Hideo Kojima says AI could make game development boring

Hideo Kojima has described artificial intelligence as a useful production tool but warned that it could make game development less enjoyable if it replaces the creative process itself. Speaking to Game*Spark at Beyond the Strand, the Kojima Productions 10th anniversary exhibition in Tokyo, Kojima separated the efficiency of making a product from the pleasure of creating it.

Efficiency is not the same as creativity

Kojima compared AI with earlier digital tools such as Photoshop and word processors. In his view, AI can speed up production, shorten schedules and handle work that would otherwise consume a team’s time. He said he is comfortable with that practical role, particularly when the goal is to improve efficiency.

His concern is what gets removed along the way. Kojima said the enjoyable part of drawing is not simply finishing the picture but the middle of the process: trying ideas, making mistakes and working out what comes next. He made a similar comparison with plastic model kits, jigsaw puzzles and LEGO, where the completed object is only part of the appeal. The act of building it is the point.

That distinction matters for games because development is not only a production pipeline. Designers, writers, artists, programmers and directors make choices through iteration, and those choices shape the work long before a finished product reaches players. Kojima’s comments were about his personal view of creative work, not a published policy for Kojima Productions.

A warning about the next decade

Kojima said he expects the next five to 10 years to be manageable, but worries about a future in which AI expands further into creative decision-making without meaningful controls. He suggested that younger people will ultimately decide how that technology is used, while joking that he may not be around to see the outcome.

The position follows a longer-running argument from Kojima. In earlier interviews, he described AI as a potential friend for handling tedious work and helping reduce development costs. The newer comments do not reject that use. Instead, they put more emphasis on the difference between automating a task and replacing the human enjoyment of doing it.

The exhibition context

The interview took place during Beyond the Strand, Kojima Productions’ 10th anniversary exhibition at Azabudai Hills Gallery. The official exhibition site lists the event as running from October 31 to December 20, 2026. The exhibition’s focus on Kojima Productions’ history and creative process gives the comments a natural context: they are less a technical forecast than a reflection on what the studio’s founder thinks creators should protect as tools become more capable.

Our opinion

Kojima’s argument is strongest when it avoids pretending that efficiency and creativity are enemies. Automating repetitive work could give teams more time for ambitious ideas, but only if studios treat the saved time as creative breathing room rather than another reason to demand faster output. The real risk is not that AI exists; it is that the industry starts measuring creative work only by how quickly a machine can produce a marketable result.

That is a warning worth taking seriously, even though the five-to-10-year prediction is necessarily speculative. Games are built by people making thousands of small decisions, and the value of that process cannot be judged solely by the speed of the final build.