New Sakurai Interview from Famitsu

[Starbound]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/7/459...discusses-the-pain-of-modern-game-development

""Every time, you know, I try to the point where I think I can't go on any longer," Sakurai said. "For example, I think pretty much the limit when it comes to creating characters for a Smash Bros. is about 20, counting those from older games. We remake them completely each time, after all, and the teams and personnel and specs are all different. But we all go beyond what the work calls for because we want to do our best to retain fans of each character."

"Sakurai sees 20 as a good, sane Smash Bros. character count. Meanwhile, Brawl had 39. "The Brawl team really put in a great effort," he recalled. "They remade all the original characters and added 18 completely new ones! Even with Melee before that, that game has over twice as many characters as the original. And that doesn't include online support and the assorted other features we've taken pains to complete under difficult circumstances. But the players don't know about how hard we work. That's not a problem because that's the case for any product, but it's important to remember that you can't take anything for granted.""

I think everyone should read this interview. I think it provides a lot of insight into Sakurai as a game developer.

 

[Arcadenik]

20 characters? We have 14 characters now... 6 more characters left.

 

[DakotaBonez]

What exactly does he do besides take snapshots of the game and do these interviews?
I mean, now he has an army of coders, character modelers, an elite team of recruits from namco, and more!
I like to imagine him poring over the nintendo archives searching for the next big inclusion. Or maybe he just includes anything miyamoto made.

 

[Hong]

What exactly does he do besides take snapshots of the game and do these interviews?
I mean, now he has an army of coders, character modelers, an elite team of recruits from namco, and more!
I like to imagine him poring over the nintendo archives searching for the next big inclusion. Or maybe he just includes anything miyamoto made.

From my own experience, he probably spends most of his day across research, organizing work flow, and spending hours pouring over spreadsheets and documents to make sure everything is perfect.

 

[DakotaBonez]

From my own experience, he probably spends most of his day across research, organizing work flow, and spending hours pouring over spreadsheets and documents to make sure everything is perfect.

Man Sakurai get with the times. Go digital with yo spreadsheets! Save trees!

 

[MasterOfKnees]

What exactly does he do besides take snapshots of the game and do these interviews?
I mean, now he has an army of coders, character modelers, an elite team of recruits from namco, and more!
I like to imagine him poring over the nintendo archives searching for the next big inclusion. Or maybe he just includes anything miyamoto made.

He decides just about everything. Every little detail in Brawl was his decision, everything down to the characters' poses. He said that he had these little bendable skeletons as figures that'd he'd pose the way he imagined each character would stand, he'd then take a bunch of pictures to make an animation out of it, and then give it to the animation team so they know how they should animate them. Sakurai doesn't just write "Bowser scratches with his claw for his F-Air" and give it to the animation team, he actually uses small figures and makes an animation out of it. That says something about how much Sakurai is involved, every little thing is his decision.

You can read some about it here where he talks about Brawl: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/15390

The guy is probably the most involved game producer I've read of.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Cool article, so he models the character's movements with Micro Men eh?
Notice a similarity between Micro Men and the Multi Men/Alloys?
Micro Men as generic baddies for smash wii u!

 

[Neo Zero]

"They remade all the original characters

What's that make Mewtwo then?

 

[FlareHabanero]

What's that make Mewtwo then?

A mutated clone of Mew.

 

[Fatmanonice]

20 characters? We have 14 characters now... 6 more characters left.

In all seriousness, I think this statement has one of two meanings:

1. He doesn't want to add more than 20 new characters per game.

2. In his eyes, a game with 20 characters total would be perfect.

I personally think he meant the second one. If you think about it, Melee was originally supposed to be 20 characters and would have been if Sakurai didn't stuff the roster with clones in the last months of development. He even said that one of the big reasons that Pichu, Dr. Mario, Roy, Ganondorf, Falco, and Young Link even got in was because he thought fans would be mad if there was only 5 unlockable characters (Luigi, Jigglypuff, Marth, Mewtwo, and Mr. Game and Watch) and only 8 new characters altogether. From a fighting game perspective, Sakurai's stance makes a lot of sense. Fighting games with more than 20 characters didn't really become a major trend until the N64/PS1 era. To put this in perspective, Street Fighter 2 had 8 playable characters in the original edition and is widely considered to be one of the best if not the best fighting game of all time. It all boils down to balance and it's significantly easier to balance a fighting game with 20 characters than one with 50.

If you are into at least watching fighting game tournaments, you know what I'm getting on about. Games with a lot of characters tend to end up having a lot of characters that are borderline unusable competitively (Marvel vs Capcom 3 is a glaring example of this) either because the better character are simply so much better or because they are significantly worse. When it comes to Smash, compare Fox to Pichu in Melee or Metaknight to Ganondorf and you'll understand this predicament. From a developer's perspective, this isn't a good thing and can be seen as a glaring flaw but, obviously, opinions can vary. A lot of fans seem to be perfectly okay with 50+ rosters as long as they get at least 10 competitively viable characters but, for a game like Smash, it matters even less because most of the fans largely just want to see the characters regardless if their Smash incarnation redefines suck and fail (Link is pretty much the poster child for this sentiment).

This all being said, I don't think people should worry about these statements that much. Sakurai's just expressing his ideals but makes it well known that he knows that only 20 characters wouldn't bode well with a vast majority of fans. What to take away from this: if Sakurai could go back in time and make Smash one game, he would probably make it with 20 perfectly balanced characters.

 

[MasterOfKnees]

He simply said that 20 characters would have been well received if it had been the norm to begin with, and it'd be kind of a normal thing to do. However, he and his team always pushes the boundaries as hard as they can, and that results in having to work extremely hard.

Remember, Smash Bros characters take a lot more work than characters in other fighting games, not only because of a vastly bigger moveset, but also because of the licensing involved with each character. I'm still in awe over how they managed to get 35 characters into Brawl, excluding transformations.

 

[Ulevo]

His philosophy and approach to the size of a cast of characters makes sense, and I'm glad it is on the forefront of his mind. League of Legends has around 110-120 champions now, and needs consistent semi-weekly to monthly updates to keep everything in line competitively speaking so that it is playable. This is also achieved through the efforts of Riot, a huge e-sports company with likely a very large live design team that has plenty of experience.

When you consider how much more complicated fighting game characters are, how complex Smash is as a game, and the fact that balance is personally supervised and regulated by a single individual, it's quite the responsibility, and very impressive.

I can definitely see him not releasing any more than 45 characters for SWU, and that's assuming if he decided to keep the majority of the entire Brawl cast. I agree with his decision making.

 

[Dark Phazon]

Mario
Luigi
Peach
Bowser
Wario

Yoshi

DK
Diddy

Samus
Ridley

Ness

Marth
FE Rep

Fox
Falco
Wolf


Kirby
DDD

Pit

Link
Zelda/Sheik
GDorf

Pikachu
Lucario
Mewtwo/Charizard
JigglyP


Villager


MM
Sonic

G&W
R.O.B
IC

C.Falcon
Black Shadow

Olimar

Perfect

it can be done in 35!

You could even take out Falco and 3rd parties...

It depends how you go about it....are you going for completion?

If not your gonna be stacking which ever way you look at it...just complete the roster...lol cut some brawl clones and just replace em and the roster would be complete and it would be less than 39!

RealTalk

 

[Salty the SLUG]

So wait, I'm confused. Are we only going to get a maximum of 20 new characters or 20 characters in the next Smash?

 

[Dark Phazon]

It can be done....RealTalk...it depends what you are going for...whats the agenda/plan....its pointless....

Gameplay > Balance > Roster Size & Who.

But balancing is gonna be hard if there is no plan on the roster...it wouldnt be a problem if they had all the time they want...but they dont...

RealTalk.

 

[Fatmanonice]

So wait, I'm confused. Are we only going to get a maximum of 20 new characters or 20 characters in the next Smash?

Alright, here's the rundown:

1. Ideally, Sakurai would like a Smash game with 20 perfectly balanced characters.

2. The reality of the situation is that he's fully aware of fan demand so he puts his own desires aside to try to please the fans.

3. Despite this, he still believes balance is important and doesn't want to just add characters for the sake of adding characters.

4. The final number of characters depends on how many issues they run into when it comes to balancing the entire cast.

 

[Salty the SLUG]

Alright, here's the rundown:

1. Ideally, Sakurai would like a Smash game with 20 perfectly balanced characters.

2. The reality of the situation is that he's fully aware of fan demand so he puts his own desires aside to try to please the fans.

3. Despite this, he still believes balance is important and doesn't want to just add characters for the sake of adding characters.

4. The final number of characters depends on how many issues they run into when it comes to balancing the entire cast.

Alright, thanks. Yeah, characters like Ice Climbers are in a pickle right now because of the 3DS's capabilities.

 

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/...layers-dont-know-about-how-hard-we-work-20893

this one explains how hard they work on the smash bros series

so with this intrewiew I have to say to sakurai and all Nintendo staff members (and Namco in the crossfire since they are helping) thank you for all of your hard work

 

[Fatmanonice]

Another interesting thing about this article: Sakurai mentions that Brawl's development was 3 years. This is an interesting statement because we know development didn't officially begin until October 2005 and Brawl went gold October/November 2007. This leads me to ask what Sakurai defines as "development." Brawl's planning stage went from May 2005 to October 2005 because Nintendo was in the process of making an office specifically for the development of Brawl and rounding up a team for Sakurai. From what we know based on past interviews, Iwata surprised Sakurai with Nintendo's intentions to make another Smash game within hours after Nintendo's presentation at E3 05. Nintendo pretty much handed the reigns to the project to Sakurai upon this meeting.

Brawl was released in Japan in late January 2008, in North America in early March, and in Europe/Australia in late June. If you add the post development time span (about 6 months), the pre development time span (about 5 months), and the actual development time span (about 2 years), you come out to about 3 years. This is particularly interesting largely because of the interviews that we got between the Japanese release and the European release, especially from GDC 08. This suggests that following the Japanese release there was a period of reflection that Sakurai considers part of the development process and the evidence that supports this is interviews that came out where he hints at his regrets and his accomplishments with Brawl and what he wanted to do with SSB4 in the future. This is also interesting because it suggests that SSB4 is a lot farther in development than we previously guessed.

From what we know, SSB4 officially started development shortly after Kid Icarus: Uprising went gold which was about January 2012. SSB4 was technically announced at E3 2011 in June 2011 which suggests that the planning stage for SSB4 began shortly before or shortly after this period. This means that the planning period for SSB4 was at least 6-7 months. With this taken into consideration, that means that SSB4 is currently at about 26 months in development at least if we include the planning stage. Brawl first released in Japan when it was about 32 months in total development. What does this mean for SSB4? Even with two games, this suggests that the games are at least half a year away from the "polishing/debugging" stage that typically lasts 2-3 months where these are the primary focus of development. This is further supported by how Sakurai has stated in past interviews that he doesn't like to show off footage unless the game he's working on is far enough in development to do so and at a point where he doesn't feel like he has to watch the staff every step of the way.

 

[DonkaFjord]

I am not sure but I think someone already made a thread about this interview. I feel kinda bad because a lot of people think game devs don't work that hard and it just 'happens.' People always complain about minor elements that may have taken months to program and years to debug, so I feel for them.

 

[Gabe Hartzog]

I am not sure but I think someone already made a thread about this interview. I feel kinda bad because a lot of people think game devs don't work that hard and it just 'happens.' People always complain about minor elements that may have taken months to program and years to debug, so I feel for them.

Yeah and you know Nintendo busts their tails to make their games. Say what you want about Nintendo, they always put their heart and soul into it for their fans. I couldn't say that about many other game companies/developers.

 

[SpaceJell0]

Another interesting thing about this article: Sakurai mentions that Brawl's development was 3 years. This is an interesting statement because we know development didn't officially begin until October 2005 and Brawl went gold October/November 2007. This leads me to ask what Sakurai defines as "development." Brawl's planning stage went from May 2005 to October 2005 because Nintendo was in the process of making an office specifically for the development of Brawl and rounding up a team for Sakurai. From what we know based on past interviews, Iwata surprised Sakurai with Nintendo's intentions to make another Smash game within hours after Nintendo's presentation at E3 05. Nintendo pretty much handed the reigns to the project to Sakurai upon this meeting.

Brawl was released in Japan in late January 2008, in North America in early March, and in Europe/Australia in late June. If you add the post development time span (about 6 months), the pre development time span (about 5 months), and the actual development time span (about 2 years), you come out to about 3 years. This is particularly interesting largely because of the interviews that we got between the Japanese release and the European release, especially from GDC 08. This suggests that following the Japanese release there was a period of reflection that Sakurai considers part of the development process and the evidence that supports this is interviews that came out where he hints at his regrets and his accomplishments with Brawl and what he wanted to do with SSB4 in the future. This is also interesting because it suggests that SSB4 is a lot farther in development than we previously guessed.

From what we know, SSB4 officially started development shortly after Kid Icarus: Uprising went gold which was about January 2012. SSB4 was technically announced at E3 2011 in June 2011 which suggests that the planning stage for SSB4 began shortly before or shortly after this period. This means that the planning period for SSB4 was at least 6-7 months. With this taken into consideration, that means that SSB4 is currently at about 26 months in development at least if we include the planning stage. Brawl first released in Japan when it was about 32 months in total development. What does this mean for SSB4? Even with two games, this suggests that the games are at least half a year away from the "polishing/debugging" stage that typically lasts 2-3 months where these are the primary focus of development. This is further supported by how Sakurai has stated in past interviews that he doesn't like to show off footage unless the game he's working on is far enough in development to do so and at a point where he doesn't feel like he has to watch the staff every step of the way.

Interesting take, I agree with you 100%. With this, when do you think Smash will be released in Japan?

 

[Fatmanonice]

My guess is still early/mid summer next year. I think how well Pokemon X and Y's worldwide release in a few months will determine if this becomes a standard practice for Nintendo. If it does, I feel SSB4 will be delayed a month or two to make sure there are enough copies for all four major regions (North America, Europe, Australia and Japan). It's pretty clear that X and Y went gold at least a month ago and is now in the process of going platinum which would explain why the flood gates have opened when it comes to information. I imagine SSB4 will be similar when it's close to going gold. My guess is that this will happen no later than April 2014 and that, at the very latest, we'll have the game by halfway through Q3 2014 if it's an international release.

 

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

what makes me smile about this interview is that Nintendo and sakurai is thinking about us and not his borderzone on this game

and ps don,t worry ever one 20 is not the limit for this game for one thing he said he wants all 39 veterans but he can,t probably only like 3 to the same amount of characters lost in melee is how many characters were going to loose

 

[Starbound]

What I love about this interview is how much passion Sakurai has for his fanbase. You'd have to be blind not to see it here.

 

[Deleted member]

I really admire Sakurai as a developer and director because he is taking a lot of time and effort into this game than most would think. Super Smash Bros. in general is a simplistic fighter in nature, but it's a complex game to play once you learn it. Ideally, he wants to put in 20 characters, but he knows that he would disappoint his fans if he left out a character like Falco from the roster and thus we have this big roster. It seems like Sakurai knows what the limits are are goes beyond them with all of this content.

This man is going through not the limits of the games, but his own limits as well with his chronic tendonitis. Sakurai is pretty much more devoted than most developers in this day and age as he is focusing on these numerous aspects like gameplay, content, and so much more that I can tell how overwhelming it is to focus on all of that. Personally, I am not expecting the biggest roster ever (I'm personally fine with the characters as long as they have some meaning to be put in the roster) in a fighting game and I do expect some glaring balancing issues post-release, but I am glad how these games are turning out thus far.

I bet most of the people on SmashBoards could already tell that and knew that however.

 

[Smashoperatingbuddy123]

I really admire Sakurai as a developer and director because he is taking a lot of time and effort into this game than most would think. Super Smash Bros. in general is a simplistic fighter in nature, but it's a complex game to play once you learn it. Ideally, he wants to put in 20 characters, but he knows that he would disappoint his fans if he left out a character like Falco from the roster and thus we have this big roster. It seems like Sakurai knows what the limits are are goes beyond them with all of this content.

This man is going through not the limits of the games, but his own limits as well with his chronic tendonitis. Sakurai is pretty much more devoted than most developers in this day and age as he is focusing on these numerous aspects like gameplay, content, and so much more that I can tell how overwhelming it is to focus on all of that. Personally, I am not expecting the biggest roster ever (I'm personally fine with the characters as long as they have some meaning to be put in the roster) in a fighting game and I do expect some glaring balancing issues post-release, but I am glad how these games are turning out thus far.

I bet most of the people on SmashBoards could already tell that and knew that however.

That's a beautiful story

 

[Kaye Cruiser]

What I love about this interview is how much passion Sakurai has for his fanbase. You'd have to be blind not to see it here.

Then I must be more blind than Brock in Mt. Moon.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Brawl wold have been less work if they didn't change the melee engine but just created new characters, they wouldn't have to recreate anybody. They brought that upon themselves honestly. It's like if someone told me to photocopy something for them but to add a new section with my work, and i burned the paper and wrote it out by hand and complaind how much work it was. I admire people who work smart, there's no point in working hard if you can figure out a smarter way to make the game better without putting in additional work. Props to his work ethic but he honestly didn't have to suffer through all that.

 

[Kaye Cruiser]

Brawl wold have been less work if they didn't change the melee engine but just created new characters, they wouldn't have to recreate anybody. They brought that upon themselves honestly. It's like if someone told me to photocopy something for them but to add a new section with my work, and i burned the paper and wrote it out by hand and complaind how much work it was.

Exactly. I'm sorry if people think I'm just being a jerk, but to me, all Sakurai has been doing for the past couple of months is whining and complaining about the job he's paid to do and how he can't do whatever he wants because the people that ensure he'll get paid will be mad at him for it.

No ****, Sakurai. If you realize that, quit messing around, just do your job and shut up already. Quit if you're so tired of it all. >>'

 

[Hippopotasauce]

Brawl wold have been less work if they didn't change the melee engine but just created new characters, they wouldn't have to recreate anybody. They brought that upon themselves honestly. It's like if someone told me to photocopy something for them but to add a new section with my work, and i burned the paper and wrote it out by hand and complaind how much work it was. I admire people who work smart, there's no point in working hard if you can figure out a smarter way to make the game better without putting in additional work. Props to his work ethic but he honestly didn't have to suffer through all that.

There's a point where you have to draw the line between making a new game and making an expansion pack.

 

[Pyra]

I would gladly accept 20 characters if they were all well balanced and polished.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Exactly. I'm sorry if people think I'm just being a jerk, but to me, all Sakurai has been doing for the past couple of months is whining and complaining about the job he's paid to do and how he can't do whatever he wants because the people that ensure he'll get paid will be mad at him for it.

No ****, Sakurai. If you realize that, quit messing around, just do your job and shut up already. Quit if you're so tired of it all. >>'

I personally appreciate how he shows that game development isn't all sunshine and rainbows and that on some days it feels like your hand is an inch away from grabbing a flask or a gun. Game development requires dedicating years of your life to particular projects and it's a ton of work. Like movies and cartoons, a lot of people kind of think it just happens which is why so many college freshmen get sucker punched by life when they realize that art/film/programming isn't usually super fun like they imagine it is and is generally tedious as holy hell. I applaude the guy for still keeping with it though because it's more than evident that he loves the series to death despite working on it probably shaving years off his life from stress.

 

[Ryan.]

Thanks for posting this, I always like reading the interviews. I thought about how hard his job would be, trying to please as many fans as possible. I wouldn't be able to do it. I very much appreciate Sakurai.

 

[N3ON]

Threads merged together as they reported on the same Sakurai column.

 

[Xigger]

In the past, there wasn't Namco Bandai. So double that measly 20 character limit!!

 

[Renji64]

I lol'ed at hardwork and brawl in the same sentence.

 

[MasterOfKnees]

I lol'ed at hardwork and brawl in the same sentence.

Just because the game likely wasn't aimed at you doesn't mean that hard work wasn't put into it. It was a much bigger project than Melee was, just look at everything that's in the game, just from every character to every stage to SSE, even if you didn't like it there's no doubt the game was twice as content packed as Melee. Sure Melee's development was much more cruel, but that's because they had to get the game ready for the GC's launch, so there was a tight deadline. With Brawl the deadline wasn't as tight, so they had much time to develop a game that was nearly twice as big. Sorry, but you're really just downright disrespectful and ungrateful.

 

[Renji64]

Just because the game likely wasn't aimed at you doesn't mean that hard work wasn't put into it. It was a much bigger project than Melee was, just look at everything that's in the game, just from every character to every stage to SSE, even if you didn't like it there's no doubt the game was twice as content packed as Melee. Sure Melee's development was much more cruel, but that's because they had to get the game ready for the GC's launch, so there was a tight deadline. With Brawl the deadline wasn't as tight, so they had much time to develop a game that was nearly twice as big. Sorry, but you're really just downright disrespectful and ungrateful.

Content doesn't make up for a medicore game and tripping.

 

[SpaceJell0]

Content doesn't make up for a medicore game and tripping.

Lets see you develop a better game in 3 years with constant pressure from higher ups and split fans. Honestly, the ungrateful people bashing Brawl are just irritating.