Cognition Dissemination: Masahiro Sakurai’s Work Ethic Is Very Concerning
It’s no secret that director and producer Masahiro Sakurai is one of the hardest working people in the video gaming industry. He’s had a good hand in creating several Nintendo properties over the years, despite how he’s never officially worked within Nintendo. Most of his years since entering the industry in 1992 were spent at HAL Laboratory, mainly known for developing most of the Kirby games. He departed it in 2012, after 20 years, and formed Sora LtD, where he’s handled most of his recent projects. Fortunately, HAL still exists, and still handles the Kirby installments.
Of course, by far the most popular franchise he’s involved in is the Super Smash Bros. series, the crossover Nintendo party fighting game. It’s also one of the most important franchises for Nintendo, thanks to the concept starring a laundry list of characters from Nintendo’s other popular franchises being a massive selling point. (It also includes several guests from games that mostly appear on Nintendo platforms.) Sakurai spends most of his time working on this series, to no surprise.
This past week, we received a better idea of exactly how hard Sakurai works, and the results are justifiably horrifying.
Sakurai elaborated on his work ethic in an interview with Japanese publication Nintendo Dream. It didn’t start off too bad, after he confirmed that his work hours are up to him — a point he previously made in a Famitsu interview nearly six years ago. Nintendo doesn’t mind how long his hours are as long as he helps get the next Smash Bros. title done within a good timeframe. But this alone is a horrifying trait in someone who feels the need to be hands-on with several elements of game development at a time. Sakurai’s mainly created as being the director of the most recent Smash Bros. installment, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but he also provided some editing and playtesting himself. He’s a control freak that needs his hands on every element to make sure it’s as perfect a product by his standards possible.
Being this meticulous has taken a serious toll on his health. He mentioned in an interview with Famitsu in 2013 (as documented on Kotaku and several other sites at the time) that he started suffering from calcific tendinitis in his right shoulder while working on Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U. The pain often became so bad that ruptures in his arm muscles kept him from getting a good night’s sleep, and it prevented him from playtesting the aforementioned game as much as he wanted. Note how his implies he that still did playtesting anyway. Even more frightening is that he told Famitsu that he still had the pain in his arm two years later, and used a special mouse that clicks in a specific way so as to not aggravate the internal sharpness.
Those details are already crazy enough, but if you can believe it, the latest are even worse. These days, Sakurai forces himself to leave work by 10PM, which alone is crazy when you imagine what hours he must have been working before this. There’s a good chance he also comes into work early, so this is still pretty late.
Each detail just keeps getting worse in this saga. Sakurai also documented how he came down with food poisoning during Ultimate’s development. But instead of taking time off, he got an IV (intravenous therapy) drip injected through a needle and continued going to work. There’s being dedicated to finishing projects on time, but this is quite a bit overboard. He also seemed hesitant to admit that he took a mere three days off last year just before Christmas.
Sakurai clearly needs more time off than that. While this particular example of workaholism seems self-inflicted, there’s an overall pressure in several companies in society for employees to work as hard as they can at all times, to the point that they’ll feel guilty if they’re not. It’s a big problem in Japan, where it’s so bad that “death by overwork” (or “karoshi”) is a serious problem. I don’t think Sakurai is about to kick the bucket here, but the mentality he has is the kind that drives people to it.
It’s nice that Sakurai has maintained his enviously youthful looks after all this time, evident upon seeing comparisons of his younger self to his present appearance. But the human body’s interior counts a lot more than the exterior, and it would be great if he started taking better care of himself; given societal standards, the chances of this are low.
The fanbase should keep all of this in mind while they vociferously demand more content for Smash Bros. games. Sakurai and his team, and the team at Bandai Namco, are working as hard as they can on the downloadable content for Ultimate. These people are only human, after all.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
