Sakurai reflects on the huge amount of work needed to make Smash Bros. a reality
The latest issue of Famitsu has a new column from Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai. There aren’t any questions answered about the Wii U and 3DS games, but Sakurai does reflect on the huge amount of effort required to complete development.
He starts out with the following:
“Making things like this takes its toll. Developing Smash Bros. destroys a lot of one’s private life.”
“I constantly consider leaving part of the work to someone else, but there’s just too much to see and handle. As a result, I work from mornings to late nights, even on weekends and holidays. I hardly have any free time, let alone time to play other games.”
Next, Sakurai mentions how that with Super Smash Bros. Melee, he worked for 13 months straight with not a single day off. The schedule wasn’t quite as grueling for the new games, but the Wii U and 3DS entries still required a massive amount of work.
“Towards the end, there were instances where I would work for 40 hours straight and then take 4 hours off to go home and sleep.”
“I’m not young anymore so I can’t push myself like I did then, but I feel that the busyness due to the sheer amount of features [in the games] was much greater this time around. My routine was trying to complete my daily work every day while doing my best to maintain my health day after day.”
“Sometimes I wind up thinking about life itself. Things like ‘why is it again that people are born?’ The work is large enough and difficult enough that it can affect how you look at life.”
Sakurai also states that if there is to be another game, he needs to reassess the workload. “I’ve passed my limit long ago,” he said.
The Wii U version of Smash Bros. has almost arrived. Unfortunately for Sakurai, that doesn’t mean his job is over. Sakurai said:
“I wish I had time to think about what I want to do from here, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case.”
We have a few more comments from Sakurai. He does note how thankful he is to be able to work on a project like Smash Bros., and despite the tone in his column, he hopes that what he writes may serve as a reference for people who may be interested in working in the games industry.
“I believe I should be thankful that I am given such funds to be able to use such iconic characters and content that represent Japanese games with such freedom, and have multitudes of people across the world play with them.”
“I’m not depressed and I continue to remain healthy and positive, but developing Smash Bros. is beyond hard.”
