You’ve heard the stories of games where
famous producers are involved in name only. Such is definitely not the case
with the upcoming Smash Bros. for
Nintendo 3DS and Smash Bros. for Wii
U
Series creator Masahiro Sakurai is nothing
if not a hard worker, but as his column in Weekly Famitsu reveals, his involvement with the development process is far more
vital than one might imagine. While he does not go as far as to do the actual
coding, he might as well. “With the previous Smash Bros. games, I would input all the fighter specs and attack
hitboxes, and with the new games I’m doing something very similar.”
Sakurai writes. With the new games, a lot of Sakurai’s job consists
of entering and editing an endless amount of parameters into the games.
“If I were to hand over the work to someone else, it would be a full-time, multi-person designated workload.”
https://kotaku.com/smash-bros-director-doesnt-have-to-work-hard-but-he-1460009783
With attack animations, Sakurai does
everything from determining the individual attack poses to the starting and
ending motion frames. While he has considered having other people do the work
and has done so before, it never turned out right. Writes Sakurai, “It’s faster
and more accurate to do it myself than to tell someone else over and over again
what to do.”
Another reason Sakurai does this nitty
gritty hands-on work himself is due to the fact that he’s working with a
different team. Fortunately, according to Sakurai, the development tools that Namco
Bandai has developed for the game are a lot more advanced and allow for more immediate
trial and error.
Apparently, Sakurai’s average work day is
so busy that by the time he actually gets to sit down and do his own editing
work, it’s usually past 10PM – 12 hours after coming to the office. Because of
this, Sakurai tends to prefer coming in to work on Saturdays where he’s not
bogged down with other duties that interfere with his work on Smash Bros.
At the end of it all, despite the 6 day work weeks, constant
workload, adverse effect on his already injured arm, and almost complete lack
of a private life, Sakurai seems to be happy with his current lifestyle.
“I’m thankful to be able to work a job where I can offer enjoyment to more
and more people.” Sakurai writes. “More than anything, it’s
fun to see things come together!” Don’t ever go anywhere, Mr. Sakurai. We
need more people like you.
Smash
Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Smash Bros. for Wii U are scheduled for release next year.
ファミ通.com [ファミ通.com]
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