Kojima Productions GDC 2020 Appearance Canceled Over Coronavirus Concerns

Fears surrounding the coronavirus have again altered plans at an event. The Kojima Productions GDC 2020 sessions have been canceled. Concerns about the illness have resulted in Hideo Kojima, the founder and head of the studio, and Eric Johnson, its AI programmer, backing out.

Kojima Productions has made the difficult decision to cancel our participation at the 2020 Game Developers Conference due to increasing concerns related to coronavirus. (1/2)https://t.co/K6FJtq5Tpx

— Kojima Productions (@KojiPro2015_EN) February 24, 2020

Although much-anticipated, unfortunately this cancellation also includes Hideo Kojima’s session on the 19th and Eric Johnson’s session on the 16th. (2/2)https://t.co/K6FJtq5Tpx

— Kojima Productions (@KojiPro2015_EN) February 24, 2020

Kojima’s session was going to be “Death Stranding’s Design Philosophy,” a March 19, 2020 presentation. It would have looked at how Kojima Productions wove the theme of “connection” into the game and made different decisions when it came to the direction of the story and gameplay.

Johnson’s session would have been “Death Stranding: An AI Postmortem.” It was going to be a March 16, 2020 presentation looking at the AI used in Kojima Productions’ first game and the different challenges they faced to help characters move around. 

Death Stranding is available for the PlayStation 4 and will be coming to the PC in Summer 2020.

GDC 2020 will be held March 16-20, 2020 in San Francisco, California. In addition to Kojima Productions, both Sony and Facebook have also canceled their plans to attend. So far, the Nintendo Animal Crossing: New Horizons session has not been canceled.