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The story
In a Weekly Famitsu conversation, Katsuhisa Higuchi — who worked on the development of FFIII and other titles — revealed that on his very first day at Square, he witnessed Hironobu Sakaguchi screaming at staff during the morning meeting, “You’re all completely useless!” The story blew up on 5ch. Higuchi, terrified, says he asked a senior coworker who this scary man was, only to be told, “Oh, that’s Sakachan, the part-timer.” The thread mixed nostalgia for that old-school, hot-blooded style of mentoring with comments noting that today it would get you fired for harassment on the spot, tying it back to how modern dev teams have grown too large for that kind of one-man management to even be possible anymore.
Katsuhisa Higuchi, who worked on the development of FFIII and other titles, has revealed his intense first impression of Hironobu Sakaguchi — the father of the Final Fantasy series — from shortly after joining Square (now Square Enix).
In a conversation between the two published in Weekly Famitsu issue 1964, Higuchi recalled, “I’m pretty sure it was my very first day at Square.” At the morning meeting, he says, Sakaguchi was already furiously tearing into the staff, shouting things like “You’re all completely useless!”
Thinking, “This guy is seriously scary,” Higuchi immediately asked a senior coworker on the spot, “Who is that guy?” The answer he got was, “Oh, that’s Sakachan, the part-timer.” That said, when Sakaguchi was later asked directly about his employment status at the time, he didn’t actually confirm whether he was a part-timer.
Source: gamestalk.net / Original article here
What people said
It's not just the game industry — people like this get branded as harassers everywhere now.
No wonder a country like this is losing its national strength.
Even overseas, yelling at people gets you fired for harassment these days.
That's exactly what got the directors of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk [2077] pushed out.
Though 'Beardy' (Sakaguchi's nickname) would actually chew you out properly, lol
Face reality — you've basically become an FFXIV fan.
I've already completely forgotten all about [FF]XIV.
Once the 'friendship fee' (subscription) stops, so does the friendship.
If it's your job, you've got to properly point out where your juniors are messing up.
Though with today's Square Enix developers, go hard on them and they'd probably wave the harassment card at you right away.
That's because nobody at Square back then could tell Beardy to cut it out.
Get showered with praise by fans, bigwigs at a giant company like Sony, and the media, and of course you start getting carried away.
He was still in his 30s then, hadn't even hit 40 yet, right?
Sakaguchi's the real victim here — he got tricked into buying that Honolulu studio and then told to make full use of it, so that movie basically got forced on him.
That live-action FMV adventure game Retrochika was good though.
Even if someone like that existed, today's polygon-era games are made by teams of hundreds — you wouldn't even know who to direct your complaints at anymore…
That's exactly why almost every publisher keeps churning out garbage games.
Teams have gotten so big that management itself has become impossible.
They were developing it by giving up all their days off — total exploitative 'black company' conditions.
Well, that was just how every company was back then.
The only one who ever actually blew up at him was Nintendo president [Hiroshi] Yamauchi, but that's because he was from an outside company he didn't normally have to deal with.
He probably believed that a chummy dev team that signs each other's memory books when a project wraps only ever produces garbage.
It's not a school club or a circle — the point is 'don't treat your job like you're making memories with your buddies.'
Whatever company bought the IP would've just let it rot anyway, so the outcome wouldn't have changed.
Terra Battle was fun.
Lost Odyssey.
I don't think it's the scolding itself that's the problem — it's holding onto that grudge forever.
Looking at FF7 Remake really drives that home.
It feels like he's desperately trying to scrub away any trace of Sakaguchi.
These days you get no return unless you deliver results, so it's a harsh era for anyone who can't produce results or sell their own achievements.
Those who can deliver and show off results get rated as 'competent' and rewarded with high pay and good treatment, while cost gets slashed to the bone for anyone seen as 'incompetent.'
This was decades ago, right? Age has nothing to do with it.
Even 20 years ago, as far as I know, yelling at people was totally normal regardless of age.
The workload has grown so much that one person can't possibly manage it alone anymore.
You're forced into a setup where each department has its own manager overseeing it instead.
Up through the Super Famicom era, teams were just barely small enough (maybe 50 people? about the size of a school class) for one person to direct alone.
That's why even 'Sakachan the part-timer' could just about pull it off, lol
He's got real talent as a 'monkey trainer' — someone who's great at handling people.
He himself is just ordinary, though.
Isn't the talent for gathering geniuses exactly the ability a company needs most?
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Hironobu Sakaguchi led the Final Fantasy series starting with the original 1987 title, before leaving Square in 2003 to found Mistwalker. Katsuhisa Higuchi is a former Square staffer who worked on FFIII and other titles, and this anecdote first surfaced in a conversation between the two published in Weekly Famitsu issue 1964. It’s easy to miss that Sakaguchi never actually confirmed during the interview whether he was really employed as a part-timer — “Sakachan the part-timer” is presented simply as the nickname people used for him at the time. The thread split between those nostalgic for that kind of strict old-school mentoring, framing it as ‘a good culture we’ve lost,’ and those pointing out that doing the same thing today would get you fired for harassment on the spot. Some also noted that now that dev teams have ballooned to hundreds of people, one-man leadership like that simply isn’t structurally possible anymore.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry (Geha)) thread “FF’s Hironobu Sakaguchi Used to Rip Into Square Staff at Morning Meetings: ‘You’re All Completely Useless!’.”
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