Hidetaka Miyazaki

• 1. Introduction

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  Hidetaka Miyazaki is the president of the Japanese game developer FromSoftware, and his 2022 game Elden Ring sold more than 25 million copies. That is a remarkable result for a game that asks so much of the people who play it. In 2023, Time placed him among its 100 Most Influential People of the year. Only one other game developer had ever appeared on that list before him, Shigeru Miyamoto, in 2007. Yet Miyazaki did not set out to make games. His path began in an office job, taken for a family reason. His most famous design idea came from a snowy road and a crowd of strangers he never saw again. How does a late arrival to the industry end up shaping a whole genre? And what does a stalled car on a hill have to do with fighting monsters?

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• 2. A Late Change of Course

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  Hidetaka Miyazaki was born on the 19th of September 1974 and grew up in Shizuoka, Japan. He went on to Keio University and graduated with a degree in social science. His first job was as an account manager at Oracle Corporation, a US-based company. He took the position to help pay his sister's college tuition.

  A friend then recommended Ico, a game released in 2001. Playing it made Miyazaki want to become a game designer. The industry was not welcoming to him. At 29, with no experience in the field, he found that few companies would hire him, and FromSoftware was one of those few.

  In 2004 he began there as a planner on Armored Core: Last Raven. He joined the project when development was already partway along. Later he directed Armored Core 4 and its direct sequel, Armored Core: For Answer. Soon after, a very different project inside the company would catch his attention.

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• 3. The Project Nobody Wanted

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  The game that became Demon's Souls was regarded as a failure by FromSoftware by the time Miyazaki was assigned to it. A fantasy action role-playing game excited him, so he offered his help. He later reasoned that the low expectations worked in his favor. If the project was already seen as lost, further failed ideas could do it no more harm, and he could take full control.

  The 2009 Tokyo Game Show gave the game a negative reception. Sales on release fell far short of expectations. After a few months, though, the game began to pick up. Publishers willing to release it outside Japan soon appeared.

  Its spiritual successor, Dark Souls, arrived in 2011, with Miyazaki as both director and producer. Following that success, he was promoted to company president in May 2014. Changing careers and reaching the presidency within 10 years was considered unprecedented in Japan.

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• 4. Beyond the Souls Games

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  In 2012, Sony Computer Entertainment approached FromSoftware about developing a new game together. Miyazaki asked whether it could be made for eighth-generation consoles. That question grew into Bloodborne. The game shares no story or setting with the studio's earlier work. Even so, Miyazaki said it carried the "DNA" of Demon's Souls and its distinctive level design.

  Bloodborne was built at the same time as Dark Souls II. Miyazaki only supervised that sequel, because he could not direct both games at once. He came back as lead director for Dark Souls III in 2016. Afterward, he announced that he would personally stop working on the Dark Souls series.

  His next projects were the virtual reality game Déraciné in 2018 and the action-adventure Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in 2019. Sekiro won several awards. For Elden Ring, he approached the American fantasy writer George R. R. Martin to supply the worldbuilding.

  Miyazaki was also the initial director of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon in 2023. Masaru Yamamura then took over that role.

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• 5. A Library Child's Imagination

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  Miyazaki's parents could not afford many books, so he borrowed them from his local library. Some of those books were English-language fantasy and science fiction that he could not fully understand. The accompanying illustrations let his imagination fill in the blanks. He has named that experience as a major influence on his design philosophy.

  His parents also kept him from video games until he was old enough to attend university. In the meantime he played gamebooks and tabletop games, including Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, Dungeons & Dragons, and RuneQuest.

  When video games did arrive, he cited the early Dragon Quest games, The Legend of Zelda, and the King's Field series as influences. Among designers, he names Fumito Ueda and Yuji Horii. His tastes in manga run to Berserk, Saint Seiya, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and Devilman. In literature he likes H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, and Martin.

  Psychology and sociology also shape his design choices. So does architecture, particularly European buildings, which he uses in his games as a form of environmental storytelling.

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• 6. Silent Cooperation

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  On any project where Miyazaki is the lead creative director, he usually writes most of the story, dialogue, and text. He also has the final say on character, monster, and level designs.

  The multiplayer systems of the Souls series trace back to a drive he once made up a snowy road. The cars ahead began slipping backward, and people nearby pushed them uphill. Miyazaki could not thank those helpers before they left. He wondered whether the last person in the line had made it to their destination, since he was unlikely ever to meet them again.

  That memory gave rise to the series' multiplayer. It tries to recreate the same feeling of silent cooperation between people who never meet. Cooperation, though, is only one half of his reputation, and the other half is how hard his games are to survive.

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• 7. Difficulty and Interpretation

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  Miyazaki has said that his games are not hard simply to be different from others. In his view, difficulty is part of the process that gives players a sense of accomplishment by "overcoming tremendous odds". It also pushes players to experiment with character builds and weapons.

  Death works as a learning tool in his games, through trial and error. He has said the public came to accept that idea after the success of Demon's Souls.

  Storytelling follows a similar philosophy. Miyazaki says he does not dislike direct storytelling. He simply prefers that players interpret the story for themselves. In his view they get more value from it when they uncover hints of the plot from items or side-characters.

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• 8. Honors and Legacy

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  At the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards, Miyazaki received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, two of his inspirations. In 2022 he won the Special Award at the CEDEC Awards. That year he also received the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Award at the Japan Game Awards.

  Many journalists and critics call him an auteur of video games. His work has been cited among the greatest in the medium, and it led to the creation of the Soulslike subgenre.

  In 2019, Miyazaki disclosed that he had recently had a son. In 2024, he revealed that he also had a daughter.

  His credits now extend to 2026, where The Duskbloods lists him once again as director.

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