 Hideo Kojima winced. When he'd seen his old college friend on this train, he'd hoped the two could have a fun conversation and catch up on old times. Instead, though, Hideo was left in awkward silence as his friend asked him the same question that he got from everyone. Why? Why throw his life away working for a video games company? Surely he could do better than that. Hideo gritted his teeth. His friend was like everyone else, his family included. They all thought he was a complete idiot for wanting to be a games developer. One day, though, they'd understand. Hideo didn't make games because he wanted to. He made them because he had to. It's no fun being poor. As a child, Hideo Kojima learned this the hard way. His family was always scraping by to make ends meet, especially after the untimely death of his father when Hideo was only 13 years old. In an effort to find well-paying work, Hideo's family moved around a lot while he was a child, meaning that Hideo was always the new kid at school and he had a hard time making lasting friends. Even at home, he didn't feel like his family was there for him a lot. The necessities of earning a living often meant that Hideo came home to an empty house. As a young child, his parents would make him wear a key on a piece of string around his neck so that he could let himself in through the front door of his house when everyone else was at work. It's hardly surprising then that young Hideo found himself feeling very lonely a lot at the time. He'd watch television just to have noise in the house and to make himself feel less isolated from the world. With such a need for money among his family, Hideo found himself working hard at school as he was pushed by his loved ones to succeed professionally to help pull the family out of poverty. He tried his best with this, but he couldn't help but be inspired by the stories he saw on television. He wrote novels and made movies in his spare time, just as a fun hobby to keep himself from being bored while he was all alone. As a teenager, he entertained the idea of earning a fortune from his writing. He submitted stories to several magazines in the hopes that he kept published to be able to earn some cash. But he was always rejected. His stories were often four times longer than the magazines had space for, so they were unable to publish his work. Seeing young Hideo's interesting creative work, his family came down hard on him, telling him to give up his useless dreams and focus on something more practical. Hideo had an uncle after all who was a professional artist and who always struggled with money, more than anyone else in the family. Hideo's mother wanted better for him and refused to let him entertain the idea of wasting his life on creative pursuits. Instead, she encouraged him to study economics. It seemed like the perfect subject to help raise their family out of poverty as if Hideo could understand the flow of money he could figure out how to make it flow their way. Beautifully, Hideo put thoughts of creative work out of his mind and focused on his schooling, at least for a time. As he tried his best to focus on schoolwork, he couldn't switch off the inner voice in his head that was coming up with story ideas and interpreting the world around him in exciting and bizarre ways. Finally, all this noise within his head got too much for Hideo. He needed a creative outlet. He couldn't keep himself trapped in a boring job forever. For years, Hideo had entertained the idea of becoming a film director when he got older. He liked the thought of creating his own stories, like the ones he'd grown up with as a child. He'd even tried making his own movies as a child, using a simple video camera, but he'd never made it that far. Film was an expensive commodity. At university though, he found another visual medium that seemed even more exciting, video games. Hideo played plenty of titles for long hours when he should have been studying, but the game that really resonated with him was Super Mario Bros. It was while playing this game about a hero who rescued a princess from a fire-breathing monster that Hideo realized that gaming technology could be used to tell powerful immersive stories where the player could feel connected to the action in a way that is never possible in movies. He couldn't escape his newfound fascination with gaming. Upon finishing his degree, against his family's wishes, Hideo applied for a job at the video game company Konami. This was a subject of much shame for his family. At the time, video games weren't considered a serious career prospect, and Hideo's loved ones felt that he was making a terrible decision. They weren't shy about telling Hideo this either. At one point, Hideo was asked to speak at a friend's wedding. In introducing him though, the previous speaker announced, this is Hideo Kojima, a man of great talent, which he's throwing away at Konami. This wasn't an isolated incident. After bumping into an old college friend on a train, Hideo had to sit through an awkward conversation as he was asked a simple question. Why? But Hideo couldn't help himself. He'd seen poverty firsthand as a child, and he couldn't help but feel like it was a small price to pay for doing something with his life that he enjoyed. He needed to tell stories. It was his first thought when he woke up and his final thought when he went to sleep. This was who he was. If Hideo was going to give his life to storytelling, he was going to work his hardest at it. He would work long hours at his desk, surrounded by game ideas on a mess of papers. He would work so hard that he often didn't give himself bathroom breaks. This simply wasn't the time. The problem was, no matter how much effort he put in, he still couldn't seem to get things right. Everyone else at Konami had programming experience and artistic skills. Their job roles weren't solidly defined and everyone pitched in, doing a little bit of every aspect of game design. Hideo didn't have the skills necessary to help with this though. He didn't understand computer coding, and although he was hired as a planner, it quickly became apparent that he didn't actually know how to set out a development plan for a game. His first project was cancelled after months of development when his bosses realised that Hideo had simply gotten himself into a muddle and failed to organise anything concrete. Hideo's colleagues really didn't know what to do with him. Everyone in the company understood, to a certain extent, how it felt to be an outcast. They had all put up with a lot of lack for their choice of profession and many had ended up in gaming as a last resort on a desperate attempt to rebel against the system. Even so, Hideo didn't fit in here. As he struggled with his work, his colleagues found it harder and harder to connect with him, and he ended up becoming an outcast, even among his group of outcasts. He became a laughingstock within Konami, as everyone teased him for his inability to finish a game. Hideo's bosses came to him with one last chance. They offered him the opportunity to create a war game. This was a popular genre at the time, so the consensus within Konami was that even Hideo Kojima couldn't get this run. The cogs started turning within Hideo's mind instantly. He really wasn't keen on the idea of creating a game where the player ran around shooting enemies. He didn't feel particularly innovative or exciting to him. Instead, he started considering a movie that he'd watched when he was younger. The Great Escape saw a group of soldiers digging a tunnel in an effort to escape a Nazi prisoner of war camp. Well, this was a war film, right? So it's core concept fulfilled Hideo's requirement to create a war game. Hideo set to work creating a stealth game, where the main character had to avoid detection in enemy camps, sneaking around and distracting guards to achieve his objective. Hideo liked how this subverted typical gaming conventions. Instead of running in, guns ablaze, players had to stop, think, and analyze the game's level in order to make progress. His colleagues at Konami weren't entirely impressed. Hideo had been giving the task of creating a war shooter, and what he was working on seemed like the complete opposite. But Hideo wasn't going to give up. He kept plowing through on his game, putting together the title as he envisaged it. Finally, enough of the game was done to show off the core concept. When Hideo's colleagues played some initial levels and realized how tense and exciting this stealth game could be, they had a sudden change of heart. Everyone at Konami began to get excited about this new game, and they offered to give Hideo all the help he needed to finish the project. Hideo titled the game Metal Gear, a reference to the core story in which the player has to destroy an advanced enemy weapon of the same name. Hideo built the game around a strong narrative, as much as was possible with the hardware of the time. The game was eventually released on the MSX, a relatively small console of the time which didn't have the biggest player base compared to the more popular consoles like the NES. In spite of the game console's relatively small profile, Metal Gear proved an enormous hit. Reviewers raved about this fresh take on war games and the title was considered by many to be among the best games available for the MSX. It wasn't long before Metal Gear was ported onto the more popular NES platform and exported to the United States, where millions of gamers fell in love with Hideo's work. Finally, after years of work and after so much criticism and ridicule, Hideo had succeeded. He'd created a game that told a powerful story, and he'd revolutionized an entire genre of computer gaming. Again, he found himself on a train, and again, he was approached by a colleague. This time, though, it was a fellow game developer who'd been involved with working on expanding the Metal Gear franchise to fulfill a demand for more similar games in the West. The developer heaped praise on Hideo for his original title and pleaded with him to create a sequel to the game. Hideo smiled. It had taken a long time, but he'd finally won the approval of his peers. He was no longer an outcast. He was now a folk hero. The moral of the story is that sometimes you have to do things that make no sense. People won't always understand what you're doing when you start a big personal project. They might question your motivation or fail to see the vision of what you're working on. What's more, you might find yourself cut off from those around you. You might feel like you don't belong, or even that your closest loved ones simply don't understand what drives you. Keep working hard. If you're willing to sacrifice, and if you're patient, you'll be able to prove yourself one day. Just like Hideo Kojima, if you give things everything you've got, eventually you'll show the world what you're really made of.