Two highly anticipated video game titles remain delayed into early 2025 due to the Screen Actors Guild strike. Kojima Productions head Hideo Kojima  confirmed that progress on “OD” and “Physint” has all but halted.

Although Hollywood actors have since resolved their strike, performers in video games remain on the picket line. The Screen Actors Guild video game strike continues to disrupt production as voice and motion capture performers seek to negotiate for protections against how AI might be used to replicate or modify actors’ likenesses and voices.

Kojima shared on X (formerly Twitter) that work on OD was well underway, including actor and environment scanning, until production halted in the second half of the year. “For OD, we developed the game and had actor and environment scanning,” Kojima said. “In the second half of the year, scanning and filming were suspended due to the SAG strike. Casting was also suspended for Physint due to the strike. We hope to resume next year.”

Fans have seen plenty of “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach,” another Kojima Productions project, but details on OD and Physint have remained largely under wraps.

Official Announcement of OD

At the 2023 Game Awards in Los Angeles, Kojima Productions and Xbox Game Studios officially unveiled OD, a new project from world-renowned creator Hideo Kojima. Kojima has partnered with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele (acclaimed for Get Out, Us, and Nope), who joins the project as one of several talented storytellers.

“We are working with Xbox Game Studios and their cloud gaming technology to take on the challenge of creating a very unique, immersive, and totally new style of game — or rather, a new form of media,” Kojima said.

Described as a “Hideo Kojima Game,” OD explores the concept of pushing fear thresholds and examines what it means to “OD on fear” while blurring the boundaries between gaming and film. A newly released teaser showcases actors Sophia Lillis (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Hunter Schafer (Euphoria), and Udo Kier (Flesh for Frankenstein), who will play lead roles in the upcoming project.

Early gameplay footage of OD — then known under the working title Overdose — appeared online in November 2022, prior to its official reveal at The Game Awards one year later. Kojima teased the project alongside collaborator Jordan Peele in a video featuring actors Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer, and Udo Kier reciting a pangram within Kojima Productions’ 3D model-scanning machine.

Mysterious Physint Project

Even less is known about Physint, which is still a working title. Slated to be a PlayStation exclusive, it’s described as Kojima’s return to a cinematic action-espionage style reminiscent of the approach pioneered with the Metal Gear series. Kojima announced Physint during a State of Play broadcast in January 2024, calling it “an interactive game, but also a movie at the same time, in terms of look, story, theme, cast, acting, fashion, and sound.” In February 2024, Kojima added that a personal health scare inspired him to return to these cinematic roots.

Ongoing SAG Strike and Industry Impact

The industry-wide strike impacting both OD and Physint began in July 2024, after negotiations stalled between the Screen Actors Guild and major video game studios. Chief among the union’s concerns is the protection of actors from having their performances reused or recreated with artificial intelligence without fair compensation or informed consent.

“The bottom line is if you have performers working for you, helping create the content that’s in your game, whether it’s voice content, whether it’s stunt work, whether it’s motion work… all of those performers deserve to have their right to have informed consent and fair compensation for the use of their image, their likeness or voice, their performance,” SAG-AFTRA executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said when the strike kicked off. “It’s that simple.”