Despite having an annoying name to say out loud, FromSoftware, Inc. has become one of the most respected game developers over the past few years thanks to its harsh, unforgiving games like Dark Souls, which stands out as a beacon of challenging gameplay amongst a sea of oversimplified titles with regenerating health and floating quest arrows directing players ever onward.

But when FromSoftware was working on Dark Souls’ less successful but critically acclaimed predecessor Demon’s Souls, the studio ran into serious difficulties and nearly scrapped the project. Fortunately, it was saved thanks to the vision of a low-level coder named Hidetaka Miyazaki, who would later go on to become the company president.

“I wanted to make one myself”

Miyazaki joined FromSoftware as an untested coder who had made the uncommon decision in Japan to change careers, leaving his job coding at Oracle to become a game designer. He had always been fascinated by video games, and he was finally inspired by the cult classic game Ico, which follows a young boy guiding a frail girl through a vast landscape of stone ruins. “That game awoke me to the possibilities of the medium,” Miyazaki said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “I wanted to make one myself.”

When he joined the team at FromSoftware, he started out working on the studio’s Armored Core series, but then he heard about another game the developer was working on, which was running into some problems.

“Demon’s Souls wasn’t doing well,” Miyazaki said. “The project had problems and the team had been unable to create a compelling prototype. But when I heard it was a fantasy-action role-playing game, I was excited. I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game, I could turn it into anything I wanted. Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care – it was already a failure.”

Miyazaki joined the Demon’s Souls team and redefined the project, giving the game its signature difficulty and level of depth, along with its ambiguous storyline and brooding atmosphere.

While Demon’s Souls was not a commercial success, it enjoyed great critical acclaim and a large underground following. The game’s spiritual successor, Dark Souls, which Miyazaki directed, outsold Demon’s Souls within a week and went on to become a huge success. Miyazaki was promoted to president of the company, but he still maintains a high degree of hands-on control of the studio’s games, including the recently released Bloodborne.

“[As president] I’ve been to places I wouldn’t have visited before,” Miyazaki said. “I get to see different things, which is important. It gives me new experiences to draw from.”

Image credit: “Bloodborne Alpha PlayStation 4 gameplay screenshot” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.