Sakurai reflects on criticism
Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai’s latest Famitsu column was all about the new DLC characters in the Wii U and 3DS games. Prior to this though, in another recent issue, he tackled the topic of criticism.
Sakurai begins his piece by talking about Star Wars and George Lucas, who is no longer involved with the franchise. He also reflected on a quote from Lucas in which he stated: “you go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized. And it’s not much fun. You can’t experiment.”
Sakurai then went on to say:
… I truly understand his feelings. You could say my body is filled with these feelings. Making something, and completing it is a huge undertaking, and there are a lot of places where fans can’t see. It’s like building a house, but people focus on a single painting that’s hung up on a wall in one room, and fixate on it, and keep listing off their complaints of that painting. These situations are very common.
For me, a familiar example would be…in Smash, Cloud recently became a playable character. And there were people that strongly criticized that, saying “Stop adding non-Nintendo characters!” This is completely ignoring the fact that I’ve added many, many Nintendo characters to Smash. It also ignores the many fans who were overjoyed at Cloud’s addition. Looking at the big picture, I am on the receiving end of countless amounts of truly trivial statements.
However, I think that’s okay. Different people value different things differently, and they should stay honest to that. For example, even I, as a fan (?) have my complaints with Star Wars. I honestly dislike Episode VI’s long-winded pacing and how easily the Empire Stormtroopers fall to the Ewoks. I think that the re-releases are redundant and superfluous. But, more than that, I am grateful that they showed me these various worlds, and let me enjoy them. Normally, I just don’t have the opportunity to vocalize my feelings of gratitude.
Those are just some of Sakurai’s comments from the column. You can read the full thing here.
