We currently live in a gaming age where selfishness and greed are all around us. You could even apply that to other entertainment mediums like animation and just general TV and movie production. So many people only aim to “make a name for themselves” and make as much money as possible. While that technically isn’t a “bad thing,” as we’d all love to do that in our fields, it should be noted that when you do those things at the expense of others, it’s bad. Masahiro Sakurai is someone who arguably doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body, and he continued to prove that in the final video of his “Creating Games” YouTube series.
As we already covered, Masahiro Sakurai has been quite the busy man since 2021 and 2022, as he apparently has already pitched his next game, and worked on the ENTIRE “Creating Games” series while waiting for production to start. That’s insane. Then again, that’s Sakurai for you. The thing we want to talk about right now, though, is that, by his own admission, Sakurai spent about $630,000 on this entire series and didn’t make a penny off of it. It’s true. He didn’t monetize the videos, and thus, he did all of this for free.
So, why would he do that? As noted in the tweet above, he did this because he felt it was a kind of “volunteer work.” Something that he should do because he wanted to help others. Specifically, he wanted to help up-and-coming game designers and developers to understand what’s going on in the gaming industry and how to work within it. He also did it to try and help developers make better video games overall, which is incredibly ironic, given the slate of games that haven’t “met expectations” over the last several years.
What this highlights, no matter how you look at it, is that Sakurai is a saint. He put his own money into this project, knowing he wouldn’t make any money off of it, and did it all within an insanely short amount of time, all so that he could help others. Who else in the gaming world right now do you think would be capable or willing to do something like this? We truly can’t think of anyone, and that makes this so incredible.
Below is the final video of the “Creating Games” series. We hope you truly appreciate Masahiro Sakurai’s contribution to our gaming world.