Hideo Kojima wants to go to space. He's made this very known, and frankly, I'm not sure the world would be ready for whatever game he'd come up with after escaping the planet for a while. But Valve boss Gabe Newell was clearly eager to help the Metal Gear mastermind make the right connections, as emails have now been released showing Newell asking Elon Musk to give Kojima a tour of SpaceX.
As spotted by PC Gamer, the newly revealed emails have appeared as part of the Musk v Altman lawsuit, listed in the "amended joint exhibit list" filed on April 24. For some background, Musk is suing the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman (who's also one of the co-founders alongside Musk), and the company itself, with the first complaint filed in August 2024 alleging that "Altman assured Musk that the non-profit structure" of OpenAI "guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value. But as it turns out, this was all hot-air philanthropy – the hook for Altman's long con."
Anyway, this email from Newell dates back to October 2018, and he gets right to the point. Kojima - "Metal Gear series, a real visionary in our field" - had just visited Valve, "talking about his new game," he says – which we can infer was the first Death Stranding, given the timing of his visit (and resulted in a delightful photo of the pair). Newell says Kojima "mentioned the importance he places on future work in AI."
This part isn't too surprising – more recently, the Death Stranding mastermind has stated that he'd "like AI to handle the tedious tasks that would lower cost and cut down on time," but "would lead the creative part" himself. However, while he can see uses for the technology, he's also expressed concerns that "humans would become spoiled" if they became too reliant on it.
VALVE訪問。Gabeさんと。 pic.twitter.com/xxZvLN9FWPOctober 31, 2018
Emailing Musk, Newell says he told Kojima that he'd be "happy to introduce him to the people at OpenAI," but that's not all. "The second thing is he was talking about how much he wants to go into space, and I offered to introduce him to you," Newell writes. "He'd love to get a SpaceX tour."
Responding to Newell's email, Musk seems enthusiastic about the idea. "Sure, it would be great to meet Hideo Kojima and he's welcome to see the rocket factory," Musk writes, telling the Valve boss to "send him my email."
Sadly, this plan still hadn't come to fruition by 2020, when Kojima seemingly made reference to some of these details in an interview with The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley. Mentioning that he visited Valve "maybe four, five years ago" (which would place this well before Newell's 2018 email, so the timeline isn't entirely clear here), Kojima explains: "Gabe said, 'Since we love space so much, let's go visit SpaceX because I know Elon Musk, and I'll contact him, and let's go.'" Poor Kojima seemed slightly disappointed, however, when he added: "Actually, I was really anticipating really going together, but we haven't done that yet."
That didn't lead to Kojima giving up on his dream, though. In 2023, he explained that "I want to go to outer space and create a game you can play in space," pleading: "Please someone send me up to space." Then, last year, he told The Guardian that he wants to "go to the International Space Station and stay there for a few months," adding: "I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first."
At the very least, an image of Kojima appears in the night sky in Death Stranding 2, so he's made it up there in some form. But who knows, perhaps one day we'll see him and Newell set off to the moon together.
