Elden Ring boss Hidetaka Miyazaki reflects on how becoming a father might influence his future games

rockpapershotgun.com:

With Shadow Of The Erdtree about to launch this week, From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki has been doing a round of interviews discussing next steps for the venerated action-RPG developer, or at least, hinting at them in the manner of a Dark Souls NPC suggesting that you might want to have a poke around New Anor Londo. In one such chat, Miyazaki strays perilously close to discussing the "themes or core elements" of whatever game or games FromSoftware are working on post-Elden Ring, commenting that he has been inspired, albeit perhaps in a "short-term way", by the experience of having a daughter.

"There are many elements that excite me when it comes to both video games and tabletop board games, and I think that there are many joys to be extracted from that," Miyazaki told Gamespot, when asked about game mechanics that currently intrigue him. "But for me, personally, what brings the most excitement comes while I'm making a game. Whenever I have a good idea and I can create a hypothesis and then test that theory against, "Hey, is this fun? Is this a good idea or not?" Those moments to me bring the most excitement. So perhaps through my work, I am constantly chasing that feeling and that excitement as I'm making games.

"One other thing that really excites me right now is watching my daughter grow," he went on. "And this might be a very short-term thing, but it's fascinating and very interesting to see a small human being discover or see the world; see how a human is constructed or built in a way, how the personality is formed, how they start to identify and build their own identity. And this might just be being a father, but I think that there's certainly something there that excites me."

Asked by the Spot whether that parental fascination might supply raw materials an art-or-entertainment work, and in particular whether "that more naive and idealistic perspective kids have could change how you see the world and thus the worlds you depict in games",