I recently had the opportunity to not only play the upcoming Kinect showcase Child of Eden but to also have the game demoed by its entirely unassuming creator, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the creative genius behind genre-defying games like Lumines, Rez, and Space Channel 5. It also gave me the chance to sit down and have a brief chat with him about the game, Kinect and the future.
Your games tend to be based around engaging the senses…why is that?
Why synaesthesia?
Yes, why do you games involve all of the senses?
Why? (laughs) I want to know that! I don’t know why. We love to think about innovation and thinking about the future of games. What is the future of games? It’s not only about fun. Many fun games exist – you know for almost 40 years. From 8 bit, simple pawns in black and white. So we have game mechanics – but what’s fun?
What is the future of games? I believe we need to focus on how it feels. Does it feel good? If we could combine the fun of games with feeling good; maybe we get a new expression, a new chemistry, a new experience.
After Rez, I thought about that. What is the future of Rez? So my answer…well, I have no answer yet but my answer at this time is I’m trying to move towards a more emotional, organic something.
Have the relatively poor sales of REZ might have affected your approach to Child of Eden, and its soundtrack in particular?
Rez was very techno, minimal music and sounds – for many reasons. It was mostly a problem of technology. Now we can use many sounds; 5.1, organics sounds if you want human voices. No limit! There’s almost no limit. So, I want to make a new chemistry, even if with only sounds. Then I started my music, you know Genki Rockets 5 years ago. That was a big, big experiment; how can we make happy music, or positive sounds. You know, if you listen to music and it makes you feel happy…why does it do that?So if you’re at a club, or rave party – everything is moving with the music; lights, colours and visuals – like you’re getting high. I did many, many tests in real space, not interactive, but it was very helpful for me.
Last Updated: April 21, 2011
