gamebusiness August Mirishita interview

A title from the "iDOLM@STER" series, the Idol Live & Produce Game "The iDOLM@STER Million Live! Theater Days" (Platform: iOS/Android, henceforth Mirishita) began service on 29th June, 2017, and has since hit its 1st Anniversary. As a title in the iM@S series with 13 years of history, the title was made for smartphones, but was developed delicately without compromise, both in terms of high technical skill, but also as fans within Bandai Namco Studios, it is supported by the love of the developers.

This time, we discuss the concepts and the future Mirishita aims for, as well as the pivotal software that supports the music of the game, the implementation of the sound middleware "CRI ADX2" as well as the thoughts of the development team.


The thoughts put in Mirishita, and the "nitpicky" Developers
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- Thank you for coming today. Firstly, I'd like you to introduce yourselves.

Kenichiro Kubo (henceforth Kubo): Please call me Kubo. I am the Live Supervisor, who handles progress management, resource specification and production of each performance. I have been making music games for around 15 years, including "Taiko Drum Master", "Donkey Konga", and "Synchronica". (PS: Go check out Synchronica, its a pretty interesting rhythm game by Bamco)

Hideyuki Fujiwara (henceforth Fujiwara): My name is Fujiwara, I am a programmer and client-side programmer, I am responsible for implementing the 3D visuals and sound effects in the Live Stage, as well as the upper parts of said implementation.

Takafumi Sato (henceforth Sato): Sound Director Sato here. The Sound leader, and the one in charge of the sound in the game. I've been involved in "iDOLM@STER" home products, and joined the team in hopes of using my expertise to create something unique for a home application.

Hayato Ikeda (henceforth Ikeda): Client Engineer Leader here, Hayato Ikeda. I have made smartphone titles before, but this is the first time we've made such a large-scale project title internally. I hope we get along.

- Thank you very much. As an introduction, please share with us the content of Mirishita, and what everyone feels is the most attractive part of the game.

Kubo: Mirishita is a smartphone application for iOS and Android. 52 idols appear in the game, and features Live Scenes and rhythm gameplay, as well as being able to interact with the idols and produce them as part of the story.

Ikeda: This work is made with full 3D CG, which I think is a big feature of the game. The game also has full voice acting, and lip-syncing the characters makes it feel like they're really talking. I feel that gives the idols presence and creates a lively feeling.

Sato: As a poster title of the "iM@S" series, as idols performing on the stage, the music and worldview are regarded very highly. Personally speaking, we are not a household title, but rather a management title (a game that keeps ongoing service daily), so I feel the need to evolve day by day to be very interesting. "We added a new function, so we can perform this!" and "We want to perform this, could we add a function to do so?" "Sure!", a place where these 2 patterns can happen, I think its good.

Fujiwara: As an engineer, it is difficult to pay attention to all the finer details of performance, but when you see the spectacle of 13 idols lined up on the stage, it leaves an impression. Since each and every one has helped to adjust the performance to the finest detail, we hope you can accept the visual side of things.

Kubo: Since everyone has touched on the stage scenes, you can really feel the reach and the presence of this whole portion. Also, as a "stage where the idols sing", it really is a culmination, an important moment progressing and finally arriving at the goal, the climax of the curve that we drew. Not to mention, considering how popular the real Lives are, we also observe how those who attend receive them into the game.

- You mentioned that this was a large-scale project, could you share how many people specifically were involved?

Kubo: It depends on the time, and it is fairly difficult to give a specific number, but there were a lot of people involved.

Sato: However, I'm the only permanent member of our company's Sound team. Due to the large scale, however, for major improvements and events, people can take spots to help out for certain parts. As I will explain later, Mirishita has greatly benefitted from CRI ADX2, and even then such huge changes for this title can still be made by only 1 person.

- I feel the stage direction is really impressive, 5 man Lives, 13 Man Lives. As Fujiwara-san said, the spectacle of 13 people on stage must have been a huge surprise to the Producers as well. Under what circumstances were these projects planned?

Kubo: The earliest time was a suggestion from our company's Planning and Developement Producer.

Ikeda: Yes, when we were doing the early technical verification level discussions. During release, it was possible to go all in with 5 people, even with some songs being more taxing depending on the conditions. However, by speeding up optimization and refactoring, we were able to increase the number of people in our Test Mode. When they asked "How many people can you fit inside?", we tried and we managed 15 people. The impact was quite apparent, and the Director's reaction was good. With this, the project was able to progress faster.

Fujiwara: As other companies charged ahead with their games, we wanted to technically precede them by having a large unit composition. We steadily tuned it and made benchmarks, and adopted the thought "Is it possible to have 13 up there?"

Kubo: The original number of idols in 765 Pro is 13, and multiplying that by 4 we get 52 people in the Theater. Thus, we chose 13 as it was a cleanly divisible number. We also wanted to cleanly split the 39 Project into 3 groups (Fairy/Princess/Angel), and so each group could wear matching costumes as well.

- The limit was 5 people at first, but the optimization that let you get 3 times as many people within a year is very interesting and deep, technically speaking. It must have been a very challenging thing to attempt, but was there any resistance from within the team?

Kubo: At the beginning, people were surprised: "Are you serious!?", but all the Producers thought it was definitely a good thing, so the opinion to go forward with the plan was the majority. Normally for such challenging developments, you would expect negative opinions, usually accompanied by talks of budget and manpower limits. But in this project, instead we got this: "All right! Let's do this thing!"

Sato: To be honest, I felt that that kind of climate was unreasonable. After all, there was no need to compromise a smartphone title against the home iM@S titles. Of course, I also see it as just another fan, and play the game in private too. It can't be helped if we played it for ourselves and it's not interesting after all... that's why, for this project, I though it was a good idea, and the opinion that I put forward in this atmosphere was "How can we realize this plan?"

- Something I'd like to hear from you all... I myself frequent the actual Lives, and in Mirishita the call & responses are replicated in the game. Playing it, I feel like I'm at the Live, but how do you realize this?

Sato: The cheering, and the call & responses are something that we nurture together with the Producers, which changes day by day.  As a management application, it is easy to update, and that's true for the call & response as well. When we saw the Live for ourselves, Kubo was organizing a cheering session to get definite calls, but that time, we thought "Let's see what the calls are this time! Then we'll give feedback" quite often, and thus we actively incorporated the calls from the real Lives.

Kubo: During the early release, there were very few cheers, but the material we have for those have gradually increased over the year. At the beginning, there was only the "Yay!" calls, which was a combination of 4 types of material of different lengths, but now we have more detailed material. While the timing of "UNION!!"'s implementation was meant to be symbolic, since the stage is a 360 degree arena, the audience is easily reflected. Giving calls from there, there will always be a sense of satisfaction giving call & responses even within the game.

However, that is not to say that "Producers should enjoy the cheers of the audience" is a separate thing. As the idols do their best and dance on the hot, exciting space, the wonderful idols surrounded by everyone's support, is a sense of unity that we want to aim for in this space. Cheer-wise, now we have 10 types of material now to put together, and through trial and error, I create the timing data myself. Thankfully, I don't need to worry about simultaneous pronunciation limitations.

Sato: We did set a limit once, but in comparison to the character models, the load for cheers is much lighter, so Kubo does whatever he wants.

Kubo: Regarding call & response, for those who've never seen Lives suddenly hearing that, it may invoke a sense of alienation. Conversely for the deep fans, it may also lead into some misinterpretations. Thus, I plan to look into volume and presentation adjustment options, so that it will be a plus for these Producers. (This article was written in August, before 1.3.700 hit.)


The "new challenge" of the Sound team's idea and the support of ADX2
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- Even as we speak, I see this team is a very bright, positive one. You are very conscious of the home iM@S titles, and even implemented the function to have separate vocals for certain songs from the beginning.

Sato: Yes. Regarding separate vocals, it was something that was implemented from the start. During release, we implemented the 5-Man Lives, which was itself already a challenge. Despite the fact that was an application, when we were discussing how far we could go with it, it was when we discussed "I want the idol that I produce to sing by herself" that I decided that it was "a very Producer-esque feeling", and thus I implemented it.

Kubo: By the by, how heavy was the processing load?

Sato: When I tried it, it was unexpectedly fine. With respect to implementing the function, it was Fujiwara-san who said it was impossible, but I was always helped by the programmers.

Fujiwara: Nah, if I say it's impossible, then it's impossible... however, I felt I should do everything that I could with a standard model. Eventually, it managed to take shape.

- I also feel that the effects of using audio middleware were rather great, especially for being the foundation of support for multi-stream playback. With regards to CRI's ADX2, when did you decide to adopt it?

Sato: From the beginning I was already considering sound middleware. It's very fun to control, and for a long-term management title, I felt that there was no way I could not consider adopting a software like this. During development, I chose to use ADX2 instead of developing something in-house, as it was compatible with iOS/Android, and it was middleware that could reduce the load of the project.

Ikeda: I have used ADX2 before, but I believe this was the first time that we verified the results on mobile. There were no problems with the operation, and it worked just fine on iOS/Android, so we went with it. The best part is, in the Sound category, to the Program side, you can easily isolate certain parts of the work. The ability to do version control was also a predominant factor.

- How did you create the "13-Man separate vocals" that concretely drew the attention of the Producers?

Sato: Regarding separate vocals, the vocal material is assembled in ADX2 after finely controlling it from the programmers' side. By handing over the parameters of these 13-man vocals to the programmers, it gives them the feeling that they can control them within the game proper. We use the category function in ADX to help with that. I feel that the way we held the data on the Sound side, and ADX organizing what we had allowed us very early exchange with the Programmers.

Ikeda: By the way, regarding on-stage lip-sync, we pass around dedicated singing data, and implement it using the same commercial tool for home use. Meanwhile, in-game lines use an in-house tool. Since we built a conversion environment from the beginning, it made semi-automatic implementation possible now.

Sato: While vocal recordings are very hard work due to how much needs to be done, the singing voice is where the personality of the character is most easily felt, so we take time to finish it thoroughly.

- Were there many suggestions from the Sound side regarding the production part?

Sato: We have implemented an interactive system where the BGM of each room and menu seamlessly switch between different arrangements in morning, day and night. For smartphone applications, commuting to work or school in the morning is a good time to use it, and it becomes a "daily habit". Since people will listen to the office BGM over and over again, we wanted to design it so that people would not get tired of it. We write out BGM stems (piano, percussion, each part is clearly seperated) and program it so that the same song will change stems when moving to a different part of the program environment by calling an event to change it. In addition to the normal, daily things, during Christmas and Valentine's, we also dynamically alter the stem's data. I implemented that on my end, without bothering the programmers.

Ikeda: When we had a build where we could go "It's done! We can submit it!", the data was just flowing. It's not that I don't trust Sato-san, but there really wasn't any trouble down here.

Sato: The best part about ADX2 is that whenever the Sound side makes any updates, I can just construct all of it on my end. Even in such an open environment, it's quite difficult to just ask the programmers "Hey, this number, could we increase it by 5? Maybe 3...no 3.5!" Being able to see the results of trial and error immediately was definitely a plus, but an even better part was the fact that it allowed us to finish this challenge without giving up.

For example, in the stage scenes ADX2 is active, specifically the reverb is changed along with the stage. The reverberation changes if the stage is large, or if its indoors vs. outdoors, and is implemented via a ADX2 snapshot (a mechanism where saved effects can be applied and switched with current settings). I can combine it whenever I need to. All I need is to tell the programmers' "Please send the snapshot down."

- I think it's good, how you didn't give up when presented with a new challenge. Being supplemented and complimented by tools, its something similar to what I want to do, something very creator-esque. Regarding middleware, how much do you feel it contributed to improving your work efficiency?

Ikeda: This time, there is no full time sound engineer in our staff. Of course, if there were no middleware, the sound engineer would always have to be around to look at it, and this alone would take the cost of one person in terms of monthly discussions. From an engineer's perspective, or even from a cost perspective, there were many parts that were saved, I feel.

Sato: Of course, the efficiency has increased drastically, but like I mentioned, "I can realize what I want to do" is an important point of mine. There were probably many things that could not be done without middleware, and techniques which were not adopted during selection would have appeared.

Ikeda: Since CRI is a domestic company, we could respond to support very fast. For what we could and could not do in regards to the selection and decision processes, we were able to question if what we did could be functionally compatible.

- Thank you very much. Lastly, please tell us about Mirishita's future plans and challenges.

Sato: In 1 year, Mirishita has already evolved so much. The visual production will continue to evolve, so inevitably the Sound will respond in kind, we will continue to stretch as far as we can possibly do so from here on!

Kubo: Whatever the case, it's already been our 1st Anniversary. For being able to reach this point without much trouble, I'd like to thank the Producers from the bottom of my heart. "Thank you!"
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It's very clear that not only players who are Producers love Mirishita very much, but also the development team, who strive day and night to evolve Mirishita. The interview progressed quite smoothly, and I could hear the stories of people using ADX2 to improve the product.

In particular, the part "it allowed us to finish this new challenge without giving up" had a good effect on Mirishita, with the staggering amount and speed of content updates. Finally, I was also able to hear the future plans and enthusiasm of the team, but how will they progress to the 2nd Anniversary and beyond?