert Purchese
17:40 pm UTCKojima thinks it's all about changing your preconceptions. Snake's stereotype is that he thinks he can't jump over - but we need to change visions.
– Robert Purchese
17:41 pm UTCSnake thinks of new ideas. Why not pole vault over the wall? Destroy it with a gun? Or fly over with a balloon? Or suddenly find a cartoon door in it? Or flood one side with water and float over?
– Robert Purchese
17:43 pm UTCBut when you change the camera to a 3D view, you see that maybe you could walk around the wall, or dig underneath it. Making the impossible possible is changing your view, coming up with new ideas.
– Robert Purchese
17:43 pm UTCKojima is clearly going for the world record in GDC keynote extended metaphors here. Iwata just doesn't have this kind of game.
– Robert Purchese
17:44 pm UTCThe ground under the wall is hardware and technology. Software technology is a box that Snake can stand on to help him over. But it's still not enough - he needs a ladder to make the last few metres. That's game design.
– Robert Purchese
17:45 pm UTCEnough with the abstraction. We're now reminiscing about Kojima's first game - Metal Gear. The time is 1985 - when the MSX 2 was released, at the same time as the boom of the NES.
– Robert Purchese
17:46 pm UTCHe joined the industry the following year, '86, and was given a mission - create a combat game for the MSX 2. The reason for it was the phenomenon of Rambo, and the coin-op games based on it.
– Robert Purchese
17:47 pm UTCAnything he's done before, he thinks is possible. Anything he's never done before, he thinks is impossible. It's only in his mind.
– Robert Purchese
17:47 pm UTCWhat was a combat game back then? 2D, with a human player character, and enemies - at least four. And bullets!
– Robert Purchese
17:48 pm UTCAll this is rendered in animated sprites on the screen. Even in PowerPoint, Kojima's production values are through the roof.
– Robert Purchese
17:49 pm UTCTo demonstrate the level of technology at the time, he's showing screens of an old side-scrolling shoot-em-up called Nemesis. He's explaining the concept of backgrounds and sprites for the young-uns attending.
– Robert Purchese
17:50 pm UTCYou could only show eight sprites. He thinks we must be pretty glad we weren't born back then.
– Robert Purchese
17:51 pm UTCThere's a little bit of footage of Nemesis - he's showing how some sprites blink in and out. "This is the actual product - it's not a bug." The ninth sprite on screen would always disappear.
– Robert Purchese
17:53 pm UTCWith MSX 2, he explains, you could do four colours in one line if you layered the sprites. But now he's used up six sprites just to draw the player and two enemies. Any more than two bullets and they would start to disappear. So Kojima thought that creating a combat game for the MSX 2 was totally impossible.
– Robert Purchese
17:54 pm UTCA change in expression was necessary. The first idea he came up with was a combat game without fighting. Of course, that wouldn't sell.
– Robert Purchese
17:54 pm UTCSo he thought about a combat game about escaping - just running around. "I thought that was totally uncool."
– Robert Purchese
17:55 pm UTCSo how about hiding and sneaking? "Oh, this could work. This could be revolutionary, I thought."
– Robert Purchese
17:55 pm UTCBut he needed to add another idea because it didn't seem heroic enough for the trend at the time. He needed to add another idea - infiltration.
– Robert Purchese
17:56 pm UTCHe needed to add more tension for the players, so he added a story and a detailed world. The stealth game genre was born. All to save on sprites.
– Robert Purchese
17:57 pm UTCSo the impossible mission (create a combat game) becomes a different mission (create a stealth game).
– Robert Purchese
17:58 pm UTCHe's explaining the top-down design of Metal Gear - mazes, enemies with sight lines, screens that don't scroll. It was almost like a puzzle-action game.
– Robert Purchese
17:59 pm UTCThat was Metal Gear. It was never released in the US. "You might know the NES version, but that was a crap game, because I didn't work on it."
– Robert Purchese
18:01 pm UTCBack to the wall metaphor. This one will run and run. The stealth game design was the ladder that got him over the wall, i.e. the mission; create a stealth game. "I think I completed the mission." Metal Gear became a hit, and they started on a sequel.
– Robert Purchese
18:02 pm UTCTheir next mission was to create a stealth game on the next gaming platform that exceeded the first, and that was a deeper game. That was a mission they set themselves.
– Robert Purchese
18:03 pm UTCThe wall rose, but the ground didn't - there was no new hardware. He had to create a deeper game without that advantage. The result was Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
– Robert Purchese
18:03 pm UTCTo make the game deeper, he expanded the enemy's line of sight to a wider cone, and expanded the field of play to make it less like a puzzle game. You'd have to think about enemies outside of the screen.
– Robert Purchese
18:04 pm UTCSince there was no scrolling, he created the radar, so players could track enemies across the whole level. He thought that was quite a nice idea, if he says so himself.
– Robert Purchese
18:05 pm UTCUh oh - a technical problem. Kojima's million-dollar PowerPoint is going backwards. "Please don't post this on YouTube, okay?"
– Robert Purchese
18:06 pm UTCWe're back on track. He's saying that he also added an Evasion phase, and hearing to the enemies, bringing more rhythm to the hide and seek, and more tension for the player.
– Robert Purchese
18:06 pm UTCSo that was Metal Gear 2, only released in Japan. There was another "crap" NES one that he didn't do.
– Robert Purchese
18:08 pm UTCSo once again, the game design was the ladder that got him all the way over the "wall": create a deeper stealth game.
– Robert Purchese
18:09 pm UTCMISSION COMPLETE. Well done, Hideo.
– Robert Purchese
18:09 pm UTCHere's mission three: create a 3D stealth game for the MSX 2. Now that really is ambition.
– Robert Purchese
18:10 pm UTCHe thought it would be more fun to change the camera to a first-person view. We're back to the 3D path. Snake's facing a huge wall with like two steps in it. We're losing him, frankly. This metaphor is like one of his cut-scenes.
– Robert Purchese
18:11 pm UTCThere was "a big incident" though - in 1994, PlayStation was released.
– Robert Purchese
18:12 pm UTCThe hardware elevated Snake! The ground went up. Ellie: "This is better than the DEATH SPIRAL!"
– Robert Purchese
18:13 pm UTCSo Kojima changed his mission. Create a stealth game for the PlayStation. He went on to create Metal Gear Solid. There is some polite whooping.
– Robert Purchese
18:14 pm UTCHe's explaining the game design of MGS. This PowerPoint has first-person and isometric views. It's got a bigger development budget than most iPhone games.
– Robert Purchese
18:15 pm UTCKojima's talking about the long localisation process for Europe, and playing audio clips in six languages. David Hayter's unmistakable rasp is playing on the PA.
– Robert Purchese
18:17 pm UTCJapanese, German - "sounds like I want to eat some sausages!", Italian - "I feel like I want to eat some pasta", Spanish - "it's very passionate isn't it?"
– Robert Purchese
18:17 pm UTCLast but not least - the French version. "It feels romantic!" The crowd's lapping up this casual stereotyping.
– Robert Purchese
18:18 pm UTCBack to some game footage. Real-time cut-scenes and camera changes for the first time.
– Robert Purchese
18:19 pm UTCSnake has clambered over the wall, which is now a complex kind of 3D ziggurat of metaphorical challenges. We have no idea what's going on.
– Robert Purchese
18:20 pm UTCI added cut-scenes. "I guess these are not popular now, these famous cut-scenes."
– Robert Purchese
18:20 pm UTCMISSION COMPLETE
– Robert Purchese
18:21 pm UTCLet's take a break. We're going to watch a Japanese TV advert for MGS. It's got some robotic Japanese chicks talking in unison. Weird.
– Robert Purchese
18:21 pm UTCA huge worldwide hit! Let's make a sequel - so we need a new mission.
– Robert Purchese
18:22 pm UTCA realistic-looking stealth game. Mission impossible, right? But PS2 came along, and the emotion engine, so everything's going to be OK.
– Robert Purchese
18:22 pm UTCUh-oh - the ground under Snake didn't rise as much as we thought. Damn those Sony lies.
– Robert Purchese
18:24 pm UTCSo we've changed the mission - create a more immersive stealth game. Voila: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
– Robert Purchese
18:24 pm UTCKojima's explaining the game design again. The PowerPoint now has weather effects.
– Robert Purchese
18:26 pm UTCGame footage is being shown: 60 frames per second, motion capture, long cut-scenes. "I believe that some of you didn't like these." Silence. "You're supposed to laugh at this point." We do - we're polite, and he's nice.
– Robert Purchese
18:27 pm UTCHe's talking about all the new actions, the deeper use of the environment, location damage, first-person action view - these make the ladder that got him to the immersive stealth game he was after.
– Robert Purchese
18:27 pm UTCMISSION COMPLETE
– Robert Purchese
18:28 pm UTCMore commercials!
– Robert Purchese
18:28 pm UTCThere's a businessman hiding in office toilets, cupboards and drawers. It's properly funny, actually.
– Robert Purchese
18:29 pm UTCNew mission: complete a stealth game that surpasses the previous one on a new platform. But as with MSX 2, the new hardware doesn't arrive - the ground under poor old Snake doesn't move.
– Robert Purchese
18:30 pm UTCHow can we advance what we've done using nothing but software and game design? By changing the environment.
– Robert Purchese
18:32 pm UTCThere's a chart showing how the series was always set in closed, artificial environments (Shadow Moses, the tanker). The opportunity is to break out into open, natural environments.
– Robert Purchese
18:33 pm UTCIt's not just the game design ladder this time. They remade their 3D engine to cope with the natural environment, bringing Snake the mighty box of software technology to stand on. It's brought along by Otacon, for some reason.
– Robert Purchese
18:35 pm UTCSo we get Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Kojima's explaining the camouflage and survival elements of the game design with his king of PowerPoints. It's got a nice wood effect now.
– Robert Purchese
18:35 pm UTCTom says: "Otacon is the man!"
– Robert Purchese
18:36 pm UTCMore self-effacing gags about cut-scenes, and we're into some MGS3 gameplay footage. CQC (close quarters combat) was added because it's not always easy to fire guns in the jungle.
– Robert Purchese
18:37 pm UTCThe concept of the game design was "infiltration in a natural environment". The box and the ladder get us over. MISSION COMPLETE
– Robert Purchese
18:38 pm UTCTV commercial time again. The MGS2 businessman's in the jungle, fighting snakes off with an umbrella and doing his ironing. Why don't we get game ads like this?
– Robert Purchese
18:39 pm UTC"Although the series was a hit, I always said that I wanted to end Metal Gear's saga as a trilogy." But the world wanted a sequel. "So I came up with a plan - why don't I make the ultimate stealth game? Then I won't have to make Metal Gear Solid any more."
– Robert Purchese
18:41 pm UTCIt's 2005 and Kojima hears a rumour of a monster gaming hardware that's so good you don't even need use a game design. A new mission: create the ultimate stealth game using the rumoured power of the ultimate gaming machine that doesn't exist yet so I don't have to make Metal Gear Solid ever again.
– Robert Purchese
18:42 pm UTCThe machine, of course, was the PS3. The wall is impossibly high, but the ground soars up to meet it - and then drops halfway back down again. Snake clings to the ledge but falls back down.
– Robert Purchese
18:43 pm UTCNew mission: use the ACTUAL power of the PS3 to create the ultimate stealth game. No, wait: a new infiltration experience.
– Robert Purchese
18:44 pm UTCThe game design is to create an infiltration game in a warzone, where you can fight both sides or neither. Massive gun battles rage on the PowerPoint.
– Robert Purchese
18:45 pm UTCPresto, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, released last year. 8/10
– Robert Purchese
18:46 pm UTC"It's a monster machine, so the cut-scenes are monstrous as well, okay? You're supposed to laugh even more, come on, I'm talking about my cut-scenes!"
– Robert Purchese
18:47 pm UTCHe's showing some footage of the first level, with Snake deciding to fight the militia as well, and them turning against him. The concept was infiltration into a "situation" - it's not about the place any more, it's about the situation.
– Robert Purchese
18:48 pm UTCMISSION COMPLETE. We're rewarded with a TV ad. A young man decides to play MGS4 rather than marry his girlfriend.
– Robert Purchese
18:51 pm UTCHe's zoomed out to show the whole journey of Metal Gear up this path. Remember the first mission? If he'd given up, there wouldn't be any Metal Gear Solid - or Splinter Cell, for that matter.
– Robert Purchese
18:51 pm UTCIt was because of design responses to hardware restrictions that Metal Gear came to be.
– Robert Purchese
18:51 pm UTCHideo Kojima's philosophy is of designer-driven game design. Anyone who's over 40 years old is like this, probably.
– Robert Purchese
18:52 pm UTCKojima's riding his metaphor all the way to the moon now. Ladders, boxes, isometric paths with multiple steps. Looks like it might be quite a good game, actually.
– Robert Purchese
18:53 pm UTCEspecially Japanese game designers are like this, he thinks. It's the traditional way of making games. But now there's a different trend - more reliant on the software technology, as was the case with Metal Gear Solid 3.
– Robert Purchese
18:54 pm UTCThis technology-based game design is used in American and European game development studios, he realised recently. It uses open-world game design where you can run anywhere without loading, ride any vehicle, destroy any building.
– Robert Purchese
18:55 pm UTCHe wants to use both software and design to vault up a high, high wall, now. That's his vision for the next mission: the next MGS.
– Robert Purchese
18:56 pm UTCDevelopers who think Kojima is old-school with his game design ladder and want to challenge that with software technology are welcome to come and talk to Kojima Productions and do that. They're recruiting.
– Robert Purchese
18:57 pm UTCSumming-up time. By overcoming yesterday's impossibilities, they become today's possibilities. Nothing is impossible.
– Robert Purchese
18:58 pm UTC"90 per cent of what is considered impossible is, in fact, possible. The other 10 per cent will become possible with the passage of time and technology."
– Robert Purchese
18:59 pm UTC"Let's join together and make the impossible possible. I want to make great games with everyone."
– Robert Purchese
18:59 pm UTCAnd amazing PowerPoints. Thanks, Snake. Thanks, Mario.
– Robert Purchese
19:00 pm UTCIt's all over. Warm applause from the GDC audience, thumping Britney on the PA.
– Robert Purchese
19:02 pm UTCThanks for staying with us and stay tuned for more from GDC.
– Robert Purchese
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