Sora president and Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai appeared at the 30th AMD Awards ceremony held in Tokyo, Japan on March 25. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his “outstanding contributions to Japan’s digital content industry,” which includes both his work as a game designer and as a YouTube content creator.
Taking the stage during the ceremony, Sakurai briefly talked about his career as a game creator so far, while also making some interesting comments about why he started his “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” YouTube channel (as reported by Oricon News).
“I did something extremely irrational on my channel – I disseminated all of my knowledge as a game director to the whole world for free. Why did I do that?” Answering his own question, Sakurai comments, “I feel like I’m losing to a lot of professions out there. While I am making my own contributions, I can’t even hope to compete with what doctors do, for instance.”
He lists other vital professions such as work related to infrastructure and production before commenting, “In the end, without peace and health, people cannot enjoy digital entertainment – this is something I’m conscious of.”
On the other hand, Sakurai notes, “The digital media we create has the potential to “buff” peoples’ lives, making it an extremely rewarding profession.” Sakurai goes on to explain that the reason he decided to share so much of his knowledge for free is that he wanted to encourage others to “do their best” at this gratifying “profession of buffing people’s lives” through games.
Sakurai first launched his channel dedicated to teaching game development know-how in 2022. The channel counts 256 videos worth of lessons, all planned and scripted by Sakurai personally during his free time between game development projects. He has previously revealed that creating content for the channel cost him approximately $630,000 USD. Moreover, he has made zero profit in return, given that the account is not monetized. Sakurai has referred to the time and money spent on the channel as an “investment towards the brighter future of games,” but his recent comments add yet a new dimension to the endeavor.
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