Kojima Productions Pulls GDC No-Show Over Coronavirus Fears
Japanese video game designer, writer, director and producer Hideo Kojima won't be attending next month's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. | Source: Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP
- Kojima Productions will no longer attend next month’s Game Developers Conference.
- Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding design philosophy session is canceled.
- Kojima Productions joins Sony and Facebook in opting to cancel their attendance at GDC.
Kojima Productions will no longer be attending next month’s Game Developers Conference over concerns linked to the coronavirus.
Hideo Kojima Cancels GDC Talk
The Death Stranding developer announced the news on its website earlier today . It reads:
Kojima Productions has made the difficult decision to cancel our participation at the 2020 Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to novel coronavirus. Although much-anticipated, unfortunately this cancellation also includes Hideo Kojima’s session on the 19th and Eric Johnson’s session on the 16th.
Studio head, Hideo Kojima, was penciled in to lead a talk on the design philosophy under pining the massively successful, if divisive, Death Stranding.
AI programmer at Kojima Productions, Eric Johnson, planned to host a session dubbed ‘Death Stranding’: An AI Postmortem. The session was to explore the challenges faced during the game’s development, notably when it came to designing AI capable of traversing Death Stranding’s extreme terrain.
Impact Across the Industry
Kojima Productions follows Sony, Facebook Gaming, and Oculus in opting to forego the conference as a precautionary measure in light of the rapid spread of the coronavirus.
Coronavirus concerns also led to the outright cancellation of the Mobile World Congress this month after notable big-name manufacturers decided not to attend.
The virus is also impacting production, notably for Nintendo. The gaming giant warned of Switch shortages in Japan . Alongside, Valve announced late last week that it would have ‘far fewer’ Valve Index VR headset units on sale in the lead to the release of Half-Life: Alyx.
There’s also speculation that the repercussions of the coronavirus may affect the supply chains for the upcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X should the situation remain as it is today.
