The creator of Rez and Lumines, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, has been enlisted by Japanese advertising firm Dentsu to create the city Tokyo in the virtual world "Second Life."
Mizuguchi originally rejected the idea when Dentsu contacted him saying, "[The game] 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."
The city won't be built in a way to replicate the city in an exact way, rather the creation will try to capture how people preceive the city said Mizuguchi.
"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."
To engage visitors to the virtual city, there will be a "Ski Jump Pair International Contest," where people can enter with their own avatar and compete on a variety of factors, including those with the most humorous performance and the usual elements of distance jumped and how they land. They plan on having the contest on a regular basis.
Mizuguchi added that he hopes to have the virtual Tokyo become a "museum of Japanese pop culture." He says that Second Life may be the perfect place to show this side of Tokyo.
This sounds interesting, but will anybody be interested? Mizuguchi will no doubt create an interesting world within Second Life, but it seems the luster has left the virtual community for now.
The Japanese have a more long-term outlook, so with that in mind, it may become a fun and desirable place to visit. I'm wondering how Dentsu will insert itself into the virtual Tokyo.
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