Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima believes that social media has become a cesspit of “false information”.
Following the release of the film Digger, Kojima took part in an interview with the film’s director Alejandro González Iñárritu to discuss the fantastically nihilistic film. Published by Gizmodo, the duo discussed the reality of social media, and the increased distance that users have with reality.
In the interview, Kojima explained that “social media didn’t exist” back during the development of the brilliant Metal Gear Solid 2. The game, which released alongside the cusp of modern social media platforms, envisioned a world where misinformation is spread by AI networks and controlled by an elite cabal.
Kojima explains that many claim he “predicted” the ongoing trajectory of social media and AI misinformation. “Now, that’s become out reality,” he said. “And it’s the same in Digger. On social media, false information keeps amplifying. And there’s a terrifying possibility it could end up influencing politics on our daily lives.”
While less important than misinformation informing politics, Kojima broke the issue down into something as basic as gaming. Today, many people spread information about new releases that isn’t true, and those lies become so prevalent that they give millions of people the wrong perspective on something they haven’t touched.
Kojima uses Death Stranding as an example with many still believing the game is simply a walking simulator, despite the fact it isn’t outside of its tutorial. “People who haven’t played the game kept saying things like, ‘this is just a walking simulator’, as if they’d actually played it. The fact tat this sentiment still persists is the most frightening.”
Iñárritu, the Digger director, explained that social media has resulted in many people losing access to a “shared reality”. Instead, they add that algorithms mean “people will only be exposed to the opinions they agree with and the things they like”, which they “find the most frightening”.
The director added that many users on social media are only getting a “fragmented truth”. Similarly to Kojima’s point about Death Stranding, many are being fed misinformation about their new film instead of trying to watch it for themselves.
This level of misinformation has been prevalent for a while now, but it is continuing to increase in scale and annoyance. The “anti-woke” crowd often creates stretched misinformation campaigns against games, and every major new release these days seems to be met with either a hate campaign or a bout of misinformation for the sake of clicks.
Obviously, the discussions of games are not the most important part of social media, but they’re indicative of the larger issue with misinformation infesting politics as well as entertainment. How we fight it, though? Who knows?
