Masahiro Sakurai is back with more words of wisdom in his latest YouTube videowhich this time is a cautionary tale against long game runtimes.
To be clear, Sakurai isn’t opposed to pouring hundreds of hours into a game — he even apologizes that Smash Ultimate took up so much time — but, he says, the game’s length is something the developers need to keep in mind during production.
Long-running games can be off-putting or “extremely intimidating,” as Sakurai puts it, especially for those who have other tasks and hobbies on their plate. “If you have a game that takes hundreds of hours to complete,” notes the legendary game designer, “keep in mind that players will weigh that time against all the other things they could be doing.”
Maybe not the hottest example of Mr. Smash Bros, but it’s always great to hear Sakurai’s take on these things. What will we do when the channel ends, huh?
Speaking of which, Sakurai took Twitter announce that this video is the last in the ‘Game Planning and Design’ category. We still don’t know exactly when the channel’s grand finale will be released, but we do know that it has already finished filming.
