Is *Death Stranding* More Than Just Deliveries? Kojima Wants Games to Help You See Farther

Compared with many works that turn collaborations into little more than promotional billboards, Death Stranding feels more like treating the game as a gateway rather than locking all the content inside the game itself. Recently, according to a report by GamesRadar+, Hideo Kojima said in an interview that he hopes to make games into a platform where players, prompted by what moves them in the game, go on to discover more artists, musicians, and related works. This way of thinking is not common in the industry; most works emphasize the internal consistency of their worldbuilding, while Kojima cares more about whether players can step outside the game.

The example he gave was still Low Roar from the first Death Stranding. In his view, when players hear a song they like during the game, he hopes that affection will extend to the band itself, then lead them further toward Icelandic music, and even to seek out related films based on a similar mood or sensibility. By contrast, no matter how excellent the soundtrack in many games may be, it often stops at “this BGM sounds great”; what Death Stranding wants to do is turn an emotional experience into a cultural search.

Why is this worth discussing? Because Low Roar has already proven that this path of dissemination can have real effects. The report mentions that Death Stranding introduced many players—who previously knew little about Icelandic post-rock, ambient music, and electronic music circles—to these relatively niche genres for the first time in a serious way. Looking at it from another angle, it’s like how some players catch up on anime because of Japanese RPGs, or how others start following design exhibitions because of the art style of Persona; the game itself doesn’t become a textbook, but it can become the starting point for shifting one’s interests.

Kojima also said outright that gamers are often aesthetically closed off, and he does not want games to ultimately become a self-contained, self-reinforcing system. That judgment is not exactly gentle, but it is not unreasonable in today’s content consumption environment. Algorithmic recommendations make it easy for people to stay within familiar tastes; and if games are only responsible for “keeping you engaged,” then they are not fundamentally different from short videos competing for attention. Compared with other forms of entertainment, film and music have long taken on this role of “guiding the way,” while the game industry has only in recent years begun seriously discussing it more widely.

Of course, there is room for debate here as well. Games do not all need to take on the task of cultural dissemination; if the gameplay, systems, and narrative are solid, that is already enough to make a good work. But if a game can also casually lead players toward a broader artistic world, that is clearly a bonus rather than a burden. What’s more, a work like Death Stranding, which already places so much emphasis on atmosphere and emotional flow, is naturally well suited to doing this. The report also notes that Low Roar’s lead singer and central figure, Ryan Karazija, passed away in 2022 at only 40 years old; from this perspective, the renewed exposure brought by the game also carries an added sense of preservation.

From the perspective of players across all platforms, I see this as a signal of an industry trend. In the future, when people compare version differences, they may not only look at resolution, frame rate, and loading speed, but also care more about whether a game leaves behind the kind of aftertaste that makes you think, “After finishing this, I still want to learn more about something.” What Kojima has put forward this time is not just the creative philosophy behind Death Stranding, but also a question well worth continued discussion and voting on within player communities: should games ultimately serve only themselves? My view is very clear: first, make the game good. And works that can also give people a push toward a larger cultural world usually go farther than others of the same kind.