Right now there is no topic in the gaming community more relevant than Blue Box Game Studios and their upcoming trailer for Abandoned. At first glance there is nothing particularly special about a relatively unknown developer announcing the trailer for their upcoming title, but some members of the community are completely convinced this is all a ruse for clever ruse for Hideo Kojima to reveal Silent Hill.
Before diving into the amount of speculation, which just continues to grow, it’s important to understand why this even entered players’ minds. Back before Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was announced, there was a trailer for The Phantom Pain. This was by a previously unknown studio called Moby Dick Studio, lead by Joakim Mogren.
This seemingly harmless reveal, lead to players realizing Joakim is an anagram for Kojima, people associated with the company and game being seen with Kojima and even at the time there were people who noticed the gaps in The Phantom Pain logo, as seen in the trailer, could form the name Metal Gear Solid.
While this previous event explains why some might think Kojima would pull this again with the often teased potential Silent Hill game, the amount details players have found is nothing short of fascinating.
This all started with a rather harmless PlayStation Blog post revealing Abandoned back in April. It detailed a robust “cinematic survival sim” set in an extremely detailed world, with a whole host of exciting PlayStation 5 centric features. Even then there are comments from people suggesting there is something more to Abandoned, some even suggesting Kojima’s involvement and it being Silent Hill.
Some initial theories were crude and far from convincing. For example, Hasan Kahraman, game director for Blue Box Game Studios, has the same initials has Hideo Kojima. Similar things were noted about Blue Box being a possible reference to Bridge Babies, which were also known as BBs, in Kojima’s last game Death Stranding.
All of this took a turn on Tuesday, when Blue Box Game Studios teased their potential upcoming title Abandoned.
The obvious inference, even at the time, was Silent Hill. It’s one of very few things people would immediately think of and absolutely something that would stick out with this kind of cryptic marketing style.
Mere hours later Blue Box Game Studio replied to speculation insisting they’re not teasing Silent Hill. And, while that may or may not have been the intent, it caused an unexpected avalanche.
Shortly after, reddit user AidThisFellowUser published a rather comprehensive post detailing all the reasons certain players are convinced this is actually Silent Hill. Some of them are rather flimsy, like the aforementioned HK and BB initials, with others proving far more interesting. For those interested, the reddit post can be found below, though any previously mentioned information has been removed.
Hideo Kojima used a fake studio when teasing both Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and PT. The one for P.T was named 7780s Studio and the one for MGS:V was from Sweden
Silent Hill Composer also teased a new game reveal for summer 2021 (which was shot down by Konami)
Blue Box Picture? (Six days ago)
Kojima recent tweet with words Silent and Hill
New Silent Hill merchandise will be release at Konami Store
There are no saved trademarks for Blue Box Game Studios. But their trailer claim they do.
Blue Box Game Studios Youtube Banner is a bunch of Hills
The Blue BOX Game Studios logo is basically PlayStation Studios logo colors inverted.
“Blue Box” is a term used for phone scams
Employees at Company Likedin profile use Stock Photos.
Geoff Keighley follows Studio on Twitter/Instagram.
Geoff Keighley confirmed it`s in talk with Blue Box and will help them with promoting their “game”
At the Abandoned Trailer, at the 0:49 seconds mark, the letters P and T are covered by the trees.
A couple months later, BLUE BOX Game Studios revealed that Abandoned would get its own PS5 app which would let players run the game’s trailers in real time on the PS5. This is a curiously specific thing that not even first-party PlayStation Studios games have done, so it raised some eyebrows that this unknown game studio would be the first to pioneer the feature. Another game that got a console application as a teaser for an upcoming release (but was later “abandoned”…) was P.T.
Blue Bog tweeted in one of their tweets that the their game would feature “Snowflakes of Blood”. This was used in P.T teasers
BLUE BOX Game Studios appears to have been founded in 2015, exactly one year after the release of P.T., and right around the time Kojima was going through his breakup with Konami.
Blue Box Game Studios only other game named ‘The Whisperer’ was completed by another studio, and it’s icon is a black handprint just like in Death Stranding.
One of their cancelled games named; Lost Tapes is a soundtrack in Metal Gear Solid V
Sam in the new Death Stranding Director`s Cut Trailer uses a backpack with the Netherlands logo. Blue Box Studios is supposedly based in Netherlands.
Most of the tweets made by Blue Box are at strange local time hours of around 3:00 am. The studio is claimed to be located in Netherlands.Kojima is located in Japan which is 7 hours ahead in time.
Hasan Kahraman has an account on PSN(SneakyWarrior) with a total number of trophies 1238, the same for the japanese silent hill commercial.
Hasan had Youtube Channel Called ‘Twentyseven27’ (Silent Hills was cancelled on April 27th)
SneakyWarrior (Kahraman) played a game that isn’t available on the PS Store that is using Siren Head as an image. Junji Ito reacted to Siren Head a few months ago and implied about working with Kojima.
Hideo translated from Japanese to Turkish means “Kahraman”, which is the last name of Hasan Kahraman, the head of blue box games. Both of their names mean Hero in their respective languages.
Hasan Kahraman does have an Apple App Store profile with a bunch of low-quality asset flip games under his belt. The only app that’s not a game is called “Go Fit XL,” which sits under the Health and Fitness category. The description of this app says at one point “Personal Training ( PT ) Programs.”
AidThisFellowUser, with assistance from LengthinessUnfair877, goldenN64, Joshdabozz, driplessCoin, nickywan123, Jarma98 and PlayStation LifeStyle
At this point the debate continued, some people marveling at the desire to connect as many dots as possible, with others still on the fence or completely sold on the idea of this all leading to Silent Hill. This likely would’ve continued until June 22, when things are set to be revealed, but things took an unexpected turn when host of The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest, Geoff Keighley, commented on the situation.
Just to set expectations, I honestly don’t think this is what you guys think it is.
Geoff Keighley on ResetEra
At face value this would suggest either the theories of Blue Box Game Studio making Silent Hill is false or, at least, our understanding of what they’re doing is incorrect. However, it is important to remember that Keighley is close with Kojima. Not only did he appear in Death Stranding, he was seemingly part of The Phantom Pain hoax. A later comment, where he shared a DM supposedly sent by Hasan, convinced many that they are on the right path.
A couple things stand out about the image Keighley shared. The biggest being the direct message has a time, but not a date. Those familiar with the social media platform know that Twitter, like a lot of services, only show a date when it was sent on a different day. This means, either Keighley decided to save the message sometime back for an unknown reason or it was sent today to throw people off. The last piece of evidence was viewed as such a smoking gun that Jason Schreier, former writer at Kotaku and current reporter for Bloomberg, was convinced this proves it’s all Kojima’s doing.
While we will ideally know more on June 22, when Blue Box Game Studios is set to reveal Abandoned, but regardless of this being Silent Hill or not, there is no denying this is one fascinating ride.
[Update: Noticed Blue Box Game Studios’ later messages indicate the reveal will be on June 22.]
