After leaving HAL Laboratory and going independent in 2003, Kirby and Smash Bros. series creator Sakurai Masahiro founded his own company, Sora Ltd. But Sora is not a typical game studio – it has only two full-time employees (Sakurai and his wife), and it exclusively works in contract with other development companies, on a project-by-project basis. Sakurai has no plans to hire employees or expand Sora as a company either. In a recent interview with ITmedia Business, he shared some details about this policy, commenting on the advantages and disadvantages it has brought him.
When asked about his position as CEO of Sora, Sakurai says that there is no common ground whatsoever between game development and (business) management, to the point that he has refused past interviews with business journals because he does not consider himself a manager. (Interestingly, Koei Tecmo founder Kou Shibusawa has expressed the opposite opinion.)
“When I entered the game industry between the 1990s and 2000s, many game creators went independent and founded their own companies. However, I felt that whenever a creator became a company president, they’d have difficulty doing creative work to their full potential. I think that there is some degree of conflict between making good games and making business decisions, and being busy with the duties of a CEO means you can’t devote yourself to the crucial task of game production,” he explains.
Wanting to go independent without being held down by the responsibilities of a business manager, Sakurai’s solution was to simply not hire any staff. Although he is technically CEO of Sora, his actual role is completely different to that of a president of a typical company with in-house staff. To Sakurai, Sora is just a legal entity he uses to handle personal contracts with other parties – and this method has worked very well for him. “It allows me to concentrate on my craft and continue doing creative work without being overwhelmed by management-related duties.”
On the other hand, Sakurai admits that his approach has its drawbacks – as he works with different teams for each project, none of the know-how gets accumulated, and he needs to build up trust and establish working methods from scratch each time. Additionally, Sakurai does not consider his methods to be an optimal solution that others in the industry can easily apply. “It depends on the person – I was able to establish this way of working because I have a track record and reputation from my work on Kirby and Super Smash Bros. titles. If you don’t have an existing track record, you won’t be able to get any work.”
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