Mizuguchi On Life After Sega, Rez Pseudo-Sequels

Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Space Channel 5 and Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi, held on the final day of last week's GDC show. As for his future projects, he seems in no hurry to reveal anything, mentioning: "Well, it's been about six months since I left Sega... I think we'll be able to make an announcement [about new projects] at E3 or maybe next year." But he does indicate: "I think my next game will be for the PSP or Nintendo DS", and when asked if it would be a sequel to Rez, suggests: "In my mind, yes. But I won't use the Rez name because that belongs to Sega."

Comments

Trippy

[josh glaser]

Rez was an awesome game. It's a pitty more people haven't played it. It's basically a shooter type of thing where you lock on to targets and stuff. The sound is awesome and the graphics are unique (and often headache inducing). It's simple, and not too deep, but superfun.

Re:Trippy

[Anonymous Coward]

Rez was an awesome game. It's a pitty more people haven't played it. It's basically a shooter type of thing where you lock on to targets and stuff. The sound is awesome and the graphics are unique (and often headache inducing). It's simple, and not too deep, but superfun.

Sorry to be a bit sharp, but that was quite possibly the absolute worst description of Rez I have ever read in my life. Superfun? Headache inducing? We want people to play this game, remember?

Re:Trippy

[chendo]

Of course, it would be much better if you have a girlfriend to play it with...

Really, this is like those Harry Potter vibrating broomstick things... girls buy em for reasons ;p

Hi. I'm Troy McClure

[Anonymous Coward]

Mizuguchi On Life After Sega, Rez Pseudo-Sequels

Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such pseudo-sequels as "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Mild Inconvenience" and "Star Trek 12: The Search for Any Remaining Trekkies Out There".

Look for me in the extended DVD version of "Gigli II"

This so fits

[Nefarious_Hat]

I was just playing the game yesterday, and thought. "Man, a sequel would be nice." Apparently the universe bows to my whims. Man, a ham sandwich would be nice. ... ... Damn. For those of you not in the know, a basic review of rez is available at http://archive.gamespy.com/reviews/january02/rezps 2/

Seems dangerous

[hambonewilkins]

"In my mind, yes. But I won't use the Rez name because that belongs to Sega."

Does anyone else hear Sega's lawyers ears perking up? He's basically saying he's going to circumvent copyright/trademark law (no, I'm not a lawyer) because they own the name but he wants to do a sequel. Good for him, but I certainly wouldn't speak about it in public.

It would be like the producers of a movie saying "we wanted to make a James Bond movie but couldn't get the rights from MGM so we just made a slightly different one." Remember the Goldmember controversy?

Re:Seems dangerous

[Black Hitler]

Remember the Goldmember controversy?

Which had nothing to do with copyright/trademark law. Parody movie titles are supposed to be pre-registered with the MPAA as a matter of course; New Line failed to do so and had to work out a separate deal with MGM. Had New Line done it properly there would be no issue. Anyway it seems to me that making a sequel to Rez and not calling it "Rez" would be no more a violation of copyright/trademark law than Rare making Perfect Dark after Goldeneye and not calling it "Goldeneye 2."

Re:Seems dangerous

[bugbread]

He's basically saying he's going to circumvent copyright/trademark law (no, I'm not a lawyer) because they own the name but he wants to do a sequel.

IAalsoNAL (making us brethren!), but it really depends on what part of Rez Sega owns. If it's the name and likeness, he can produce a game with a different name and different graphics, but with the same gameplay style, and be legally safe. That's where Goldmember, etc. have problems.

Really, if you think of it, if game style were part of copyright/trademark law, there would be no game genres. Only one company could make first person shooters, only one company could make power up shooters, only one company could make RPGs, etc. The same with movies. It's not so much the core mechanics as the name and visuals that seem to be protected.

Re:Seems dangerous

[BinaryOpty]

Xenosaga is a game that's done this very thing. Square owns Xenogears, so Monolith named their game Xenosaga. No copyright infringement suits or or anything even though everyone knows its relation to Xenogears.

Re:Seems dangerous

[AvitarX]

Yeah, and that even seams like fairly blatent trademark infringemeant if the game name was trademarked.

It is not a parody and clearly is trying to cash in on the first one. That is why trade mark law exists, of course Xenogears may not be trade marked, in which case there is some wiggle room, but depending on how the story is intertwined it still may not work (I know nothing about the games).

Re:Seems dangerous

[josh glaser]

I think the grandparent is a little off here. I don't think Monolith called Xenosaga "Xenosaga" because Square wouldn't let them call it Xenogears. They called it that because it was a different game in the same series. The "Xeno" in the title makes them easily recognizable as that, and I don't think they wanted to call it "Xenogears II." Especially because Xenogears is actually Part V in the Xeno story, and Xenosaga is Part I. (What would they call Xenosaga then? Xenogears -4?) Other popular RPGs do this too...Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross, SaGa Whatever, etc. They probably just didn't want to create confusion by naming a prequel like a sequel. Also, if Square owned the name Xenogears and wouldn't let them use it, and they used the name Xenosaga, well, the names are similair enough so Square could sue them anyway. I mean, making a prequel to somebody else's game probably isn't that smart either - which is why I'm pretty sure they had the rights to all the Xenogears stuff.

Re:Seems dangerous

[bugbread]

Another example is Dark Cloud 2, which is called Dark Chronicle in Japan. It's made by the same folks, on the same platform, but they wanted to avoid the "2" for some reason.

Just to get it over with

[Anonymous Coward]

Insert oblibatory rez vibrator comment

Re:Just to get it over with

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for realizing that that joke is no longer funny.

"In my mind, yes"

[philiptan]

Between Space Channel 5 and Rez, when Mizuguchi says that his next game would be a sequel to Rez "in his mind," I don't see that as an indication that the next game would necessarily look or play like Rez at all, and that should be a good thing.

I doubt Mizuguchi is interested in making a straight sequel of Rez... he seems rather too imaginative for that. I personally hopes that he takes the synaesthetic ideas in Rez in a direction no one expects. The Kandinsky/Tron hybrid is done, and it's excellent... hopefully his 'Independent' status gives him more breathing room for even stranger, unique ideas.

Re:"In my mind, yes"

[Anonymous Coward]

he seems rather too imaginative for that.

Even though he's already made two sequels (Sega Rally 2 and Space Channel 5 Part 2)?

Re:"In my mind, yes"

[shadowcabbit]

Even though he's already made two sequels (Sega Rally 2 and Space Channel 5 Part 2)?

We can't fault Mizuguchi if those were made as a result of Sega's decisions and not his own (ie he didn't propose the sequels, but Sega put him in charge of them).

I actually would welcome a new Rez-like game. The original was mind-blowing, but it was too short because it was limited by the Dreamcast's disc space. Give Mizuguchi the chance to do close to the same thing with a dual-layer DVD (and, by extension, better audio compression tools)-- and that'd be the one game I'd put a pre-order on the import for.

Another poster weighed in on if Sega had the copyright on the name and style... I think that there're plenty of ways you could do the same thing as Rez, but still get away with it. On the other hand, I doubt that Sega would begrudge Mizuguchi the opportunity to keep working on one of his most beloved games. (witness what happened with Xenogears/Xenosaga and Square Enix/Monolith Soft-- same basic dilemma)

Re:"In my mind, yes"

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it really hard to believe Sega (or anyone) was begging for a Space Channel 5 sequel. Particularly after they poured so much into hyping up the first one only to see it bomb badly.

Re:"In my mind, yes"

[philiptan]

No doubt, I'll be in line if a straight sequel of Rez is released. I'm just a lot more interested in what Mizuguchi could do if given a free hand. He tapped some very compelling concepts in Rez, and I'd be disappointed if he decided to only apply those concepts to a Panzer Dragoon-style shooter. It's the completely new ideas in his head that I want to see, not just the refinements of the old ones.

That being said, sequels are certainly part of the bread-and-butter of game sales. Not only do sequels give the chance for a franchise to build its the fan base and re-sell a tested formula to its old customers, they often give developers a chance to put in ideas that had to be dropped for the first one, refine existing game mechanics and update games using newer technology.

Both Sega Rally and SC5 garnered some decent fan support when they were released (at least, among people who raced in the arcade and people who had Dreamcasts), and IMHO, their sequels were actually better games. I don't think Mizuguchi would necessarily be opposed to doing a straight sequel of Rez, since he seems quite sympathetic to the opinions of fans.

As for Sega's involvement in ordering the sequels, SC5 didn't break any sales records, but gave Sega a lot of press worldwide. Based on that, it's entirely reasonable to think that a sequel would sell much better than the original. Note that the JP sequel of SC5 came out relatively quickly... it just took a long time for it to be ported, published and localized for US PS2s.

Re:"In my mind, yes"

[Anonymous Coward]

Space Channel 5 did very well as a series in Japan. The Dreamcast sequel was very highly anticipated, and demand was high enough that PS2 versions of the original and the sequel were produced (and subsequently released in the U.S. just a couple of months ago).

And of course it was hyped up here. We're talking about Peter Moore-era Sega of America. The man is an idiot.

Re:"In my mind, yes"

[DeadScreenSky]

The original was mind-blowing, but it was too short because it was limited by the Dreamcast's disc space.

Umm, nothing could be further from the truth. Rez used well under half of the max space a Dreamcast disc has. An interesting theory, but there are two far more obvious/likely/possible reasons:

1. The game is meant to be played all in one sitting. Otherwise the intention of creating the stated goal of synaesthesia simply wouldn't work - you can't space something like that out. It also fits into the well-established rail-shooter genre, which are generally pretty short, like their shmup ancestors. Some newer games like Panzer Dragoon Orta are admittedly getting longer, but that game is well-suited to multiple sittings (the story fits it - there are several natural stopping points).

2. The game was made by a relatively small group of people. Look at how few names are in the credits sometime - IIRC, I would wager the international creation of the music ultimately involved more people than the rest of the game. :D Big, long games need big budgets and big teams, especially when the graphics are as amazing as a game like Rez (yes, I know the stylized look helped alleviate this - you still have a lot of unique, complicated environments and enemies). I am quite alright with this, since I don't think Rez would have turned out half as good with a larger team - unique artistic visions just come out better by smaller, tighter teams.

What would have helped Rez's length would me a real remixed mode - not just different colors and filters, though those are cool. Just change the enemy patterns around, maybe add some minor new attacks, etc. This would be harder in Rez than in something like Mars Matrix, partially because of the whole synaesthesia thing - but it gets past much of the problem of additional content creation = lots of money.

Well, let's cross our fingers for a Rez2, though I honestly hope I don't need to buy a new system to play it. And as a further aside, if this is on the Sony PSP like I expect it to be (as Nintendo hasn't cared at all about providing decent sound quality since the SNES - every newer Nintendo system goes for as cheap audio as possible), its discs hold the same amount, roughly, as Dreamcast discs do. :p

(And the music takes up very little space, like all games. Look at how much music a game like Jet Set Radio contained on a single DC disc, along with more levels than Rez and more art and voices. I certainly wouldn't begrudge a DTS 5.1 version of Rez, though! Likewise, the Dreamcast had pretty servicible audio compression capabilities - pretty equal to what you find in all current systems excepting the Xbox, which just blows away everything else audio-wise.)

Without Sega he's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yu Suzuki is the only Sega guy with name value.

Small Studio

[BestGameEver.com]

This comment of his was interesting: "I could see getting up to 20 people, but I don't want to get any bigger than that. If I want to make a big game, then I'll try to cooperate with a studio. I think production and design should be separate." This sounds like a cool development model. Ties in with the recent story about game development outsourcing too.

Wow!

[aanand]

"Well, it's been about six months since I left Sega..."

Dude! Not only did this guy make Rez - he can speak anchor tags!

Re:Wow!

[IntergalacticWalrus]

...AND they lead to slashdot! Who knew that guy was a slashdot reader!