Elden Ring’s Hidetaka Miyazaki makes Time 100 most influential list

Hidetaka Miyazaki, the president of FromSoftware who directed the hugely successful year 2022 Elder ringand practically created the Soulslike subgenre it follows was called one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the year. It’s only the second time a video game developer has been on the list.

Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, co-creator of The Last of Us video game and TV franchise, wrote the short essay for Time introducing Miyazaki. He called Elder ring “a great ambassador for video games and the unique feelings they can evoke in the player, feelings that a passive medium like TV can never replicate.”

“He refuses to over-explain the mechanics or the lore, instead trusting the player to figure it out for themselves,” added Druckmann.

The Time 100 has been published every year since 2004. Political figures and pop culture celebrities routinely appear on the list (some multiple times). But Time says the nominees are simply chosen based on how much influence they have, regardless of their personal popularity, fame or individual power. Miyazaki is on the list of the 2023 Time 100 “innovators” alongside Disney CEO Bob Iger, native chef Sean Sherman, comedian Nathan Fielder, tennis star Iga Swiatek, actor Natasha Lyonne and others.

In that light, Miyazaki and his developers have been very influential over the past year, selling 20 million units as of February, two-thirds of them in the first month of release.

The only other video game developer to make the Time 100 was Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, in 2007 at the height of the Wii’s popularity. Miyamoto was a named finalist, but did not make the list in 2008.

Other well-known pop culture faces that made the Time 100 include Michael B. Jordan, Neil Gaiman, Doja Cat, Pedro Pascal, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson and Ke Huy Quan.