Mizuguchi Creating A Virtual Tokyo For Second Life
With a virtual ski jump contest, no less...
Real Tokyo.
Image courtesy UnitedVisualArtists
Image courtesy UnitedVisualArtists
The latest issue of Japan’s Weekly Famitsu reveals that one of SPOnG’s favourite game designers, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, (CEO of Q Entertainment and he of Rez and Lumines fame) is to create a Virtual Tokyo for the online 3D chat room, Second Life.
Apparently Mizuguchi was not initially enamoured with the idea claiming that "[Second Life] is just too vast and involved too many loose ideas. But the more I thought about it, a lot of interesting ideas came up. My work all these years has been to entertain people through video games, but this Virtual Tokyo concept could be the next step and path."
Mizuguchi continues, in his own unique and strangely allusive and poetic way, "The Tokyo we are trying to create is based on the image of city. How do people in Tokyo perceive the city? How about foreigners? That's what we want to express."
Yes, that sounds nice, Miz, but what does it mean? What about some more concrete details?
Mizuguchi has them, revealing one of his plans is to open a Ski Jump Pair International Contest, telling Famitsu, "We will put a giant ski slope in the middle of Virtual Tokyo. We will take entries from players around the world. Then have them create their own avatars and their ski pose. They will compete based on longest distance, landing, comedic performance and so on. We've already been running tests in Second Life and this is quite fun. We hope to do this contest regularly."
Mizuguchi’s ultimate dream for the project is, "to make Virtual Tokyo like a museum of Japanese pop culture. My friends abroad have told me often that there's so much materials and it's never preserved. This might be the perfect place for it."
SPOnG will be catching up with Mizuguchi at E3 next week, so we will be sure to quiz him a little more about all this Second Life shenanigans.
More images of greatness can be found at the UnitedVisualArtists site.
Apparently Mizuguchi was not initially enamoured with the idea claiming that "[Second Life] is just too vast and involved too many loose ideas. But the more I thought about it, a lot of interesting ideas came up. My work all these years has been to entertain people through video games, but this Virtual Tokyo concept could be the next step and path."
Mizuguchi continues, in his own unique and strangely allusive and poetic way, "The Tokyo we are trying to create is based on the image of city. How do people in Tokyo perceive the city? How about foreigners? That's what we want to express."
Yes, that sounds nice, Miz, but what does it mean? What about some more concrete details?
Mizuguchi has them, revealing one of his plans is to open a Ski Jump Pair International Contest, telling Famitsu, "We will put a giant ski slope in the middle of Virtual Tokyo. We will take entries from players around the world. Then have them create their own avatars and their ski pose. They will compete based on longest distance, landing, comedic performance and so on. We've already been running tests in Second Life and this is quite fun. We hope to do this contest regularly."
Mizuguchi’s ultimate dream for the project is, "to make Virtual Tokyo like a museum of Japanese pop culture. My friends abroad have told me often that there's so much materials and it's never preserved. This might be the perfect place for it."
SPOnG will be catching up with Mizuguchi at E3 next week, so we will be sure to quiz him a little more about all this Second Life shenanigans.
More images of greatness can be found at the UnitedVisualArtists site.
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