We're back in video game land with another bizarre story related to the saga of one Hideo Kojima and his influence across the media and with his fans.
There have been some excellent write-ups on this sub regarding Kojima and some of his more notable adventures, but for those who aren't familiar, let me summarize some of the more noteworthy events. Hideo Kojima is one of the best known figures in the video game industry today. Having started at Japanese developer Konami back in the 1980s, he lead development on a number of successful titles throughout the 80s and 90s, eventually getting thrown into superstardom with the release of 1998's Metal Gear Solid for the original PlayStation. He would continue to lead development on the Metal Gear franchise, gaining a reputation for incredible attention to detail and a flair for dramatic storytelling. He rose to become a vice president at Konami, before being ousted from the company in 2015 leading to the cancellation or premature release of his current projects. He has since gone on to found his own studio, where he released Death Stranding a few years ago, and has been confirmed to be working on a game in collaboration with Microsoft as of this writing.
Now, while this is a fascinating story, it is not what we are here to cover today. In fact, our story today has nothing at all to do with Kojima, Konami, or any of their properties. Instead, this is the story of a little indie developer who found themselves at the center of a conspiracy that they were Kojima in disguise, trying to toy with the industry with the announcement of a new game. This is the story of Blue Box Games Studios.
Who on Earth are Blue Box Games Studios
Blue Box is a Dutch indie developer who in April 2021, announced that they were working on a survival horror title called Abandoned for the PlayStation 5 with an initial release date of Q4 2021. This reveal announcement was made on the official PlayStation blog, complete with a brief trailer for the game. The trailer features voice over dialogue with shots of snowbound forest and buildings. There is only a brief amount of gameplay shown, along with some text blurbs about their vision, but the developers promise more soon. Most of the comments are positive, saying it looks good and that it would be a good candidate for VR support. However, there are already a few comments saying that this reminds them of the work of Kojima to an uncanny degree, and that there may be more going on here...
To explain this thought, we need to step back again. While Kojima is well known for his official published works, towards the later part of his career at Konami he gained a reputation for announcing his games in unorthodox ways. In 2012, a game called The Phantom Pain was announced as a title from the unheard of "Moby Dick Studio". The trailer features a amputee coming out of a coma and attempting to escape a hospital overrun with soldiers killing patients as well as checks notes flaming whales and unicorns. It didn't take long for eagle eyed viewers to notice that the playable character had a strong resemblance to major Metal Gear character "Big Boss" both in appearance and movement. The logo for The Phantom Pain also had a number of "notches" removed from it, which was discovered to line up to the text "Metal Gear Solid" when used in the same font. After a few days of speculation, Konami confirmed that this was in fact the trailer for the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V, written and directed by Kojima, with "The Phantom Pain" becoming the subtitle. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would eventually be the final game to release while Kojima was at Konami, but not without the final act being removed due time constraints and Kojima's departure.
But Kojima's wild ride is not over. In 2014 a demo for an indie game by the name of P.T. appeared on the PlayStation 4 store. This short demo had players walking through a hallway in a small house, only to reappear at the beginning when reaching the far door. As the player continued to cycle more and more, increasingly bizarre events would happen such as ghost sightings, radio broadcasts describing horrific murders in the news, and even a fetus in a sink which would chastise you. This game was said to be developed by "7780s Studio" and quickly became wildly discussed for its effective take on the horror genre. It didn't take long for players to (somewhat accidentally) unlock the secret trailer for the full game. This trailer revealed that, you guessed it, there is no 7780s Studios, this was the latest game in the acclaimed Silent Hill series, featuring a collaboration between Kojima, filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, and actor Norman Reedus titled Silent Hills. Silent Hills was greatly anticipated until it was unceremoniously cancelled in 2015 when Kojima left Konami. The P.T. demo was removed from the store as well, making it difficult for players late to the party to even try it (I myself have never been able to play it). The Silent Hill series has not seen a new title since 2012 (and not a good one since 2004) leaving fans of the series desperate for a new game.
Back to Blue Box
With this in mind, fans of the survival horror genre with thoughts of Silent Hills still fresh in their mind took a look at the trailer for Abandoned and saw a familiar pattern. The game featured similar voice over to the trailer for Silent Hills. It was the right genre, the right atmosphere, the right look, there was even a sign with the letters 'P' and 'T' obscured! And most importantly, no one had ever heard of Blue Box before. These rumors don't really go very far at first, only the mild wishes of hopeful fans, although Blue Box did make a formal statement on their website shortly after the reveal saying that no, they weren't Kojima, just fans of the genre. This was the end of the story for a few months, until Blue Box apparently had a change of heart. In June 2021, the Blue Box Twitter accounted tweeted this tweet (now removed) stating "Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L)" with some reveal coming soon. This was interpreted by many as an obvious reference towards Silent Hill with the interpretation that rights holder Konami had made up with Kojima and that Silent Hills had been brought back from the grave. They quickly tweeted again that this was a mistake and that still had nothing to do with Konami, Kojima, or Silent Hills (this will become a common theme), but the damage was already done. Major outlets begin covering the situation at this point, a subreddit is created to discuss the theories (because of course one is), and attention begins to be shined on the lead developer of the game, one Hasan Kahraman, who was listed as the developer's sole employee on LinkedIn. A number of coincidences (I use this term loosely) between Kahraman and Kojima are discovered by fans, such as "Kahraman" allegedly having the same translation as "Hideo", the same initials, and the most common time the Blue Box account tweeted being in the middle of the night in Europe. As silly as these sound, they received a lot of attention when the story was breaking.
More credibly however, were the observations that Blue Box as a studio were getting. They had never released a game before, although they did have some failed Kickstarter projects, but their claims for the game were rather impressive, more so than what a new studio would typically be capable of. Kahraman claims the studio has a dozen employees with up to 50 contracted workers assisting in development, and that they would be developing their own PS5 app which would tease the game prior to release. However, accusations arose that what was shown off in the initial Abandoned trailer was primarily pre-made assets bought from an online store, not made in-house. All of these raised a lot of eyebrows, as it painted a conflicting picture of what the studio was capable of.
The Journalists Strike Back
As I said, by June this story was making its way through the gaming press. A number of well-known figures begin to give their takes which add to the mess. Geoff Keighley is famously a close friend with Kojima, and is best known as the creator of The Game Awards a biannual commercial-a-thon that desperately wants to be taken seriously. He confirms that he will be involved in further reveals for Abandoned, although he clarifies that Abandoned is "not what you guys think it is". Jason Schreier, reporter for Bloomberg, throws more wood on the fire by claiming that Keighley's tweets were pre-scheduled to assist in the reveal, and that he believes that this is really Kojima (although walks this back later). Kahraman, quite over his head at this point, continues denying that he is affiliated at all with Silent Hill, while also not doing himself any favors, as while he officially denies involvement, he also tends to be very vague with questions and sometimes even encouraging discussion. Keighley states that he had arranged to prove that Kahraman was who he said he was, only for him to fall through, tweeting "Hasan has kept me waiting", which is itself probably a reference to Metal Gear Solid, confusing matters further. Keep in mind that Kahraman has never been publicly seen throughout this whole adventure, until finally towards the end of June he posts a video of himself on the company's twitter page stating that he is in fact a real human being and not affiliated with Kojima. Jason Schreier returns with an interview between himself and Kahraman about his experience with the conspiracy, although Schreier does confusingly say that the interview left him "with more questions than answers". At this point, public interest in the conspiracy begins to die down somewhat, and it fades from the headline news.
So... what are Konami and Kojima up to then
While all this is going down the main actors begin to play a part as well. Konami announces a line of Silent Hill merch with the hashtag "#SHLSS", leading to all sorts of speculation as to what is it and the timing of this announcement. They also add a Silent Hill-themed shirt to their store, with fans quickly noticing that the "Silent Hill" title on the shirt is actually taken from the fonts of several of their games, possibly leaving space for an 's' suffix. I'll save you the suspense here, it turns out "#SHLSS" stands for "Silent Hill Limited Series Skateboard" (coming soon) and that the T-shirt design was allegedly stolen from a Deviantart user, and taken off the shop once this became public. How fun.
Kojima himself stayed out of the conspiracy, although that doesn't stop people from dragging him back into it. I'm going to break the timeline a bit here, but fans begin combing through all of his social media for anything that could possibly relate to the games, and they obsess over a few of them. Most notably is this tweet from slightly before this all kicked off which has the words "Silent" and "Hills" in it; and this Instagram post where he's holding a blue box. Make of these what you will. Users on the conspiracy subreddit continue to analyze further posts by Konami, Kojima, and others, but I didn't really see any of them as substantial enough to describe here.
Wait, wasn't there an app?
Remember how I said that they were also going to develop an app to help tease the game? Well shortly after his initial public video Kahraman posted an announcement that the companion app would be delayed until August when it will be released alongside a beta for the game. Let us fast forward to August then when this app finally becomes available to download. It had never been clear as to what exactly this app was supposed to do other than play trailers, but Blue Box branded it as a "Realtime Experience" that once again peaked interest. The anointed time came... and went. The app did nothing. Blue Box took to Twitter to say that the app had run into technical difficulties that they were attempting to fix. It would be four whole days later until the app would function as promised and reception was underwhelming. The app displayed a number of placeholder spots for future demos and trailers, none of which would be made available, but it did play a three second trailer... which had already been released a few days prior. By this point fans had had enough. Any idea that this was a grand conspiracy was lost, and some news outlets declared that they would refuse to cover the game any further.
Conclusion
In the end, Abandoned is widely believed to be a case of mistaken identity. An indie developer found himself at the center of a conspiracy not of his own making, but the temptation to lean into the mystery became too tempting, until it eventually lead to his downfall. Following the app debacle, public opinion for Abandoned reached a new low. While the initial blog post gave a Q4 2021 release date, this came and went, with Blue Box eventually having to state in March 2022 that the game hadn't been cancelled. This is most recent post on their Twitter account, with still no release date given. They say they plan on continuing to update their Realtime Experince app for fans, but nothing else has come out as of yet. Perhaps the game will eventually release some day and give the real fans of the title something to look forward to.
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