Hidetaka Miyazaki

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Hidetaka Miyazaki ( Japanese 宮 崎 英 高 , Miyazaki Hidetaka ; born January 1, 1974 in Shizuoka , Shizuoka Prefecture ) is a Japanese game developer , designer, writer and president of the video game company FromSoftware . Miyazaki started working as a game designer for Armored Core at FromSoftware in 2004. He became known for directing the Souls game series . Although Miyazaki directed the first two video games in the series, due to the parallel development of Bloodborne , he chose to take a less active role in the development of Dark Souls II, with Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura co-directing it.

childhood

Miyazaki says he grew up "incredibly poor" and without ambition. Still, he read a lot, but since his parents couldn't afford to buy him books or manga, he had to borrow them from the library in his native Shizuoka . The books he was reading at the time, many of them in English, sometimes exceeded his reading skills and contained parts that he did not fully understand. He filled in the missing sections by using his imagination with the help of the illustrations next to it, and used this technique as inspiration for some of his later ideas in the field of video game design. Also, his parents didn't allow video games until he was old enough to go to college. So instead he played with gamebooks and tabletop games such as Steve Jackson's Sorcery! and Dungeons and Dragons .

Career

Berserk (Manga) one of Hidetaka Miyazaki's many inspirations
Company logo From Software

After graduating from Keio University , Miyazaki started working at Oracle Corporation . Following a recommendation from a friend, he started playing Ico in 2001 , which led him to consider moving into the games industry as a game designer. Miyazaki discovered, however, that because of his age of 29, only a few game developers would hire him - one of the few was FromSoftware, where Miyazaki began in 2004 as a game planner for the largely completed Armored Core .

When he first found out about the project that would later become known as Demon's Souls , he offered to help. The project was viewed internally as a failure by the time Miyazaki joined. Miyazaki said, “I figured if I could find a way to take control of development, I could shape it as I imagined. But the best thing was: If my ideas didn't work, no one would care - the game had already failed. ”Although the game was received rather negatively at the Tokyo Game Show 2009 and sold well below expectations, after a while sales increased in a few months and distribution companies were found that wanted to publish the game outside of Japan.

Following the release and success of Dark Souls in 2011, Miyazaki was promoted to the rank of president of the company in May 2014.

After Bloodborne was released in March 2015, Miyazaki returned to the Souls saga as the director of Dark Souls III with the help of Isamu Okano and Yui Tanimura (Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, Dark Souls II) .

Influences

Miyazaki often takes inspiration from real world architecture and incorporates it into his game design philosophy. One such example is the Milan Cathedral in Italy, from which he modeled Anor Londo, a central location in Dark Souls.

Miyazaki's influences include video games like Ico , the first games in the Dragon Quest saga, and the King's Field franchise, as well as the manga Berserk , Saint Seiya , and JoJo no Kimyō na Bōken, and game books like Sorcery! .

Games by Hidetaka Miyazaki (selection)

year title role
2005 Armored Core: Last Raven planner
2006 Armored Core 4 director
2008 Armored Core: For Answer
2009 Demon's Souls
2011 Dark Souls Director, director
2014 Dark Souls II supervisor
2015 Bloodborne director
2016 Dark Souls III
2018 Déraciné
2019 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Unknown Elden ring

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Simon Parkin: Bloodborne creator Hidetaka Miyazaki: 'I didn't have a dream. I wasn't ambitious'. Accessed June 1, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Ron Duwell: Dark Souls' Hidetaka Miyazaki Promoted to President of From Software. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Marty Silva: Inside the Mind of Bloodborne and Dark Souls' Creator - IGN First . IGN . February 5, 2015. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
  4. ↑ Anoop Gantayat: Hidetaka Miyazaki Discusses Dark Souls . Archived from the original on April 27, 2016. Retrieved on April 22, 2016.
  5. ↑ Luke Karmali: Dark Souls Director Hidetaka Miyazaki Made President of From Software . Archived from the original on May 24, 2014. Retrieved June 10, 2014.
  6. ↑ Tamoor Hussain: Dark Souls 3 is Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki . GameSpot. Archived from the original on July 23, 2015. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
  7. ↑ David Scammell: Dark Souls 3 is being developed by a different team to Bloodborne . VideoGamer.com. June 17, 2015. Archived from the original on June 17, 2015. Retrieved June 17, 2015.
  8. ↑ Stephany Nunneley: Dark Souls online play to bring back the feeling of old Dragon Quest games. Retrieved May 9, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Giant Bomb: Dark Souls Design Works Translation: Weapons and Equipment Part 1/2. Retrieved May 9, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Miyazaki, hidetaka
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese game developer
DATE OF BIRTH 1st January 1974
PLACE OF BIRTH Shizuoka , Shizuoka Prefecture