If you love Final Fantasy, Blue Dragon, or Lost Odyssey, you just might know the name Hironobu Sakaguchi. He’s been making games for quite a while now and as it turns out, he’ll be honored for them with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the GDC Awards in San Francisco next month.
At Square Company, Ltd. (now Square Enix), Sakaguchi notably served as Director of Planning and Development and created a certain role-playing game called Final Fantasy. Despite its nod to Sakaguchi’s previous plans to leave game development, the series, of course, turned out to not be so final after all, spawning 13 sequels with another hopefully on the way.
In his tenure at Square, Sakaguchi also helped produce Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, Kingdom Hearts and many others. Sakaguchi’s since left Square Enix and founded the development house Mistwalker, where he helped with the creation of Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, The Last Story and Terra Battle. Since its initial release in 1987, the Final Fantasy franchise has put more than 110 million units into people’s pockets worldwide and has received seven Guinness World Records.
“Over his illustrious and thriving career, Sakaguchi-san has established some of the most successful entertainment franchises of all time, and helped cement the RPG genre in Japan and around the world,” says GDC’s Meggan Scavio.
“But the gaming world owes an even greater debt to Sakaguchi-san and team for making a compelling game narrative as important to game development as its graphics and sound. Final Fantasy helped pave the way for game stories that dealt with death, regret and character development in a mature and significant way, and we’re proud to honor Sakaguchi-san as a true leader in the space, and an inspired game developer.”
Lifetime Achievement recipients are chosen by the Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes game industry notables such as Doug Lombardi (Valve), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Independent), Chris Charla (Microsoft) and Erin Robinson (Independent).
Doublefine’s Tim Schafer, creator of many classics himself and founder of Double Fine Productions, will be in attendance to host this year’s GDC Mar. 4th.
Via Gamasutra