Without a doubt, Masahiro Sakurai is one of the greatest minds in video games today, if not ever. He’s done legendary projects across multiple franchises and is the reason that Kirby is a mainstay at Nintendo. Over the last few years, he’s been working on a secret project while also doing his incredible “Creating Games” series over on YouTube, which ended late last year. In that series, he revealed his personal thoughts and feelings about video games and the creative process behind them. Fast forward to now, and he’s still revealing key insights into the projects he works on and how one must dedicate themselves fully to them, even if it’s “not their cup of tea.”
In a chat with Nikkei Cross Trend, Masahiro Sakurai noted that while it’s nice to make games that you want to do, you have to be truly professional and accept that sometimes you won’t make what you want. In those cases, it’s important to remember that this is work and not simply something to do for entertainment:
“The job of making games is to create entertainment. However, if you are going to sell them, you have to think of it as work, not entertainment. That’s what it means to be a professional. Even if it’s the opposite of what I like, I’ll make it if it’s necessary.”
He went on to note that for him, it’s not about what he wants from the project per se, but making it the best possible experience for the players, which is a theme that carried through his “Creating Games” series. In multiple videos, Sakurai noted that he would do incredible balancing feats with programming to ensure that fighter characters weren’t “too powerful” or too weak, and it worked out incredibly well.
Sakurai also went to almost extreme lengths to ensure that everything looked crisp, that things like stages reacted the way they should at times, and that even the animations and special effects looked on point, even when they weren’t something that fans would notice in the heat of battle.
It’s clear that Sakurai is someone who values gamers to a high degree and wants to give his all for them. However, he also values the companies he works for, whether they be Nintendo or someone else entirely. His goal is to give his all and to try and ensure the success of the video game he’s making by putting as much quality and care into it as possible.
That makes him the consummate professional.
