As part of this year’s Japan Game Awards ceremony, acclaimed director and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai announced that he will be ending his “Game Designers Award” after 16 years because he could not find a suitable successor. Created as a means to recognize genuine creativity in the medium, Sakurai delivered the news during the “Game of the Year” portion of this year’s event, Sakurai said, “This is the last year that we’re doing it, and the reason is because there’s nobody who’s going to replace me.”
Explaining further, he continued, “In order to keep this award something that is really convincing and fulfills the role, it needs to be given by somebody who’s a director, who’s come up with innovative games that have changed gameplay a lot. I scouted and tried to find someone to replace me. I did some presentations to try to find somebody, too. I searched for a couple years, but nobody stepped up to replace me. There’s a lot of other judges, but none of them were able to pick up the mantle.”
As Sakurai describes it, there aren’t many people who are willing to think outside the box when it comes design choices. He specifically states, “There’s not many people who will always drink the newest version of an interesting drink,” but the sentiment is the same. At this point in time, development costs have become so inflated that making something truly innovative is seen as a big risk. A generation of creators are being trained on minimizing risk, which is leading to stale games in the mainstream and AAA sectors. As Sakurai puts it, “You usually go with things you’re used to.”
It’s hard to refute that as it’s a common part of human nature, even. When we’re young, we’re ready to experience life to the fullest and see what’s new around the corner. As we get older, we get stuck in routines, and it becomes hard to break free from that. Still, it’s not as if Sakurai is preaching gloom and doom. He does say, “if the industry loses creativity and innovation, I think the industry as a whole will slowly die,” but that doesn’t come off as him claiming things are over. I think by closing this award category, Sakurai is laying down a challenge to younger generations to prove him wrong.
Whatever happens with the industry going forward, I do think creativity and innovation will win out in the end. There are only so many times players can tolerate the same thing before they leave en masse, which we’re starting to see with blowback to certain first-party games from Microsoft and Sony.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
