While we haven’t covered every video on Masahiro Sakurai’s “Creating Games” YouTube channel, we have done our best to cover the “best ones” for a simple reason. That reason is his wisdom and insight into video game development and design isn’t just wise, but it’s something that MANY other companies should adhere to and take notes on, yet they don’t. Today, Sakurai released the final main video of his series. There will be a “special finale” coming up, but this was the last of the main line. To end it, he decided to focus on a philosophy he has adhered to for a long time, “Up is Down, Down is Up.”
What does that mean? In the video, he highlights how if you are a director or producer, you might think you have “all the power” and are able to “bark orders” at your subordinates because “that’s your job.” However, Sakurai sees it the other way around. You might be “above them” in rankings, but you’re below them in the production side of things. Your teammates, or the ones you hired to make a game for you, are the ones working the hardest to create the product, and thus, they needed to be treated with respect and only “guided” by you in key areas, not talked down to just because you think they’re not “doing enough.”
Masahiro Sakurai even went so far as to talk about how he addresses people in the workplace, talking to them with their formal names instead of just calling out their first or last names. Ironically, he doesn’t do that when talking to the executives at Nintendo. Go figure.
So, why is this so important? Simple, we’ve seen far too many cases recently of “people at the top” talking down to people either within the dev team, or the customers themselves. Ubisoft has been one of the biggest “sinners” on this level, as those at the top have blamed everyone but themselves for the misguided attempts they’ve released recently.
Then, you have games like Concord, which allegedly cost $400 million to make and eight years to develop, only to be shelved in about two weeks after release. Reports state there was “toxic positivity” going on within the dev team due to a higher-up refusing to hear anything negative about the title. That’s not how things are supposed to go. Then, there are companies like Blizzard, which created a hostile work environment after certain higher-ups took over.
Sakurai’s feelings on this are clear: everyone is even, and no one should treat others like dirt.
