On April 13th, Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki was named one of Time magazine’s “Top 100 Most Influential People of 2023.” Miyazaki was highlighted by The Last of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann for his innovative work on Elden Ring, which debuted last year. “Miyazaki’s games make the player feel accomplished and smart,” Druckmann wrote, “and it’s all thanks to his and his team’s uncompromising approach. He refuses to overexplain the mechanics or the lore, but rather puts his trust in the player to figure it out on their own.”

Miyazaki’s latest game is the most recent iteration of his creative evolution since he directed Demon’s Souls in 2009. The iconic Japanese game designer worked in IT for Oracle until he was 29, when he was inspired to change his career after playing Ico. While working at FromSoftware, Miyazaki was given creative control of Demon’s Souls, which FromSoftware was said to view as a surefire failure. From there, he went on to develop his signature flair for open words, dark fantasy, and trial-by-fire gameplay. Since joining FromSoftware, Miyazaki has worked on 11 games, including the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, and of course, Elden Ring.

Elden Ring has been praised for further developing Miyazaki’s immersive “soulslike” style, as well as its storyline. During development, Miyazaki recruited A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin to collaborate on world-building, a process he told IGN was like receiving a “dungeon master’s handbook in a tabletop RPG.” Advertised as a “multilayered story told in fragments,” Elden Ring is an epic of magic and conflict where players embody an exile of the crumbling kingdom, the Lands Between, on a mission to restore order and peace by repairing the mystical Elden Ring. In part, it’s this narrative that makes Elden Ring iconic, and it’s the famously tricky gameplay that makes Neil Druckmann regard it as “a great ambassador for video games.”