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Kojima Says Expedition 33 Is "Ideal" For This One Reason

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the most popular games of 2025, and it's been praised by countless people in the video game industry. Now, Hideo Kojima is joining the chorus. He said at a speaking event in Sydney, Australia recently that he's a big fan of the game and particularly its relatively small team size.

Expedition 33 was developed by a small team at Sandfall Interactive, and Kojima said it was impressive to see the studio make the game with "like 33 team members and a dog," Dexerto reported. It's not exactly true that the game was made by 33 people alone, as the core team at Sandfall was helped by dozens of other people. But in any event, Kojima said a small team size like Sandfall had for Expedition 33 is "ideal."

"When I first started, it was like a team of six," Kojima said. "You could do everything yourself. Now, it's expanded. You can't really control each employee, so you delegate. But sometimes, the idea doesn't really work out because it's a bigger team."

Many modern games are developed by teams of hundreds of people, and this can feel like "factory" work, Kojima said. When teams get that big, they lose cohesion, Kojima said.

"Big companies, like 600, 1,000 people, they're full of totally different teams," he said. "Everyone's concentrating on their work and then combining together. Creation has now become much bigger. It's kind of a war between how efficient you could [be] with the small team, but you have to make it so grand."

Regarding Expedition 33's team size, Matthew Handrahan of publisher Kepler Interactive told GI.biz that the "creative engine" of the game was about 30 people. He said it's true dozens of other people from places like Korea contributed to the game, but he said "none of them were full time." Then there was a "galaxy of partners" working on the game as well, including musicians, translators, testers, and more.

Handrahan said people get "fixated" on how many people worked on Expedition 33. That's actually missing the point, though, which he said was that Expedition 33 is not a "AAA" game and that becomes obvious when you look at the game's credits.

"Some games can make it work. Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to make it work, I think we can all say with great confidence. But there are plenty of games made with very large teams and for huge amounts of money that don't land, and there is a human cost to running things that way," he said. "People lose their jobs. God knows how many layoffs there's been in the industry over the last few years."

At Summer Game Fest recently, host Geoff Keighley praised Expedition 33 in part for how it was made by a team of "under 30 developers." Many quickly pointed out that this is a myth and that saying this downplays the critical role that people outside of the "core" group had in the making of the game.

As for Kojima, his next game is Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, and it launches on June 26 for PS5. He has multiple other games in the works as well, including OD and Physint.