RPG Development: Inspiration and Perspiration

[Music] hello my name is Yoshi fumy Hashimoto the executive officer and CCO of marvelous AQL today I'm going to talk about how to make an RPG my main focus is the role of a producer in terms of the work involved I take helm of various projects but depending on the game I'll take on the role of an all-around supporter or write the scenario and even come up with settings and names and at times attend voice over recordings and act as an audio director when I get heavily involved I'll get into the game design and decide what kind of game we're going

to make i simply love making things so I try to get involved on various aspects of the projects that we're doing the RPG titles I worked on as you can see here are rune factory Muramasa the demon blade lesser known niche games also include Avalon code and Valhalla Knights I also worked on an online compatible RPG called granites history which was only released in Japan I've also made simulation games like Harvest Moon but today I'll focus on talking about making RPGs so enough with

the introductions and this is the outline of our session today it'll probably be difficult to convey the work involved by simply describing them so go into talking about things that actually happened and what we decided to do at those instances I think that'll make things easier to understand and you'll get much more useful information out of it so we'll talk about actual concerns problems issues and challenges that we face with these titles let's first talk about rune factory the concept of this

game is living the fantasy life the main theme isn't necessarily about the often used premise of adventure it's about living a relaxed life in a fantasy world and eventually passing away I wanted to make a game rooted in such a premise in JRPGs you see a lot of settings where the main character is a hero and as someone special or of some status but I wanted to make a game were you as the main character I may not necessarily be a hero but you still live a very rich life for example in the very beginning of Lord of the Rings there's the hobbit village the game is

similar to that but you don't find the ring and instead live a very peaceful long life I also wanted to make a gameplay system that is different from RPGs that has come before it we did our best to avoid having the villagers repeat the same message over and over and instead of just being simple NPCs they act like main characters and act under their own AI everyone in the village even the old men and the women they have their stories to tell and they have their own existence they have their own opinions and concerns just like any other person

getting into a battle doesn't mean you'll come away with gold and treasures the main character has to work very very hard raise crops to earn a livelihood in order to exist it's more like a game that features the realistic side of things that most tend to ignore in the fantasy worlds and settings when you step outside the village there are dungeons about these dungeons have bosses and once you leave for an adventure the road is very very long and pearls abouton then I thought about the concept of water stations during a

real-life marathon as if it was a similar long long road if you take breaks during your dungeon crawl just like at the water station I felt that people will be able to overcome them without giving up but to capitalize on the game systems we also put fields in the middle so that you can raise crops to revitalize yourself give yourself more energy and this happened to work out in the end people who are good at the game do not need to rest and cultivate crops while people who feel that the game is hard can do so that the game design adapts to the players play style then in the

summer time the characters change into swimwear when this happens female characters sometimes put on a tattoo like symbol on their bodies this is actually a form of sunblock in this particular fantasy world at the time because of the way we built the characters we couldn't make them tan and we were looking for a way to get around this we also figured that even in this fantasy world there would be girls who would like to tan and those who wouldn't from there we embrace the

idea that in this fantasy world people didn't use sunblock as we do in real life but instead put on tattoos to avoid the Sun it was a way to take something realistic and put a fantasy spin on it also in terms of outfits because it's about people who work in the fields a lot of us would assume that they wouldn't care much about their appearance and what they're wearing but we figure that because everyone is doing the same date Dana day in and day out that they wanted to do something to stand out and maybe be noticed when we went out to the real farms and asked young farmers they actually felt

the same way so we decided to implement this idea as such when you put in little bits of realism from real life it helps resonate with the players and makes it much easier to feel as though if it were real even if you have a great idea a unique idea if your users don't understand it what is the point right they're certainly not going to think it's fun unless they really understand what you're trying to communicate it's the same thing with movies after you finish watching a movie and walk out of the theater you sometimes feel as though you could do what you just saw for instance if you saw a superhero movie

you feel like you become powerful and if you see a movie about magic you almost feel as though you could do actually you could actually cast magic but you just didn't realize it until now this I think is proof that bits of realism from your life is connecting with the audience I want to make a game where we don't just lean on the fantastical and instead make it feel somehow real and relatable with games we have an advantage over movies and that players can also do what they want to do they can choose their route the way they want to live for example in room factory when you become friends with the girl you can get married and even have a baby in the latest version you can even play as a

girl and when they become friends with the boy they can get married and have a baby together how far can we go in living your life in this game if you want to simply live together with your partner you can and if you want to go defeat the demon together you can also do that we wanted to make a game where people felt like they didn't want to they didn't want the world to end as if they didn't want to clear it because then that world would be over next I'm going to talk about Muramasa the demon blade as you may know this is a Japanese themed swordplay action RPG the motif is very Japanese

there are 108 swords in the game this number of swords is significant as the number of 108 is known as the number of earthly desires human beings are born with in Japan also the Oni characters that appear in the game were created to be different from augers that originated in the West I often see Oni translated as ogres but I like to treat Oni as the Oni and designed them as such as for the characters that appear in Buddha Massa

there are some Japanese there are some characters that Japanese people will recognize in the Japanese version the conversations were written in such a way that it would be slightly difficult to understand even for a Japanese person let me just give you a quick example the girl momo Hema is the princess and the boy only scare Kiska are the main characters momo Hema is a princess and speaks like royalty and Kiska is a ninja so he speaks with the trilling edica style dialect in addition in the case of momo himesh she'll take on other souls which also caused her to switch up the way she speaks so even if

the situation presented in front of them is the same between these characters depending on which role they play we change up the way they talk and the way they grow also in the game there are lots of edible things and items that appear along the way it said that the all foods it said that all foods contain life energy called psyche and foods that are special even have a soul by eating them Inc by eating the food the main characters gain its strength from seiki and uses that strength to increase the power of their blades in terms of the setting it takes place during the Gandil

ku era which encompasses the Edo period it covers the latter years of the 17th century and into the 18th at the time fatty tuna or as we know it here poodle was not valued like it is now the less fatty red meat was actually more valuable and maguro sushi the tuna sushi was not very expensive at all at the time they also started farming sea bream and flounder so while the prices were high they could buy them we

wanted to show food world that is different from what we know today but of course this world did not actually exist this is still Japanese styled fantasy world just like in rune factory however by injecting some realistic elements into the world it made it much easier to play and believe also we made it so that you can change characters at anytime as well as change difficulties that will we wanted players to be able to pick their own route and play the way they want having player choice is what makes games different from other mediums so I'm

going to talk a little bit about the emphasis on action even though we're talking about RPGs I often make RPGs and simulation games but I feel that there needs to be an emphasis on action within these games because they're meant to be games that you play for a very long time you almost have to have controls that feel even better than actual action games for example let's say if it takes a very very long time to close a window to the point you get irritated and then on top of that whenever that window closes it makes a weird system noise you would think that as you play

you'll get used to it but in reality the stress actually begins to build until it gets to a point where players may actually stop playing or they may just end up hating the game altogether even though they actually like the game the inside of the game not everyone who plays games is a hardcore fan this may not apply to a lot of you here today but it is true and so because of this you really have to emphasize good action but I think for me perhaps this comes from

my roots I worked on many action games and fighting games in the past and to just give you an example when you have a character jump you don't just repeat the same up-and-down movements you need to have acceleration to feel it or when you punch you get the punch to feel good by having the punch come out very very quickly followed by a slower reset I learned a lot of this through trial and error I think this kind of tuning in relation to timing is something that I still value so now I'm going to talk a little

bit about the volume and flow of information using a specific example that you see here when making a game the Creator must control the amount of information along with the course of development or progress of the game in my early days when I was designing a stage in an arcade game I thought of this gimmick the ground splits halfway through as you can see and beneath it lays a pool of magma if you proceed straight the path is a dead end and there's a switch by explaining the

elements in this fashion and not overthinking it one may wonder and something's going to happen if I put on the switch right but when we actually did a focus group the reaction confirmed that it was wishful thinking I thought for sure the players return on the switch but I was wrong instead they plunge right into the magma that's an instant game over and many felt it was pretty unreasonable so instead of instantly dying we adjusted it so you would gradually lose health but that actually didn't do much either in fact they would run into the magma even more and would die one after another in this case in addition to not

being able to understand what to do there was simply just too much going on we were asking for more decisions to be made than one can handle so there was a dead end there was a switch enemies were approaching and then he had magma these conditions made it very difficult to figure out what your next move was going to be by adjusting the condition of magma from instant death to loss of health it's possible to say that the players briefly forgot about what to do with the switch and ran right into the magma and stayed instead in the end we didn't want to scratch the idea so we added the word pool to the switch and assign that command to the controller stick as if you were actually pulling there may have been other ways to solve this but when the players finally understood it I learned two things how challenging it is to communicate your intentions to the player and the relief

and joy when you succeed at doing just that in RPGs there are various missions and side quests in a way this is a result of needing to control the amount of information presented to the player when players leave a game they often forget where they left off unlike a movie as we just mentioned earlier and when there is too much information they can't figure out what to do maybe a week will go by and you you may start to forget about the story because of these situations the developer must streamline how the information is not forgotten but

remembered and create invisible like staircase for the player basically to guide them in doing so there's no need to prepare every single step or hold their hands for them the players should be able to figure out the more important things so I just touched on side quests but I'm going to take it one step further for example there's a remedy medicine in the location of the forest so you head out and then along the way there is a

village where you collect information and ultimately you return to the castle if that quest is made exactly how I explained it it'll become very repetitive and eventually boring no fun so what if we change it to enter the neighboring village then someone leaves in need of the cure when you finally arrive at that force the person has fallen and if you return to the castle you find out that the person was trying to get the cure for his girlfriend the girlfriend is in the village the flowchart I know might be a bit confusing but in this scenario were able to link the village and the castle as well as the relationship between the two people this way you feel less obligated to do the quest just for the sake of

doing them as such it becomes less tiring and boring when you shape your idea in a circular form additionally rather than really realizing you've been fooled or tricked this approach gives a deeper sense of gameplay in RPGs the cycle or circular movement applied to the story as well as the system helps to keep things at an exciting pace and when that happens we are sometimes pleasantly surprised by the unexpected moves and plays performed by the user so a little bit about making RPGs and where are they headed when you really really think about it people don't really have to play games there's really no inconvenience to us if they're not around but personally I think they are necessary and I hope you feel the

same way since we're all here today the thought though is that it's no fun if they come out as expected in a way by implementing ideas that are different or unexpected and unpredictable it'll help make the game something beyond the players expectations it's difficult to know if you'll be able to deliver at that level but you know all you can do is trust yourself so it was the same with room factory internally at the company there were opinions about why we're making the game when we already have Harvest Moon or why are we even adding combat to Harvest Moon we don't

think anyone is wanting something like that people said and we were even more surprised when we publicly announced the game the fans didn't want a Harvest Moon or you wield a sword it wasn't easy and it was a very unusual situation to have very very few allies who understood my plan I was in a very awkward position in the case of Muramasa the development of the game itself went smoothly but because of the Japanese motif and I'm talking about very traditional elements many thought this wasn't going to be an easy sell overseas and also even in Japan however because we went all out

with a Japanese fantasy theme and setting rather than trying to accommodate a western style or elements players overseed overseas said the game was fantastic so if you believe in it you can create a path for it and you'll have a sense of accomplishment the most important thing is if you don't believe in it it won't be communicated to the player but if and when they do get it it's the best feeling especially when the players get something that was rejected by others they get it and then those who rejected my idea they didn't initially get it that moment

that sense of feeling it can get very very addictive and that's probably why I can't stop making games even though it requires a lot of stamina and strength to make an RPG isn't really that difficult is what I think but however if you're serious about making one you need to find some friends so come along the ride with you as well as an idea and obviously some knowledge it can be over the top or something realistic that was the same situation for me for

room factory and Muramasa I had a group of friends who believed in the idea that I presented to them and if there's something you feel is missing slightly off or inconvenient and RPGs that are available in the market today you might be able to come up with something entirely different or new just by tweaking that one element even for myself if it weren't for an idea I had one day to make an RPG I probably wouldn't have made this many RPGs and I wouldn't be standing here today in front of you if there's one person after this session who's inspired to make an RPG that's at least a new beginning for them

right for me I want to continue to provide excitement and entertainment and I also want to be happy at the same time with what I've accomplished I have a list of ideas I want to challenge and world the settings I want to create back in the days there was a game unrelated to harvest moon where the overseas publisher requested us to change the second playable character to a male character originally the game had one male and one female playable character as part of the process of what we call

culture ization as much as we wanted to respond to their expectations because it was a game where I wanted both the male and female characters to have a chance I want both characters to enjoy the game I want to bring a smile to everyone as long as we're making games I want people to be happy and enjoy the games that becomes my motivation and every time I see I see that and see the feedback it keeps me long hours at work and I want to continue to spend my time making games what would be sad for me is if

people stopped playing games as long as people loved playing games and they want to explore and experience new games I will continue to make games in closing I have a few stories to tell about Harvest Moon as you all know this is published by net submit the publisher out here in the West I myself have and still continue to visit farms in various parts of Japan what are they growing what kind of vegetables are in season I just like to

check in and see what the land is like but one day I hope to do the same out here whenever I have a chance to talk to the farmers I'm reminded of their dedication and hard work but it wouldn't make sense to simply turn that into a game just how challenging it is and how hard it is and the dedication these farmers have so while including some of the hardships and lessons in the game I make sure there's a great deal of satisfaction while playing when I included a cultivation method in the game where you go to different crops in the same year there's an actual farmer

who contacted me he asked me if I really knew how that method worked what does that mean well he asked me if I was aware that the soil loses its nutrients during harvesting and that land actually starts to deteriorate well you know of course I did know about the fact that but if I were to reimagine the entire process step by step the true process in real life it would have been a little too difficult so what I did was I applied the part I thought was interesting and fun and fitting for the game as with the RPG topic earlier I left an element of

realism in the game it's been about 17 years since the first Harvest Moon game was released and we still continue to receive letters and feedback from our users a parent we write and say my child was plowing a field in the game and it brought a smile to my face I started laughing I've never seen my son do that in real life these letters instantly make me want to make a bunch of these games and I feel very lucky as a creator and that is why I make games another cute story I heard several years ago is when a child raised in in the city saw an insect die he told his mom that the battery died not the incest and

when I heard that I thought to myself even if it's a game maybe he can learn something about insects or other subjects that exist in real life so he doesn't grow up thinking that insects can be recharged like a battery we've also had users share their thoughts on how sad it is that animals get sick in the game but instead of condemning the players that this happened because you didn't care for the animals you know I would take a slightly different approach by communicating the obvious and a much more natural way I realized our culture's are different in Japan and in the West in general and what specific subjects such as farming but one day I hope to make an RPG and a Harvest Moon game that goes with the different cultures thank you very much thank you so we have about ten minutes left and we

like to open it up for Q&A so if anyone has any questions there are two mics one on the left on the right and if you could just walk up to the mic and ask the question we'll go ahead and ask mr. Hashimoto and get the answer from him and translate that as well okay hello I was wondering JRPGs sometimes have a bit of a of a reputation here in in America for occasionally talking a little bit too much like going

on a little bit more that then isn't necessary but then conversely some people accuse the the American audience of being interested in nothing but shooting the next guy as quickly as possible do you have any opinions on how much like dialogue and Story 2 to gameplay is the correct ratio or how how do you think that should be approached

I it isn't a dream I thought I tested on this girl what'd you do something about a repeat customer it's a scenario mano a mano marks on the authority oh it's an action Abubakar stay listen story they're not so I just want to quickly recap the question which is yes and JRPGs there's a reputation of just too much chatter too much dialogue and then but conversely in the West you know you go out and just shoot people so what where's that right balance to do we think there is in terms of story versus non story listener and I sort of thought is net and budgets are the same

cool buddy I don't have to do that buddy Johanna it's good scenario hater in this there are therapies you know it's not even that I don't so with room Factory and and harvest moon even though they may not all be JRPGs I I do agree I tend to agree that there's maybe a little too much dialogue

so yes so admitting that I do agree that the dialog tends to be a little too long in JRPGs I myself I not only play J games but I make sure that I know you know what's going on in the West and I do play shooters like Call of Duty and yes there's a considerable amount of difference and there's a huge gap but I'm very I'm always conscious about the radio the ratio of the right balance and for example with Muramasa we really tried hard to make it into a compact whether it's a sentence a line or you know a part of the story we wanted to make sure that we communicated what we wanted to in a certain scene or a level but to try to keep it compact so that it

was a well balanced game yeah thank you hello I thought it was curious how you were talking about when you first started working on rune factory how you didn't have a lot of allies in the company and then when you brought it to Harvest Moon fans they didn't seem to be too keen on the idea of adding combat to the Harvest Moon formula so I'm wondering who it was who ended up purchasing rune factory was it Harvest Moon fans who were turned on to the idea of adding combat or was it a new audience that weren't Harvest Moon fans that wanted that that experience

[Music] so I'm just going to quickly recap so you are curious to which what type of users do we gain a new audience new user base for room factory or did a significant portion of Harvest Moon fans and that's purchasing and trying room

factory that is the question correct hi it will equal to this name so need 20 to put it on wrong you know what the harvest don't talk to a nice gesture after I see use that the harvest or no use a goddess name no secret there there is anatomist Akash harvest on one mo so what the doctor said we see an America that's it a your condom hours so when we first announced the title so from announcement - maybe pre-release leading up to the release I would say that we had new users so non harvest moon interested consumers and users were

keeping up with the information that we were releasing from time to time and then once a game hit the shelves the Harvest Moon fans they started to obviously read about the reviews of the game and I think they had this sort of inkling about okay if this has enough elements that resonate with me since I'm a harvest moon fan that I should probably give it a try and so now that you know we we have both series and we could talk about kind of the merged audience and in a I do feel that the earlier Harvest Moon fancier fans they feel that it's it's a nice balance it's quite a nice balance of blending the elements from Harvest Moon with the new elements serving for the room factory type game so I would say that maybe it's about half and half right now um hello a

common thread I've noticed in many of your games is the relationship building factor like you will find NPC you will fall in love with them and eventually that will have significance on the gameplay and story I'm wondering what it is about this element you enjoy and how you think it adds to the games and engages the players

okay so thank you for this question I'm I'm flattered and so I want to say thank you for asking me this question but yeah it is it is a core element or core theme so I'd like to go ahead and answer please do like it also does not show me

much good day dunno there it was rock so no honkies so no no no cafetorium without the reaction we have 39 us keyed up this is Karina isn't it you know they also know York Johannes good day so I can't guess I'm up of caucus title game oh don't don't what's critical not to use our domains so one thing that probably has is important to me as to why I'm emphasizing this sort of relationship building is that prior to working on these games I had a lot of experience building action games and maybe fighting games and in those types of games there's not a whole lot of this relationship building and it's really more about the setting and where you're at and you know who your opponent is so I think the root of my desire and my intent sort of comes from there so it's a different type of approach that I'm

taking right a boy Cooper striker ecoboost go to the lowest icon you can store the snare a motootto or Geminids could pass on a character toka under thought you can see their money holding I think some character I can't stay Marconi Sunday damn you oh yeah so no other character cause habit their game Bogart a character tonight I'm there so now you're gonna sue me master Muhammad a how do you coach in Seneca Boston and so that was kind of you know how it all got started but back in the days and even until now and maybe this is more of a Japanese thing I'm not sure but

originally we when we started receiving a lot of fan letters you know they would look at us or the company or the the people behind this game and think oh you know this character these characters actually live in this world and if I send a letter if I send a fan letter that it maybe I can have a conversation with them or I can you know have a relationship with them and shortly after this may or may not come as a surprise to you but there were people who are asking you know - how do I get to speak the language speak the lingo that we are seeing in games in your games and is there a school that I can attend or is there is there any way that I can learn how to speak the language because I want to build this relationship what the character is that you guys created so that really got me thinking and that you know what some of these people really think that there's a character that they can relate to and they they want to build this very nice relationship with

and I think that just continued to roll on and has naturally become a very core component of our storytelling thank you thank you so I think we can take one last question if that's okay thanks for the presentation you mentioned that in Rome factory you had introduced the farming so that less skilled or maybe less hardcore players would be able to keep up and enjoy the game whereas skilled players could go right ahead go ahead into the dungeons and progress more quickly do you feel that this was a successful solution and are you planning to do something similar in future titles

[Music] yes so just to recap it was in one of the slides earlier but during a very long dungeon path or a crawl that for the

less skilled players that you know like in real life and the marathon that you would have these breakpoints and that they can sort of regain their energy back and then make sure that they don't you know give up and feel that it's pouring or they they need to go back and redo something that that would be a motivating factor to keep them going and the skilled players can you know basically go straight out if they wanted to and if that was effective or not and that if I would be taking a similar approach for other games in the future so what I tried to - cuddle and I know she's only caught a key doctor - - you know what yeah horizontal it system with - noir 100 so that one is called chica Matt's could eat experiment an acting lesson also DeCoteau a Perico yo-yo

non-indigenous America Brazil adaptive tool Yaron optimal you see Aaron is 20 sorry sorry see attached to our Aaron I stole his name Oliver Stone's cousin in Jersey so as a result yes I think it was very very effective and you know as a creator as a developer were creating content delivering that to the users and what we want to avoid is to say hey this is how you're supposed to do it basically force upon how you're supposed to get through this specific part of the game by doing XYZ I want to make sure that there is some level some extent of player choice so if you're a less skilled player and you feel like oh well this is an option that I can take and you're still getting rewarded you know in a small way every

step you make then that will make that player happy if you're very confident you know you could get through it in one try and there's a reward that's appropriate you know scaled to that type of experience then I think that player will continue to maybe take that approach in the next level in the next dungeon so I just want to make sure that there is an option and that that will be something that will entice the players of varied levels to be able to play our game so yes I do think that it's an approach that it will keep in mind for future games as well so thank you very much thank you for attending today