Soulslikes
After Demon's Souls (2009) and Dark Souls (2011), English-speaking players and writers began using the term "Souls-like," and it became the name of a genre. Nobody knows who said it first. This map has already written, more than once, that names arrive from outside. Here, though, something else happens too — the person the name was given to is the one applying the brakes to it. In Hidetaka Miyazaki's own words: "I know we've been credited [with inventing the term Soulslike], but I think the idea of putting death and learning at the core of play is something players were already ready to accept — there just wasn't yet an answer that fit it exactly." He has also said that "Soulslike is not necessarily a new invention," and that developers "should learn from each other and push each other forward." His own account of difficulty is just as clear: the sense of achievement in overcoming a wall is the root of the experience, so lowering the difficulty would take that joy away, and in his own eyes, that looks like breaking the game itself. The person credited as the inventor, speaking not of invention but of timing and mutual learning — for this map, that is the most satisfying kind of testimony there is.