October 26th, Sakurai's Youtube Channel

This man is one of the project managers of all time.

Masahiro Sakurai, famed Japanese video game director of series like Kirby, Super Smash Bros, and Kid Icarus, made a Youtube channel back in around 2021. In it, he uploads short, edited videos where he talks about a specific topic, usually related to game development.

He recently concluded the channel, and his process for the whole thing is insane. His sendoff video goes over the details, but in short:

1. He listed out all the topics he wanted to cover, 1 for each video
   1. This ended up being around 260 videos/topics.
2. Then, he recorded every single video, which was just him talking into a camera and mic.
3. Then, he recorded loads of gameplay for a wide variety of games to support the topics he would talk about, using his own hardware.
4. He negotiated a contract with outside translation and editing companies who would gradually work on creating proper videos from his footage and audio, and release it over the next 3 years.
5. He paid about $2300 USD for each video, totaling around $630k for the whole channel, not including the unpaid hours he personally worked. The Youtube channels were unmonetized, so he did not make any money from the venture.
6. After sending the footage and audio out to the editing company, he checked in on their work and requested about 6 rounds revisions for each video.

Then, he wrote the scripts for every single video

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. He finished personally writing and recording every single video within a few months. This was when he was inbetween game directing gigs. So he did this, during what was meant to be his break time.

And these videos are pretty interesting. They're short and too the point, going over topics related to working on games and directing them. Animation, programming, sound effects, work ethic, leadership. Sakurai has a lot of experience and success under his belt, so it feels like his words have a lot of weight to them.

I've been gradually watching them when I have time, taking notes on what he says. Unfortunately, the audio is only in Japanese, so I have to read the subtitles directly. Already, I've picked up good advice on making effective presentations and project proposals, and how to make good decisions during a project.

A lot of his advice goes outside of the realm of game development. Game development is basically just software creation, where you need to make new software from scratch. In my notes, I try to minimize the use of "making games" and simply replace it with "making products". A lot of industries need to do the basics of working in a team, sharing code with other people, working with several independent departments, and writing proposals.

I highly recommend Sakurai's channel and videos to anyone, especially those that might be starting to get in to working in a team. He made this channel to be a repository of information for everyone to use.

Here's the link to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sora_sakurai_en

Here's the link to his farewell to the channel, which shows the insane amount of effort he put in: