Interviews// SPOnG Interview: Tetsuya Mizuguchi

SPOnG: In the UK around that time in the early 1990s, rave culture was huge. A key aspect of it, it was very much like punk rock, a DIY aesthetic, it was about creating electronic music for yourself… or going to a rave or club and having a totally new and different experience. So going back to your initial inspirations for Rez – was part of it about enabling players to create music as they played?

Tetsuya Mizuguchi: So I had a few inspirations, not only one. The rave culture and synesthesia was just one. Another inspiration was a video I watched from my friend, who shot a bunch of people drinking and talking at a bar in Kenya. And suddenly someone picked up a bottle of coke or something and started beating, like a drum, like ki-ki-ki-ki [imitates drum noise] and then some in the crowd start swaying, then some start clapping, then some lady stands up and starts dancing, then someone starts singing – la-la-la-la-la [sings!] – and an amazing, very natural groove emerges.

So I felt that ‘this is the kind of process’ of how to make the groove I wanted in the game. So if I can make this kind of groove by myself as an experience, I'm thinking 'what kind of design can I make?' so … so I needed to talk with programmers because we have to make the code to do it… a long, long, long conversation! We then did the drumming workshops with all the programmers joining in, beating drums, getting a groove together, to learn the feeling of the experience… so we could break down the process and the detail…

If you watch something then your brain thinks something and you act in a certain way… then you repeat it again and again… We wanted to recreate ‘the loop’ or ‘the upward spiral’ using the sound effects and the video effects in the game. So we all learned a lot from this whole experience.

SPOnG: I noticed today that Brian Eno is doing the music for Will Wright’s Spore – is Eno an inspiration? With his whole idea of ‘generative’ and ambient music?

Tetsuya Mizuguchi: Right, right…there are maybe similarities there. Many, many experiments and trying out of new musical concepts…

SPOnG: If we can just talk a little more about your own background. Prior to starting at Sega in 1990 you have said before that you didn’t set out to become a games designer. You studied Media and Aesthetics at University right? What’s your first memory as a young boy or child as to what you wanted to do with your life?

Tetsuya Mizuguchi: Right. I remember I was eleven years old; kids right? When I went to my friend’s house and I watched the first videogame, that was Pong. Black and white things you can move on the TV!! So that was the first interactive entertainment experience I had and I was so surprised:‘oh the TV! It’s moving!’ Everybody just thought at the time that the TV was just for watching some news or variety shows. So I was so shocked.

Almost around the same time I listened a lot to The Beatles. So I listened to The Beatles and I had a big emotional, err, involvement in that… listening to cassettes of The Beatles with my friends. Yeh I strongly remember these two experiences. I loved music, but I didn’t play the games not so much, I didn’t buy the game console for my house, but I loved to play the games, but not like a maniac!

I wanted to study about creativity, about art, literature, movies and stuff, so I went to do Media Aesthetics at University yes.

SPOnG: Rez was a complete departure from what you had done before at Sega. It was totally different to your previous games. Was it quite a ‘hard sell’ to start with?

Tetsuya Mizuguchi: Yeh, very difficult. It was not easy. Everybody asked me ‘what is the genre?’ And I always answered ‘I dunno’ [shrugs shoulders] – some people would say it was a music-based game, some people would say it was a shooting game. I don’t care about all that. I wanted to make a strong impact, a new experience, to bring the game to the next level. So anyways, that kind of passion I had… the marketing people always were asking me ‘what is this?’