Interviews// Eye of Judgement: Yusuke Watanabe

SPOnG: Do you think that Cybercode can be used in any other technologies at all outside of Eye of Judgment?

Yusuke Watanabe: Yes, we did throw around ideas as the two teams were talking about the technologies, but I think it was critical that we needed to establish the CyberCode engine to begin with and for that I think we have managed to successfully focus on Eye of Judgment without any distractions. Based on the success of the Eye of Judgment concept though, I would like to see the idea expand.


SPOnG: Is there the possibility that the Eye of Judgment, through its success in the card selling and game sales, could become a series? Even so far as to expand to a PSP version using the camera for that?

[b][A Sony Rep appears from the shadows to inform me only to talk about this title and that Watanabe-san can’t comment on any future titles…][/b]


SPOnG: What kind of challenges arose from developing Eye of Judgement and what has been the best thing about making the game?

Yusuke Watanabe: I think for one, the integration of the CyberCode technology into the PS3 hardware, that was a big challenge in itself. But I guess the biggest challenge for me was to actually make this stand alone as a trading card game – it needs to work on its own, as well as with the PS3 game to enhance the battles. When we first started we didn’t have a PS3 and we didn’t have a camera. So, what we did was we printed out all the creatures, with all their abilities and statistics on them, and physically played battles out. We spent a lot of time – two years in fact – trying to fine-tune the balance of the creatures and level out the damage and things like that.

We had to work to that extent to ensure that the trading card game could stand alone. The effort spent to make sure the rules and game was so solid ensured that we had the best kind of game structure and we knew exactly what we were looking for when testing the game out. In a sense, knowing what we were doing beforehand allowed us to create a very structured and polished game, and in the end that is probably my biggest achievement.


SPOnG: One last question – are you a fan of trading card games at all? What’s your favourite?

Yusuke Watanabe: I have to confess, before this project I wasn’t into trading card games at all! (Laughs) So, when production began I actually had to go and buy a lot of trading cards and play them an awful lot, so I could understand the process. I’ve now really become interested in all the intricacies of what makes a trading card game and now I’m a bit of a fan! Magic the Gathering is probably my favourite out of all the ones I bought.


SPOnG: Thanks a lot for your time.

Yusuke Watanabe: Thank you very much.