Mizuguchi on Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

Plus, new Wii title in development.

Posted by Staff
Every Extend Extra - absolutely barking mad
Every Extend Extra - absolutely barking mad
All Images (4) »
SPOnG had the pleasure of interviewing Q Entertainment boss and the game developer’s game developer, Tetsuya Mizuguchi earlier this week, where we discussed - among many other things - a new Wii project he’s working on, how to design good (and bad) games, and then moved onto the far more vital and interesting topics of sex and drugs and rock and roll.

Miz shared with us his first memories of being inspired by The Beatles and Pong as an eleven year-old boy, as well as detailing the many different areas of inspiration behind his music-based puzzle and action titles such as Rez, Lumines and the soon to be released barking mad Every Extend Extra on PSP.

Here’s a few taster quotes from the interview. On discussing the reasons why women seem to like puzzle games more than men, he told us:

[i]"I think the male and the female… everybody has part male-brain and part female-brain… The ratio is always moving, so some male players still love the puzzle games…But many female players love to play puzzle games. The male player loves to fight each other – it’s basic DNA!"[/i]

When asked if he minded his games being described as ‘trippy’ said:

[i]"No, that’s okay. I’m seriously thinking about what is the future of entertainment via visual or audio or stimulation by good vibration. My DNA of creation is coming from like a ‘sensorama’ concept or games like ELIZA [an early therapist sim] and crazy, experimental games based on new science …so I’m always thinking what should we do, not only for amusement, but to expand our consciousness in different ways so … ‘trippy’… yeh, that is good."[/i]

On the new gen consoles and the future, Miz certainly had plenty to share with us, telling us that:

"The packaged game will soon be a thing of the past, perhaps in the next five to ten years."

On PS3’s lack of Rumble:

[i]"…with Gran Turismo, the feedback vibration was very important on the player’s consciousness…So even if you have a higher resolution, in terms of the visual experience, but no rumble, then essentially you feel some ‘lack’."[/i]

We did plan to ask him about the whole mess surrounding the costly XBLA microtransactions for Lumines Live updates last year – which led to a fairly severe backlash from the XBLA community – but we never got around to it. However, we ended up talking about far, far more important and interesting stuff – which you can read about in the full transcript of the interview on SPOnG.

The Lumines Live scandal seems to be righting itself anyway, with three bits of new, bargain bucket-priced content on the way for the game next week (more on this shortly).

Comments

Posting of new comments is now locked for this page.