Gaming industry veteran Hideo Kojima has commented on the semi-recent trend of remote working in the video game business, saying it might not be the ideal way to work but forcing people back to the office isn’t a good option either.

Speaking to The Guardian, Kojima said remote work is “almost like a fast food chain” in that people are “just concentrating on one thing instead of the whole project.” The publication further reported that Kojima said working remotely as opposed to being in an office together with colleagues can be inefficient for a variety of reasons, including the lack of back-and-forth with people working at a desk next to each other.

“Only 1% of yourself is on show during [online] meetings,” he said. “This is not like building a team. Think about football. You hire someone, he comes to your squad–but you can’t play together remotely. So that person doesn’t change the way they played before; they won’t fit in.”

However, Kojima said he acknowledges that “you can’t force people back to the office, you can only persuade them.”

For Kojima Productions specifically, Kojima said “not everyone came back” to the office to work on Death Stranding 2: On the Beach but the “main members” did.

Beyond the people working on the game, Kojima said he encountered some challenges with the cast for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. He said it was “quite difficult” to communicate to the actors how they should perform in a particular scene, adding that this was “almost impossible” to do over Zoom.

Kojima previously said the original Death Stranding, which was released in 2019, was made based on the theme of, “We’re in danger of being divided and isolated, so let’s connect.”

Then the COVID pandemic began in 2020. Having lived through the pandemic, Kojima said he’s changed his way of thinking when it comes to connection.

“After actually experiencing that, I felt that maybe it’s not such a good thing to connect so much. That feeling is foreshadowed in lots of different scenes and settings [in Death Stranding 2]. I think there are portions that players will only understand once they reach the end of the game. What I felt during the pandemic is quite strongly reflected within this title,” he said of Death Stranding 2.

Many video game development studios embraced remote working during the pandemic, and some companies even used it as a selling point to hire new staff. Now, however, some companies are pulling back and asking people to return to the office–if not for a full week, at least partially. Mega-publisher EA, for example, has effectively ended remote working, which has upset some staffers. Rockstar Games, meanwhile, has required people to return to the office to finish GTA 6, which also prompted a backlash.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is out now on PS5. If you’re just getting started with the game, be sure to read GameSpot’s Death Stranding 2 review and consult our Death Stranding 2 guides hub to help yourself get off to a good start.

In addition to Kojima’s plans to make a game in space, he and his team are working on multiple upcoming new games, including OD and Physint.