Hideo Kojima files 3x SSS trademarks: Social Strand, Social Stealth, and Social Scream Systems

Good things come in threes: Hideo Kojima's games production company has filed for three interesting trademarks since 2019, and the more recent ones give clues on what to expect from his new horror game OD.

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Hideo Koijma's games are enigmatic and stylish, but the auteur will often provide surprisingly obvious clues on what he's working on (hindsight is 20-20, after all). Take his new game, OD, for instance; since 2019, we've been writing about Kojima's desire to create a new kind of interactive gaming experience using horror. That project has manifested with OD, an Xbox-funded title that will apparently use the cloud to deliver a uniquely social horror game. Kojima is even enlisting horror mavens like Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us, NOPE) to help out. We've also seen Kojima do livestreams with Peele in the past.

So what's up with OD? Not much has been revealed, but new trademarks give us some hints. It turns out Kojima Productions has filed for 3 separate trademarks that all have 3 words that begin with the letter S in them. The Social Strand System trademark was filed in 2019 for Death Stranding, and refers to the more loose and indirect online co-op featured in the game.

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The other two trademarks are related to OD. We know this because at the end of the OD trailer we see three S symbols on the screen, which fits the exact symbols used for these more recent trademarks.

OD's trademarks are for a Social Stealth System, strongly indicating that the new cloud thriller will require gamers to hide (presumably against terrifying one-eyed ghosts). Bear in mind that it's possible that the Social Stealth System is actually for Death Stranding 2, and not OD.

The other trademark that's a given to be attached to OD is the Social Scream System. How this will work remains a mystery.

If we had to guess, the Social Scream System could use some sort of mic feedback to interact with the game, not unlike the old-school microphones found in the original 1980s Famicom (NES).

There's just one potential issue with that last bit: The default Xbox Series X/S controller does not have a built-in mic. OD is an Xbox game, with Microsoft publishing the title.

Microsoft is believed to be working on a new refreshed Xbox controller called Sebile that has direct-to-cloud access, similar to Google's ill-fated Stadia controller. This could be an important feature for OD considering it's reportedly a cloud-based title.

But the recent Xbox leaks didn't have any mention of a microphone being included with Sebile...so we have to wonder what exactly this Social Scream System is for and how it will work.