If we may be honest for a moment, the video game industry isn’t full of nice people. Numerous stories over the last few years have highlighted the “dark side of gaming” regarding terrible bosses or supervisors, harmful business practices that left workers burnt out or not paid, etc. So when you hear that someone did something nice for their dev team? You want to praise them. Not surprisingly, the man that was incredibly nice to his team was none other than Masahiro Sakurai. In his latest “Creating Games” video, he talked about the struggles of the pandemic and how he helped his team get through it.
As we all know, the global pandemic went from “something that might happen” to “shutting down everything in sight” in no time flat. That meant many people, including those in the gaming industry, had to go from working at office buildings or similar places to working at home. So one of the first things Sakurai did after everyone worked at home for a bit was give them a survey to see how they were doing.
As you can expect, some positive elements included not having to commute to work and being at home where you can get your own food or take a nap on your couch. However, many of the teammates couldn’t perform their duties at an optimal level. Why? Their homes weren’t outfitted to be game development spaces!
As he notes, some of the team didn’t have a proper PC desk to work at and thus had to sit on the ground to use the table they had. Others lived in small apartments. Thus their internet connections weren’t fast enough to handle their tasks.
Multiple developers didn’t have a good TV to test out Super Smash Bros Ultimate in its many forms. As a result, it was quite a problem to overcome.
So what did Masahiro Sakurai do? He used his company, Sora Ltd., to give those developers anything and everything they needed. All he asked for was the link to Amazon or a similar site, and he’d buy everything for them. Moreover, he didn’t ask for anything back or something in exchange.
He even noted that he did this for non-Nintendo people working on the project, like those at Bandai Namco.
This kind of generosity we don’t hear enough about in the gaming industry. So you can bet that as this story spreads, the love for “Daddy Sakurai” will grow immensely.
Source: YouTube
