Hidetaka Miyazaki (Japanese: 宮崎 英高, Hepburn: Miyazaki Hidetaka; born September 19, 1974) is a Japanese video game director, designer, writer, and president of the game company FromSoftware. He began working at the company in 2004 and designed games in the Armored Core series before gaining wider recognition for creating the Dark Souls series. In 2014, Miyazaki was promoted to company president and also serves as its representative director. Other games he has directed include Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.

Miyazaki's influences include works by novelists, manga artists, and game designers such as Fumito Ueda and Yuji Horii. His games often feature high difficulty levels and tell stories mainly through descriptive text and environmental clues instead of dialogue. Considered an influential creator in video games, Miyazaki's work has been recognized as some of the greatest in the medium, inspiring the creation of the Soulslike subgenre.

Career

Miyazaki was born on September 19, 1974, and grew up in Shizuoka, Japan. He attended Keio University and earned a degree in social science. After graduating, he worked as an account manager for Oracle Corporation, a company in the United States, to help pay for his sister’s college education. A friend recommended that he try playing the 2001 video game Ico, which inspired him to change careers and become a game designer.

At 29, Miyazaki had no experience in the game industry, and few companies were willing to hire him. FromSoftware was one of the few companies that offered him a job. He began working there as a planner on Armored Core: Last Raven in 2004, joining the project halfway through its development. Later, he directed Armored Core 4 and its sequel, Armored Core: For Answer.

When Miyazaki learned about a game that later became Demon’s Souls, he became excited about creating a fantasy action role-playing game. He offered to help with the project, which had been considered a failure by the company. He believed the company’s negative view of the game allowed him to take full control. Although the game was poorly received at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show and sold fewer copies than expected, it gained popularity later. After the success of Dark Souls, a game inspired by Demon’s Souls, released in 2011, Miyazaki was promoted to company president in May 2014. This was unusual, as it was rare for someone to change careers and become a company president in Japan within 10 years.

In 2012, Sony Computer Entertainment asked FromSoftware to work together on a new game. Miyazaki suggested creating a game for eighth-generation consoles, which led to the idea for Bloodborne. Although Bloodborne had no direct connection to FromSoftware’s previous games, Miyazaki said it shared the core ideas and level design of Demon’s Souls. Development of Bloodborne happened at the same time as Dark Souls II, which Miyazaki oversaw but did not direct personally. He later returned to the Dark Souls series as the lead director for Dark Souls III, which was released in 2016. After its release, he announced he would no longer work on the Dark Souls series.

His next projects were the 2018 virtual reality game Déraciné and the 2019 action-adventure game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which won several awards. Miyazaki directed Elden Ring, released in 2022, and worked with American fantasy writer George R. R. Martin to help create the game’s setting. Elden Ring sold more than 25 million copies and is often listed among the greatest video games of all time. He was the initial director of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (2023), but Masaru Yamamura later took over the role.

Influences and design philosophy

Hayao Miyazaki loved reading as a child, even though his parents could not buy him many books. He often borrowed books from his local library, including English fantasy and science fiction stories that he did not always understand. He used the pictures in the books to help his imagination fill in the parts he did not know. Later, he said this experience greatly influenced how he designed stories and characters. Miyazaki also played gamebooks and tabletop games like Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, Dungeons & Dragons, and RuneQuest because his parents limited him from playing video games until he was old enough to go to university.

When Miyazaki finally played video games, he became a fan of titles like Ico, the early Dragon Quest games, The Legend of Zelda, and the King's Field series. He said these games influenced his work. He also enjoyed reading manga such as Berserk, Saint Seiya, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and Devilman, as well as books by authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, and George R. R. Martin. Miyazaki is inspired by European architecture and often uses it in his games to tell stories through the environment. His work has also been shaped by ideas from psychology and sociology.

As the lead creative director on a project, Miyazaki usually writes most of the story, dialogue, and text. He has the final say on how characters, monsters, and game levels are designed. The multiplayer mechanics in the Souls series were inspired by a personal experience. Miyazaki once saw people helping cars stuck on a snowy road. He could not thank them before they left, so he wondered if the last person in the group reached their destination. This experience led to the Souls series’ multiplayer systems, which aim to create a feeling of quiet teamwork.

Miyazaki explained that the difficulty of his games is not meant to frustrate players. Instead, it helps players feel proud when they overcome challenges and encourages them to try new strategies with characters and weapons. He said that dying in his games is a way for players to learn through trial and error. This idea became popular after the success of Demon's Souls. Miyazaki prefers players to discover parts of the story on their own, using clues from items or side characters, rather than having the story told directly. Many journalists and critics have called him an auteur, or a creative master, for his influential work in Dark Souls and related games.

Awards and honors

Miyazaki received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards. Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, two people who inspired him, presented the award to him. In 2022, he received the Special Award at the CEDEC Awards and the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Award at the Japan Game Awards. In 2023, Time magazine listed Miyazaki as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the year. This made him the second game developer to be featured on the list after Shigeru Miyamoto in 2007.