FromSoft president, Dark Souls creator, and guy who never reads the comments Hidetaka Miyazaki has won himself yet another title, Famitsu reports: He’s the second game developer ever to receive a spot on Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year list. Sitting alongside names like Joe Biden, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and, uh, MrBeast, Miyazaki is the first dev to make the list since Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto in 2007.
Every person on the list has a short blurb written by a famous (though, I suppose, not notably influential, which has got to sting) person explaining their significance, and Miyazaki’s is no different. His entry was written by Neil Druckmann, Naughty Dog co-president and co-creator of The Last of Us.
“The first time I played one of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s games, I was miserable,” wrote Druckmann, echoing an experience plenty of us have had when we first bashed our heads off of a Soulsborne game. But as he learned to slow down a little, “it all of a sudden clicked”.
“As I moved forward in the game, I was much more deliberate, careful in how I explored this world. And in return the world rewarded me with tension, beauty, and surprises”.
“That’s why Elden Ring … is a great ambassador for videogames and the unique feelings they can effect in the player,” said Druckmann, “feelings that a passive medium like TV can never re-create”.
That last bit might be a little concerning to the people working with Druckmann on The Last of Us TV show, but I can’t disagree. No TV show has given me highs as high as overcoming Artorias in the Dark Souls DLC, and no TV show has ever made me sigh, turn off my PC, and go to bed after killing me for the 14th time in a row, either.
Miyazaki has yet to respond to Time putting him on a list alongside the man in charge of the second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons on Earth, but I imagine he’s pleased. The games he’s helmed have been some of the most important of the past 15-or-so years. If that’s not influential, I don’t know what is.