“The 8 years I spent developing Silent Hill 1, 2 & 3 at Konami, I gave up on getting a girlfriend,” reads a new tweet from Masahiro Ito, the legendary Team Silent artist best known for designing Silent Hill 2 antagonist Pyramid Head. The tweet largely echoes something Ito said back in 2024 about not having the time for a girlfriend when he was working at Konami, but now he straight-up suggests he regrets sacrificing his love life for the his work.

“Never even went on a single date w/ a lady,” he says. “I sacrificed my days off & slept on cardboards spread out on the floor, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d end up like this on X.”

That is… incredibly sad. Ito is a horror icon and should be eternally proud of the work he’s done for its unparalleled influence on the genre. That said, as a married man who wouldn’t trade my family for the world, it’s fair for him to long for love.

“To be honest, lately, I’ve been thinking that if I hadn’t sacrificed my personal life, found a girlfriend, and gotten married early on, I probably would have been happier.”

Ito’s comments section is filled with encouraging words from his adoring fans, so he doesn’t need my advice, but I agree with one commenter that “hindsight is a bitch.” Not much is known about Ito’s personal life, but professionally he’s had an undeniably successful career. If he had never worked on Silent Hill and instead chose to pursue a wife and family, who knows how that would’ve turned out? One thing’s for sure, horror would’ve lost one of its all-time great bad guys, and I’m selfishly glad he stuck to games.

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