George R.R. Martin is "very happy" with Elden Ring

This story about legendary praise, boiled down, in 1:02 minutes.

What's the fuss?

A game that the mastermind behind Game of Thrones contributed to is being hailed as "once in a generation", which he seems to be celebrating in stride.

The situation

The recently released role-playing game Elden Ring has gotten more 10/10 reviews than any game in the last decade.

• Created by the developers behind the crazy difficult "Souls" series, the game puts players in a fantasy open world full of rich storytelling and much-harder-than-your-average-game enemies to face.
• Elden Ring stands out from the rest of its predecessors as it is a collaboration of series mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki and writing legend George R.R. Martin.
  

Although touting himself as "not a serious gamer", George R.R. Martin has officially stated he is ecstatic about the game's quality and the rave reviews.

• "...almost all the credit should go to Hidetaka Miyazaki and his astonishing team of games designers who have been laboring on this game for half a decade or more... I am honored to have met them and worked with them, and to have have played a part, however small, in creating this fantastic world and making ELDEN RING the landmark megahit that it is."

Boiling it down

George R.R. Martin was brought onto the project to help with the game's worldbuilding - the process of constructing an imaginary world.

• Martin primarily wrote snippets of text about the world's history, its characters, and mythology.
• In order to contain Martin's imagination, Miyazaki had to place certain restrictions on Martin's writings in order to serve the player experience.

Elden Ring is a bright spot on single player narrative experiences in gaming.

• Multiplayer experiences have been heavily favoured by modern game publishers since they are more easily monetizable through microtransactions.
• Given the landmark success of Elden Ring both critically and commercially, perhaps other publishers will follow suit.

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