Hideo Kojima tried to give away free Death Stranding 2 tissues to market the game, but nobody wanted them until he tweeted about it: "Some went out of their way to avoid us"

You'd think, of all game developers, Hideo Kojima would be most suited to an on-the-ground personal campaign for something like Death Stranding 2. People recognize and love him, and have done for years. Even he struggles with passing out swag, though, as evidenced by his experience offloading tissues in Japan.

A publicity stunt for Death Stranding 2: On The Beach earlier this year had him glossed over by pedestrians in Tokyo. He and his team were trying to hand out branded tissues, with QR codes on the packaging leading to a special teaser for the then-upcoming sequel.

"Death Stranding is a game about connections. That's why, although outdated, I wanted to try out this gesture of physically handing something to someone," he explains to An-An magazine, as translated by Automaton. "The act of receiving an item directly from a stranger is very close to the kind of connection explored in Death Stranding."

Tissue packets are a longstanding advertising method in Japan, the logic being that people are more likely to take a utility with your brand than they are a flyer. The tradition has become less favorable after COVID-19, leaving Kojima with bags of Death Stranding tissues that weren't going anywhere.

After the Metal Gear Solid creator and his cohorts were snubbed at three Tokyo locations - Akihabara, Ikebukuro, and Shinagawa - even while wearing branded clothing, Kojima finally decided to make use of his substantial social media following. He tweeted out what they were doing and where to find them, and suddenly, everything was cleared out within minutes.

"Hardly anyone was willing to take one. Even when I reached out, they wouldn't take it. They'd walk away without even making eye contact. Some even went out of their way to avoid us, as if they were walking around something dangerous," he recalls. "It was an analog stunt going against the tide of the times, but by fusing it with digital power, we created an even stronger connection."

Hideo Kojima thinks "of AI as more of a friend," but one he'd only let "handle the tedious tasks" of development "that would lower cost and cut down on time."