Masahiro Sakurai created his YouTube channel to freely give advice and help developers ‘do their best’

In a recent acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award, legendary game director Masahiro Sakurai stated that he created his YouTube channel to freely distribute advice in an effort to help developers “do their best.” 

In a ceremony held earlier this week (reported by Oricon News), Sakurai was given the honor as part of the Association of Media in Digital Awards in Japan, and during his acceptance speech, he explained why he started his YouTube channel and never monetized any of the videos on it. According to him, he felt that while he’ll never be able to compete with the contribution to society that doctors make, games and other digital media have the ability to “buff” people’s lives. As such, his distributing knowledge for free felt like the best course of action to help other aspiring creators.

 

“I did something extremely irrational on my channel – I disseminated all of my knowledge as a game director to the whole world for free,” Sakurai said. “Why did I do that? I feel like I’m losing to a lot of professions out there. While I am making my own contributions, I can’t even hope to compete with what doctors do, for instance. In the end, without peace and health, people cannot enjoy digital entertainment – this is something I’m conscious of. But the digital media we create has the potential to ‘buff’ people’s lives, making it an extremely rewarding profession.”

 

This award comes a couple of weeks after Sakurai received a different award from the Japanese government. As part of a ceremony for Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, Sakurai was given the “Art Encouragement Prize” for his contributions to the development of the games industry. Considering that he was giving free advice with the goal being to help other developers, that prior award feels well deserved.

 

Make sure to have a look at Sakurai’s YouTube channel and view his content when you have a moment!

 

Leave a Comment