The 15th annual Game Developers Choice (GDC) Awards will be honoring the Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi with the Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is well deserved, considering that his imagination and Square Enix's support gave way to an entire generation of gaming.
In 1986 Sakaguchi worked as the Director of Planning and Development at Square Enix, by 1987 Final Fantasy made its first appearance on the Nintendo Entertainment System. For the next 15 years Sakaguchi brought sequels and spin-offs to the series (as well as other games) and went from development and planning to producing and then to being the President of Square USA.
You could say Sakaguchi's life was shaped by Square and Final Fantasy. In 2004 he moved on to founding his own game developing studio Mistwalker. There, Sakaguchi helped create Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, The Last Story and Terra Battle.
“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. 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,” said Meggan Scavio, General Manager of all GDC events. “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.”
The GDC Award ceremony will be held on Wednesday, March 4th at 6:30 pm PST at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
