Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai has asked developers to release their games in the “best condition possible” from launch.
Speaking during his latest video on his YouTube channel, Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai shared some advice for game developers as someone who knows the circumstances surrounding game production. He said that it would be ideal if everything could be perfectly adjusted and finished in time for a game’s release date, but that can only happen when the steps and final build are determined in advance, which, in his view, is almost impossible with modern titles.
Sakurai shared 4 personal thoughts on game updates/patches. Firstly, he said that today’s games are too complex. Current games, especially AAA titles, have extremely complex mechanisms and structures. He added that it is no exaggeration to say they are 100, 1000, or even 10,000 times more complicated than older games. According to him, the massive amount of data creates instability developers wouldn’t expect from pure ones and zeroes.
Secondly, he mentioned that, during production, developers can’t play much of the completed version of their game before it is released. If any adjustments are made, the process needs to be restarted from scratch in order to become a finished product. As such, he said that the time spent on a game without any adjustments, including bug and balance fixes, is very short.
Third, Sakurai said that the market’s testing power is incomparable. If a bug occurs for one in a thousand people, the chance of encountering it during debugging is very low. According to him, nowadays, that one person in a thousand can upload a video of the bug to the internet. No matter how many testers you get, once your game hits the market, it’ll be put through its paces to an incomparable degree. Even bugs that are easy to reproduce if known need constant rechecking as they are fixed, and there is no guarantee that all will be found during debugging. He added that the same applies to game balance.
Forth, he said that fatal bugs that cause a game to crash should be fixed, by all means. However, improvements for better enjoyment are purely services provided by the manufacturer. To operate this service, they probably keep core team members, including the director, on hand. For a AAA title, it is more effective to move on to the next project once it is sold. That said, he believes that the effort to make it better by spending developmental resources should not be criticized.
Lastly, Sakurai said that developers don’t take updates lightly. According to him, things may be different for games-as-a-service titles, but he’s personally grateful that people choose to invest time and money into improving released games. He mentioned that, from a player’s perspective, no matter how much you improve your games through patches, it won’t mean anything if the player base has already given up on the game. Therefore, the Smash Bros creator believes that developers should strive to make sure their game is in the best condition possible from the day of release.
