The Meaning of 'Physint': A Look Behind the Title of Kojima's New Game
(Image source: Kojima Productions)
Hideo Kojima is known in the gaming industry for his unconventional approaches. So it was little surprise that when he finally announced a sequel to his legendary Metal Gear Solid series, he gave the new game a very ominous yet meaningless name, "Physint." But what does the name of the game mean? What is Physint?
Physint under the microscope
Hideo Kojima has announced his new game called “Physint”. However, no one really seems to know whether the name has a deeper meaning. It almost seems as if Kojima has simply lived out his creative side again.
After a little research it turned out that "Physint" is probably a mixture of "Physical Intelligence". Some fans think that "intelligence" refers to espionage and information gathering.
Kojima is known for inventing his own terms, and considering it's a sequel to the Metal Gear Solid franchise, this neologism might make sense to describe the game.
In the Metal Gear Solid games there was already the term Sigint, which had a similar composition and stood for "Signal Intelligence". Since his new project is back in the action espionage genre, "Physint" could have something to do with physical information gathering.
However, this is all wild speculation for now. Kojima likes to do his own thing.
A top commenter under the announcement video even cited a research paper on mechanics and robotics that says "physical intelligence" describes the ability of artificially created systems, such as robots, to understand and interact with the real world.
It's clear that Kojima likes to play with concepts, and maybe he's just trying to tell us something about the current state of AI and robotics. No matter what, it's definitely going to be crazy again!
