Japan's Computer and Entertainment Developer Conference (CEDEC) has announced Hidetaka Miyazaki as the recipient of its 'special award', basically the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award. Miyazaki joins a list of truly distinguished creators: the first recipient was Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, while others include Dragon Quest creator Yuji Hori, Namco founder Masaya Nakamura, 'father of the PlayStation' Ken Kutaragi, and Sega's arcade god Yu Suzuki.
The citation for Miyazaki's special award reads as follows (this is an edited machine translation):
"Beginning with Demon's Souls, Miyazaki's consistently challenging game design continues to fascinate fans and break new ground within its own genre. Fromsoftware's most recent game, Elden Ring, is a culmination of their previous work that also achieves quality and scale that greatly surpasses what had come before: the game has received extremely high praise from users all over the world and been a huge hit. Hidetaka Miyazaki has won numerous awards, and his titles have attracted admiration from both game players and game creators."
Elden Ring has been a wild success for FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco, and is certainly some sort of capstone on the Souls series. Its huge open world and vast array of bosses were a true feast at a time when there just weren't many other big games delivering that kind of spectacle, and it seems certain to scoop up countless game of the year awards come the end of 2022.
Elden Ring remains most active on PC, where the modding community has taken to it like a demigod to runes. Most recently this wag chopped down the giant Erdtree at the heart of the world to get an enormous performance boost, while elsewhere the game has birthed its own community legends. There's no news yet on any DLC for the game, though given its commercial success that seems inevitable, and if FromSoftware's past DLCs for the Souls series are any guide then expectations should be high.
CEDEC takes place later this month, August 23-25, and Miyazaki will receive the award in a presentation on the final day. CEDEC itself is a part of the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association, which exists to promote the Japanese industry and, among other things, runs the Tokyo Games Show and Japan Game Awards.
