The announcement of Nightreign baffled many FromSoftware fans. Why are they developing a game that does not have the scope of one of the main games but is also not a DLC of Elden Ring? A player on Reddit finds an older statement by Miyazaki that could provide an answer to these questions.
Which statement is meant? On Reddit players discuss whether an interview with The Guardian with Elden Ring’s game director Hidetaka Miyazaki already provided a reason for the development of Nightreign.
The interview was published in June 2024 and became known mainly because Miyazaki himself admitted that he was very bad at video games. However, another core statement of the interview was overlooked as a result. Miyazaki talks about his own visions for the future of the studio, which might say more about the development of Nightreign than one might suspect at first reading:
“Maybe the next step is to have multiple projects where some of the younger talents have the opportunity to manage and lead game design for smaller projects.”
Here you can see the trailer for FromSoftware’s latest project Elden Ring: Nightreign:
“Everything has grown so that failure is no longer tolerated”
What does Miyazaki say in the interview? Miyazaki explains in the interview that one must find the right approaches when developing new projects in order to find room for nurturing young talents in a risk-laden environment.
Budgets, size, scope, everything has grown so that failure is no longer tolerated as it was in the past. FromSoftware has its own way of mitigating risks, as most of our projects have a partner who finances the project … From a business perspective, we do not put everything on a single project. At the same time, one must find the right project that allows room for failure: whether it’s a smaller project or a small module within a larger project, there must be space for it. I think many young game developers are exactly challenged here and can learn from it. We try to nurture our talents by ensuring that they understand and recognize where they are allowed to fail.
Hidetaka Miyazaki in the interview with The Guardian
What does this mean for the development of Nightreign? The author of the Reddit post summarizes this well in a brief statement: “I believe it clearly shows what Nightreign (and probably also Duskbloods) is about: a way to train new developers with relatively low risk, and that in an industry where exorbitant development costs traditionally do not allow for failure.”
The community seems to understand this approach. The response with the most (over 3700 upvotes) from Snoo61755 reads: “That makes sense. The Elden Ring engine is already finished. […] Developing a spin-off with the same engine gives new developers a chance to work in an environment where the foundations are already in place and to develop a 40-dollar game instead of a 60-dollar game with DLC.”
For this reason, Nightreign could be the first result of Miyazaki’s approach to nurturing new talents and focusing on smaller projects. But just because young developers are allowed to fail, it does not mean their projects have to be pre-programmed to do so. Nightreign is already set to release in just a few days on May 30, 2025, then players can form their own opinion on FromSoftware’s latest game. More information can be found here on MeinMMO: Elden Ring: Nightreign – All information about the release, crossplay, and the network test
