Making of THE IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE! THEATER DAYS (Part 1)

■Komachi: And you offered tie-ups with a lot of different companies, too.

●Higashi: When a tie-up starts, you get texts from the idols saying things like, “I’m working at a beef bowl shop now, and they made me their poster girl!” Or “I did a photo shoot today for stickers that are going to be distributed!” One of the advantages of LiveOps smartphone games is that you can create content that is linked with real-world events and, deliver that content to the user immediately. MLTD makes good use of this feature by delivering it in a way that fits naturally into the game.

●Sato: It really makes you feel like the idols’ lives are synchronized with your own, and that they’re nearby you.

●Kubo: Of course, developing this type of game is not easy. We have to step out during performances to update contents, and live TV shows broadcasts are always hectic, because we perform updates behind the scenes as the show progresses. You feel that you are developing the game in real time. 

●Tsuchihama: We pay special attention to making the in-game contents look different every day. Whether it be giving the idols a different outfit than normal in loading screens, replacing posters in the theater with the cover art of a new song, displaying messages on the whiteboard celebrating an idol’s birthday or drawings that match the current season, we try to include some small, new changes every day. These little details are another way that we strive to make the game feel like it’s operating in real time.

■Komachi: Compared with arcade or console games, a characteristic of smartphone games is that you receive instantaneous reactions to those updates from players, isn’t it?

●Tsuchihama: In MLTD, we put considerable emphasis on including fans’ opinions in the game’s content. We don’t want to release content one-sidedly, but to set our goals and what we want to do as the development team based on valuable comments from fans. We created plans for improving user-friendliness and convenience which are at the top of our priorities, and we plan to continuously implement these types of updates in-game as quickly as possible.

●Higashi: Imas is a series that has maintained a very close relationship with its fans since its inception. Going to live events gives us the chance to see fans up-close and to hear the enthusiastic voices of thousands of producers, which is an environment that we are grateful for as developers. When making console games, we receive reactions after a game is released and implement those opinions in the sequel, but creating smartphone games allows us to implement changes in a much quicker cycle.

●Kakizawa: The same goes for the live parts. We are constantly listening to fans’ opinions, and while the part usually looks the same, we make improvements to it on a daily basis.

■Komachi: In Imas players are called producers, and those producers create idols (icons). MLTD is a LiveOps game created by producers’ actions, but the relationship between the producers and the game is ultimately a collaboration between the feedback we get from fans and the contents that we developers provide, and I think that is a really amazing relationship!

●Tamiya: I think the art team makes more extravagant requests to engineers than the planning team…

●Ikeda: The biggest challenge we ran into at the beginning of development was bringing the five-member formation dance (*1) from the console version to smartphone. As soon as we reached a point where all five idols could do different dance motions and the game looked like it would work on smartphones, we received request after request to separate each member’s vocals by giving five vocal parts for each member. We would discuss as a team and decide, for this request, we’ll give you this much! Or sometimes we’d be told, we absolutely need this feature! By brainstorming good additions as a team, MLTD turned into the game it is now. Every part of the team, not just engineers, but also visual artists, planning staff, motion artists, and sound designers, all strongly felt that we wanted to make something even better than what had been made until now. Making it wasn’t easy, but as a result we received a lot of positive feedback about the game, which makes creating the game worth the effort.

●Higashi: We’ve discussed all of these things we can accomplish because we’re making a game for smartphones, but I think it’s also amazing that a smartphone can accomplish almost the same things as a console.

●Kubo: Everyone on the team is very passionate. When I say “Let’s make this game good!” everyone responds “Let’s make it happen!” I felt that during production, there was a gradual increase in staff who would cordially respond to my suggestions to add new things to the game by saying, OK, this is what we have to do to make that a reality.

●Sato: And you’re the most passionate one on the team! You always come up with new ideas to add to the game, and end discussions saying, “Let’s do it!” It’s been that way the entire project. (Laughs)

●Kubo: I consider myself first and foremost an Imas fan. I try to guess how fans of the series would feel about the game. So instead of trying to find a new spin on an existing idea, I try to imagine the qualities of Imas that fans have cherished for over ten years, or expressions that fit the series perfectly, and to relay those to the staff.

●Ikeda: For example, in a scenario event part called “communication” where idols chat with the player and each other, to create acting in this sequence, we made a scripting making tool from scratch that’s comparable to that in the console games. Our script writers add 3D acting and facial expressions to match the dialogue, which they tweak to look irresistibly cute.

●Kubo: Creating a working environment is an important part of making a good game. For live mode, we spent a good amount of time creating a music score tool that places notes in the game. This tool makes use of the dozens of years of know-how accumulated from work on Taiko no Tatsujin, and we had to beg them to let us use it, saying it’s a must for this project!

●Kubo: We hold meetings twice a month to talk about directing live performances, and we call the meeting the “Greatness Checkup Meeting.” We check how great the performance is, and whether it’s better than it was last month. We reference a phrase the cast said during a live event, that “you have to always set a higher bar for greatness,” and try keep the meeting passionate so we can continue to raise the bar we set for ourselves.

●Tsuchihama: And one of the unforgettable parts of live mode is the moving glow sticks! We always pay an unbelievable amount of attention to them. But we always leave that up to the Director, Mr. Kubo. (Laughs)

●Kakizawa: Mr. Kubo, you have a deep understanding of how producers in the audience cheer on idols, but could you talk about what parts of live shows you pay attention to?

●Kubo: Glow sticks are a way of paying respect to the actual live scene. Fans all have their own ways of cheering with glow sticks, and the way they’re used is constantly evolving. I try to go to ask many Imas concerts as I can to gather information, but I spend more than half of the concert looking at the audience. Watching them, I realize they’re really into one part, but I haven’t seen this cheer before. I try to observe what cheers change between concerts, and implement those changes in the game.

●Ikeda: From a technical standpoint, making glow sticks move is pretty tough. We made additions to the editor to make it easier for their movement to look good after cutting to a short shot, or to give more freedom of movement to adapt to changes in types of songs or cheers.

●Kubo: We don’t perfectly trace glow sticks’ movements, but observe fans’ feelings when they are cheering, or to what parts they react to the strongest. Once we understand this, we reflect it in the lights’ movements and the audience’s cheers.

●Tamiya: Some of MTLD’ s visual staff also have experience working on console games, and the way all of the members’ experiences and preferences come together is great. You can see this in the characters, backgrounds, camera, and motions; watching the camerawork, staging, and the way the characters’ bodies and hair moves on the stage feels great.

●Kubo: If one section has to cut corners, that part won’t end up on camera. If the audience moves like robots, we can’t use shots that show them on screen for long. Because of this, I really feel that every section, from character and background design to motion creation, camera work, sound creation, engineering and planning, all work hard to do the best work they can.

●Sato: The camerawork especially moves in ways that would be impossible to pull off in reality. This type of expression has a level of impact that you can only see in games that surpasses the limits of a real camera, which I think is really impressive!

●Higashi: And there are a lot of people who have never been to an actual idol performance. The game gives them a chance to see what these events actually look like by recreating the audience cheering on the idols in-game. This gives these players a chance to experience what it feels like to be a part of these events, and I think we were able to create a performance that’s passionate enough that it might make potential fans want to go to a real performance.

●Tsuchihama: One thing we talked about at the beginning of development was that, even if playing the app makes new fans of the series, the ultimate goal of the experience is to have players enjoy a real performance. This is the concept behind this content, so we asked our staff to make expressions in the live part as high quality as you would see in a real live performance. We were blown away when we saw their final output, I really felt that the entire team is excited about what we’re making.

●Kakizawa: The MLTD project mixes a variety of media by tying in things like real live events and music publishing, and I think that allows us to make the most of the fact that we are making a game for a BANDAI NAMCO Group IP.

●Sato: We’ve been discussing with BNE and Lantis about expanding outside the game, and using songs that explore character’s and unit’s personalities in CDs or performances, which is all to make Imas as good a series as it can be. I think one of the strengths of the BANDAI NAMCO Group is that we are able to create mixed-media projects that expand outside the realms of the game!