A Special Conversation: Fumita Ueda and Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Part 3

Continuing on from parts 1 and 2, part 3 of the conversation between two of Japan's most creative game designers (Ueda - Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and Mizuguchi - Child of Eden, Rez, Lumines) focuses on how they go about creating the gameplay mechanics of their games. Enjoy, and look forward to part 4 coming soon!

“A game is not just a series of beautiful images.” 

~Fumita Ueda

Mizuguchi: Ueda-san, how do you make the core gameplay part of your games? For example, in my case with 'Child of Eden', when we made the trial build, I really suppressed the visuals as much as possible so I could focus more on how the music changed, and how to present that change visually. That was the most important gameplay aspect to me, so I really tried hard to make those scenes. Temporarily dampening the graphical intensity in that build allowed me to create more feeling and emotion.

Ueda: So the graphics in the test build were completely different than the finished version, then?

Mizuguchi: Yep, it was the absolute minimum, bare-bones version, visually. It was so simple, actually, that I had to graphically supplement it in my head while I was playing it, to keep myself entertained (laughs).

Ueda: Heh, I see. So, not the visuals, but how I start making the actual core gameplay mechanic, huh?...... How on earth do I make it?! (laughs) …. I think I probably start making the game mechanic core at the same time as the visuals. If I just wanted to make something composed of beautiful images, I'd be better off making a movie. Since I make games, not movies, I usually choose one of my drawings to become the focus, the inspiration, for the gameplay. What sort of game structure and mechanics do I need to make in order to re-create the feeling in this image? How do I get the players to experience it without them feeling like they are being forced to? In 'Ico', for example, I started with the image of a person moving while pulling a girl by the hand, and 'Shadow of the Colossus' came from a picture of someone climbing up these giant creatures that were like living art pieces.

Mizuguchi: So, you made 'Shadow of the Colossus' from a scene, an idea, of riding on top of one of the Colossi?

Ueda: Yes, that's the very first thing we experimented with. Even though we called them 'colossi', at that point they were just cylindrical shapes and groups of bare polygons. We stuck the player character, the Wanderer, on top of them, and after verifying that the actions of both the Wanderer and the 'colossus' came off naturally, and the build was stable, we then broadened the design and look of the individual colossi. That's pretty much how the process of making the whole game went, continuing on one by one. With 'Child of Eden', did you derive the interactive portion of the gameplay from a visual piece of art as well?

Mizuguchi: No, the visuals for 'Child of Eden' were used solely to develop the world and how it looked. While the art team were working on the visual aspects, a separate team of staff members were making the game framework, the interface and such, parallel to them. We would figure out how we should proceed with development by actually trying to make something and play it. We just kept on fine-tuning it.

Ueda: Something as unique as 'Child of Eden' seems like it would be difficult to fine-tune all the way down to the minute details. It just seems like it would be difficult to explain exactly what you wanted in either words or pictures at that precise a level, somehow.

Mizuguchi: It was, we really needed a lot of patience and perseverance in the end. We were making small, minute tweakings of the game interface and controls until just before it went to press.