Smash Bros and the creator of Kirby Masahiro Sakurai say he gave all his commercial secrets for free because he wanted to help the life of other ‘players’ developers.
Sakurai recently received an Achievement for Life Award at the Association of Media Media in Digital Awards in Japan, and attended the ceremony earlier this week to collect its award.
During his acceptance speech, Sakurai said that while his knowledge and experience could be considered valuable enough to sell, on the other hand, he voluntarily shared a large number of games of games and tips on his YouTube channel, without even monetizing the videos.
As reported by Oricon News and translated by Automaton, Sakurai explained that the reason he did this was to improve the life of the players, noting that, although he does not see the development of games as a job as important as something as a doctor, he still feels that video games can ‘polish’ the players’ when they are well designed.
“I did something extremely irrational on my channel: I spread all my knowledge as game director for everyone for free. Why did I do that?” Sakurai asked during his speech. “I feel that I am losing many professions out there. While I am doing my own contributions, I can’t even expect to compete with what doctors do, for example.”
Then he added: “In the end, without peace and health, people cannot enjoy digital entertainment: this is something I am aware. But the digital media we create have the potential of ‘polish’ the life of people, so it is an extremely gratifying profession.”
Sakurai concluded that with this in mind, he decided to share his knowledge for free with the hope that other developers can learn something and use their advice to “do their best” to make more games than people enjoy.
The AMD Award for Lifetime Achievement is one of the two main awards that Sakuari received this month. At the beginning of March, the Japanese Government’s Cultural Affairs agency listed Sakurai as one of the annual art encouragement award for new artists.
The award is “delivered to people whose outstanding achievements have opened new views in a certain year”, and was delivered to Sakurai for his YouTube channel, instead of his over 35 years as play designer.
In a statement that explains why Sakurai received the prize, the agency said: “Masahiro Sakurai has made a significant contribution to the development of the game industry by sharing his knowledge of the production of games widely through YouTube in an easy -to -understand and accessible format with a coherent story.
“An English version has also been released, and its influence has spread not only nationally but also internationally, and we believe that this is enough to win the art encouragement prize.”
