As Xbox shutters studios like Tango, Silent Hill creator says FromSoftware might have the "key to life" in the industry: "Not changing everything every time"
Jul. 16, 2024Games like Elden Ring demonstrate that well
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Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama might have a strategy for helping video game studios stay afloat as the industry at large grapples with layoffs andclosures. Elden Ring developerFromSoftware, he says, is a perfect example of it.
“You look at an example like FromSoftware,” Toyama told VGC, “they keep making different games but certain styles and aspects of their games stay the same. That’s an obvious example of how a studio is successful. Not changing everything every time might be the key to life and surviving.”
Players haverecognized this aspectof FromSoftware games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls, going back to the studio’s earliest title, the 1994 action RPG King’s Field. Though 20 years can shift target demographics, staff members, and certainly ideas, FromSoftware has nevertheless dedicated each of its major releases to refining the feel and fantasy of the games that came before it. The studio efficiently reuses some assets and concepts in its games, and Elden Ring director and FromSoft president Hidetaka Miyazaki prides himself on keeping"conservative" expectationsin general. So far, it’s all helped make FromSoftware more successful, and more stable, on the back of good games.
When we spoke to him, Toyama said he wouldn’t be “unsatisfied” if Slitterhead was his last game because his “last mission” is to “leave a path for these younger creators”
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Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.
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