There are times in all of our lives when we not only feel compelled to try something new, but burn with an irrepressible desire to break free from the chains of our mundane misery by experiencing a thing which we’ve not yet experienced.
For some people, that thing might be skydiving or baking a pistachio layer cake with cream cheese buttercream. For me, at one point last year, it was to watch the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit. For Hideo Kojima, developer of games like Death Stranding 2, it is to go to space, and make a game in space. Please, someone just stick him in a rocket already.
I make this plea following Mr Kojima’s recent interview with The Guardian, in which he once again voiced a desire to go to space and then make a game while in space. He’s wanted this, or some variation of it, for years.
People keep putting microphones and bits of paper in front of him, and he keeps telling them he wants it soooooooooo badly. Then, we all go ‘Oh aye Hideo, you’re so quirky’ and move on.
“I want to train properly, learn how to do the docking, go to the International Space Station and stay there for a few months,” the space-starved soul said in this latest instance of cosmic craving, “I’m not a scientist, but I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first. There are a lot of astronauts over 60, so I guess it’s possible.”
He also mentioned in this interview that he’s suffering from, er, “Tom Cruise disease”. Basically, he wants to risk his life in a way that would give him a feeling of really being alive. Sounds very Breaking Bad, and I’ll be honest, it’s underlined the seriousness of the situation in my eyes.
We need to get this man up there to space. I don’t care how it goes, whether it ends well for Kojima or not. We know he’s prepared for the worst. He wants it so badly that we desperately need to let him eff around, so he can finally find out. Maybe it won’t be all he’s imagined it to be. Maybe he’ll come running back to Earth and spend long evenings whispering to Geoff Keighley and several famous acting people about how much of a letdown it was.
The worst part is, given how long Kojima’s been saying this stuff, we clearly can’t rely on the governments or billionaires who currently have access to spacecraft or the means to send people up there to accomplish it.
There’s only one solution I can see. If we all stand on each other’s shoulders, and I mean the entire population of the planet here, we can form a huge flesh ladder which can convey Hideo to the heavens.
No, before you ask, I don’t volunteer to be the person at the very bottom.
