 Love it or hate it. Death Stranding is certainly a unique experience, and in the modern, big-budget games industry, that's disappointingly rare. When asked why he'd made something so utterly weird, game director Hideo Kojima replied by saying, mainly because games haven't changed in a long time. With experimentation, though, comes uncertainty, and it turned out that Death Stranding was not an easy game to make. When Hideo was first plotting out his new open world epic, it was hard to get people to see his vision of what he wanted to achieve. The biggest challenge was money. This was not a cheap game to produce, and was never a very safe bet as an investment. Death Stranding only exists today because a few of Hideo Kojima's fans decided to break the rules and take a leap into the unknown to help him realise his dreams. The year was 2015. After a particularly messy breakup, Hideo Kojima and his employer of the past 30 years, Konami, had finally parted ways. Hideo had nothing. No studio, no finances, no business partners. He was desperate to set himself up as an independent game developer to avoid getting trapped in another unfavourable partnership. Without any money, though, he couldn't really do anything. What Hideo lacked was legitimacy. As popular as he might be as an icon among gamers, negotiating with businesses is hardly his strong suit. In setting up his own company, he felt like he was starting completely from scratch. Hideo's family didn't approve of his decision to go indie. This was incredibly risky, and he was a 53-year-old man. Now was the time to be thinking about future retirement plans, rather than throwing everything away to establish his own game studio. It didn't help that Hideo's plan for a new, sprawling, open-world game was very ambitious. And likely very costly. He wanted world-famous actors to lend their likenesses to his game. He wanted sprawling mountains, realistic graphics, and a state-of-the-art game engine. This wasn't something he could do alone. So, Hideo needed a team. He needed to be able to pay them for their work, and he needed to be able to liaise with other studios. This also meant he needed legitimate office space, if only so that companies within the game industry would take him seriously. Plus, aware that his own family were hesitant about his success, Hideo wanted to make sure that the families of any of his employees could take one look at the Kojima production's office space and feel like their loved ones had made a smart decision in working there. Alas, all of Hideo's work up until that point had been through Konami. He didn't have any clout of his own, and potential investors were not shy in saying so. He might be a big deal to gaming enthusiasts, but to the banks and lenders of the world, he was a nobody. Said Kojima in an interview with Famitsu, I went to a bank and couldn't even get a loan. We understand you're well known, but we don't have any record with you as an individual, they told me. Hideo ran into similar problems with trying to hire office space. The owners of the buildings would run background checks, come up with nothing, and wind up asking, what exactly is Kojima Productions? Hideo's response that it was a newly formed indie game studio didn't exactly inspire much enthusiasm. For a while, it seemed as if Hideo's dreams were going to be crushed. He couldn't work within the system. Who would possibly take a chance on him when he didn't have a history of making money? Then, a few brave fans stepped forward to help. At the largest bank in Japan, to Hideo's complete surprise, somebody approved his loan application. As it transpired, one of the higher-ups within the bank was a big fan of Hideo's games. Perhaps, Hideo suggests, one of his biggest fans. The decision to fund death stranding didn't come from typical banking logic. It wasn't a move to make money, because Hideo was clearly a risky investment. In one unexpected act of defiance, a banking executive decided to break the rules and put the development of art above the need for assured safe profits. Hideo's office space problem was solved in a similar fashion. After applying to rent plenty of different buildings, Hideo managed to stumble upon a property that was managed by a huge metal gear fan. It was this connection that allowed him to get his application approved. Not because Kojima Productions was a proven trustworthy tenant, but because the manager wanted to make sure Hideo landed on his feet after leaving Konami. The moral of the story is that sometimes you have to break the rules to achieve your dreams. Hideo Kojima was told by everyone around him that his goal of making a big-budget indie game was impossible. It simply couldn't be done within the established system. In spite of all of this, Hideo was able to find a few other like-minded souls, other people who were willing to push against conventional wisdom in order to get the game made. Death Stranding is the work of many, many developers, artists and programmers who've come together with the goal of making something different. Whatever your thoughts on the finished product, this originality is something that's worth celebrating.