Hidetaka Miyazaki

is a Japanese video game director, designer, writer, and president of the game developer FromSoftware. He joined the company in 2004 and was a designer for the Armored Core series before receiving wider recognition for creating the Dark Souls series. Miyazaki was promoted to company president in 2014 and also serves as its representative director. Other similar games he has directed include Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.

Miyazaki's influences range across the works of various novelists, manga artists, and game designers such as Fumito Ueda and Yuji Horii. His games often invoke the use of high difficulty and narratives presented largely through flavor text and environmental cues as opposed to dialogue. Regarded as an auteur of video games, Miyazaki's works have been cited as among the greatest in the medium, leading to the creation of the Soulslike subgenre.

Career Miyazaki was born on September 19, 1974, and grew up in Shizuoka, Japan. He later attended Keio University and graduated with a degree in social science, later getting a job as an account manager for the US-based Oracle Corporation to pay for his sister's college tuition fees. Upon a friend's recommendation, Miyazaki played the 2001 video game Ico, which caused him to want a career change as a game designer. It was considered unprecedented for a person to change careers in Japan and become company president within 10 years. Development ran parallel to that of Dark Souls II, which Miyazaki supervised only as he was unable to direct both games simultaneously. Miyazaki returned to the Dark Souls series as the lead director on Dark Souls III, which released early the following year. After its release, he announced his intentions to personally stop development on the Dark Souls series. His next project was the 2018 virtual reality game Déraciné and the 2019 action-adventure game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, with the latter winning several awards. Miyazaki directed the 2022 release Elden Ring, approaching American fantasy writer George R. R. Martin to provide its worldbuilding. The game sold more than copies and has been cited as among the greatest video games of all time. Miyazaki served as the initial director of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (2023) before Masaru Yamamura assumed the role.

Influences and design philosophy

Miyazaki was an avid reader as a child despite his parents being unable to afford him many books.

Once exposed to video games, Miyazaki became a fan of Ico, The Legend of Zelda, He is also a fan of manga such as Berserk, Saint Seiya, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and Devilman, Miyazaki is also inspired by architecture, especially of European origin, and often uses it in his games as a way of environmental storytelling. Psychology and sociology have also influenced his design choices.

Miyazaki stated that the difficulty of his games have no intention of being that way compared to others. Rather, the difficulty was a part of the process that gives players a sense of accomplishment by "overcoming tremendous odds", while also incentivizing players to experiment more with character builds and weapons. Miyazaki stated that he does not dislike direct storytelling but prefers players to interpret it for themselves, as they get more value from it when they find out hints of plot from items or side-characters.

Works

Awards and honors Miyazaki was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards. The award was presented to him by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, two of his inspirations. In 2022, he was the recipient of the Special Award at the CEDEC Awards and the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Award at the Japan Game Awards. In 2023, Time listed Miyazaki as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the year, making him the second game developer to be featured on the list after Shigeru Miyamoto in 2007.

Personal life Miyazaki disclosed in 2019 that he recently had a son. In 2024, he revealed that he had a daughter.