Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki believes that it is a "bad idea to analyze it deeply" and that it would be better to focus on making games "the same way as before."
FromSoftware's Elden Ring has had unprecedented success since its February 25 release – both commercially and critically. The action RPG was the best-selling game in the first half of 2022 and, as of September 30, it has sold 17.5 million copies worldwide becoming the fastest-selling multi-platform Japanese game.
It has already received several awards, including the Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards 2022 and, most recently, the Grand Award at the PlayStation Partner Awards 2022 Japan Asia, and has appeared in seven nominations for this year's The Game Awards.
Previously, the game's publisher, Bandai Namco, shared that Elden Ring's global success exceeded its forecasts noting that one of the reasons for it was that the developers were able to convey to the players that despite its complexity, Elden Ring is accessible to everyone.
However, the developer of the game, FromSoftware, apparently is not so sure about the reasons for the game's success. Speaking at PlayStation Partner Awards' Q&A session (via IGN), Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki shared that he hadn't "analyzed it too much" and while he sees that the game's sales were obviously higher than those of the studio's previous titles, he has "no idea what the reason was."
"I try not to think about it too much because I think it would be a bad idea to analyze it deeply and to consciously try to replicate it in another game," Miyazaki explained.
According to him, the studio just plans to continue making games "the same way as before", trying not to be affected by Elden Ring's success.
Miyazaki also revealed that he's trying not to be overly exposed to player feedback. The game director explained that it's not possible to listen to "every single comment" from all the players and that choosing to only listen to selected players' comments might lead to a biased assessment.
"If I only take on selected pieces of feedback, it might affect my future decisions as a developer, which I find rather unsettling," he said. "I know that I personally could not be fully objective, so I try to avoid being directly exposed to too many opinions."
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