Kojima says MGS2’s digital society is becoming reality

Hideo Kojima has revisited Metal Gear Solid 2’s picture of digital society, describing its anxieties as increasingly real. In a conversation with filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, he connects the game’s warnings to today’s social media.

The interview, published by Gizmodo Japan on October 14, centres on Iñárritu’s film DIGGER. Kojima describes how false information can expand online until it influences politics and everyday life. The fear extends to losing confidence in what is true.

Familiar fears, twenty-five years later

For us, that is familiar MGS2 ground. The game’s lasting concern is who filters information, which ideas survive, and how people decide what to believe. Hearing its creator discuss those questions alongside a contemporary film is a reminder of how much of MGS2’s power sits in its treatment of culture and social control.

Kojima also points to AI-curated feeds narrowing what people encounter: familiar opinions become more visible while different perspectives and chance encounters recede. Iñárritu similarly discusses people living inside fragmented versions of reality, including forming firm opinions about films they have never seen.

A future he wanted to avoid

Kojima made the distinction especially clearly in his earlier WIRED Japan Tech Support appearance. At around 12:04, he is asked whether he predicted the present. His answer reframes MGS2 around digital society, memes, and the move from analogue to digital information.

He contrasts MGS1’s DNA theme with the cultural information that DNA does not pass on. Digital records persist, the internet connects people, and opinions circulate directly. MGS2 explored what human life could become in that environment, with interconnected information seemingly acquiring a will of its own. He calls it a “future I didn’t desire,” while acknowledging that reality has moved towards it.

That makes the familiar claim that MGS2 predicted everything feel incomplete to us. A warning matters because of the choices it asks us to recognise. Revisiting the game means looking again at our own relationship with the information we consume, share, and leave behind.

Watch the interviews

Gizmodo Japan’s full DIGGER conversation — includes film spoilers.

WIRED Japan Tech Support — starts at the MGS2 question, 12:04.

The source post

Game no Hanashi’s original post

Sources

Gizmodo Japan — original Kojima and Iñárritu interview
Gizmodo Japan — interview video
WIRED Japan — Kojima’s earlier explanation, from 12:04
Game no Hanashi’s report
Game no Hanashi’s source post — October 17, 2026