The Evolving JRPG Audio Culture

[Music] hi welcome optimization ge building or do culture I'm Tom with asthma I designed some 15 years and vagrant story and Final Fantasy series I was sound designer audio director son she's an artist in eleven twelve and thirteen through G also I am in charge of audio engineering of Dragon question and I'm supervising the audio drawing classes are also not was in short I have been

involved in JRPG audio for yes oh and you might have guessed by now but I'm not a great English speaker I had to write my best this so please no claims about my bad english in session on those kazama-kun the others I'm gonna run to the tokugawa somatic do you conjugate sound program model a cool car some guys open Amos so he might start speaking Japanese like that so I'm gonna translate in that case and hi I'm yuuichi I'm Nadia programming squeenix I joined squaring seventeen five years ago I worked on fine 11 to 13 to the lighting

insurance Kingdom Hearts HD Dragon Quest and some lots of JRPGs and I just I'm just mentioned infinite years but I was like in third or fourth grade back then so not demoscene to the history of development but I'm going like talk about what's going on the present time and the technology and help him in English I guess okay angry going stories including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest screenings has created numerous RPGs the all over the world are jrpgs and have developed the discounting culture I have been able the RPG development as audio

engineer and audio director for 19 years and through that experience I have encountered many this crisp distances between what is down here abroad I will go I will be going into the details later in the session but some of them are music that is constantly being played the point of folks in Amazon's characterization in voice sound system sound effects in this session we like to

introduce the techniques peculiar to Japan some of genes may seem unnatural to you but I will be bringing new ideas and points of focus to the developers from all over the world is going to make the future of game audio beretta Elijah today I am looking for to study various discussion about the Japanese creativity first let's ricotta JRPG box since the

RPGs in the ages of Nintendo players explore the world still innocent the characters unchallenged strong enemies to retaining and today the basic process is it unchanged unchanged well actually I am sure most games work like this not just J RPGs and as geranyl RPG the process is storage to be divided in story section

explanation section button section animal and completing mission is the basic rule of the game in RPGs the game is driven by the story from the opening to the ending the player had control but it is the control to see Oh turn the page I would say it's like reading a book or seeing a movie this is a tunnel in Japan and games such as Dragon Quest Final Fantasy representative cases of this the diagram

here shows how there may be some options for the player to proceed the story but those options are limited by the game designers and of course do not affect the story at all you can see that this is working to a different direction compared to the worsen RPGs whether games a game is doable by player players as our character existing in the butterworth we enjoyed the load play

next let's talk about JRPG up to the present time when JRPG is a spread latest title of the season most of them do not expect something completely brand-new but look at how it has involved from the previous G's are seeing in us tag game process button system and one to explain this phenomenon in Quang work it tarisha JRPG series such as Dragon Quest

and fire hunters have continued to build up on the previous project adding new features were keeping the good part of the sheath so we have the latest cutting-edge creativity into the traditional and historical game play it the same in the technology aspect as well this JRPGs have tendency to be always compared to other games of the same general genre and so every developers complete compete for the new ideas take especially for audio history

many ancient engineering how come out in JRPGs and I believe the RPGs have introduced just many new game of audio future to that work let's break down his old by ha dong she hug JRPGs deeper through the ages let's start with a Nintendo a su Paladino at kernel Nintendo Super Nintendo more I have to stop this deal okay how many of you have developed something on Nintendo Super

Nintendo could you raise your hand oh-ho-ho-ho-ho the gender he was still a user back then uh squared a Super Nintendo Sega no Hudson to guinea Booga New Zealand a Sanka Colorado when he joined the screen for developing the last of the Super Nintendo games so he didn't just actually during the development no more oh good oh she [Laughter] raised the hand right now is P the games of this time is where game audio alternating by this time Final Fantasy

and Dragon Quest already became popular to be the representative titles of Japanese games g2 JRPGs adapted the common bubble schism and up till today JRPG developers have kept this at the standard while bringing innovation to it jus the hardware limitations back at this time gromek rendering was nothing near realistic so to bring the user into the story music took important learning assistant graphics and sorry this is why

music 4G gained highly emotional and melodious and also it is noted that the length of the music containing the file size at that time is rather long many creative ideas were invented to cover the lack of simultaneous notes and the number of tracks to our larger considering the storage on the other hand sound effects were mostly couples

will note our basic Ravens simple and small in quality next game precision decoding their musical instruments were adapted but at this time but at least music was still programmed of sequence data JRPGs require large quantity of music tracks but media stone it was not enough for storming decoded trucks in

this time of history attempt for the LG such as stopping the music and playing the ambient sounds only women however BGM had already became a prerequisite in the Nintendo Super Nintendo games and many users Harper had being excited for it so such attenti at many times concept as baru both music stopped stopped for some reason since then some kind of music is

always being break played in everything also sound effects have started to be important not only the Corti but the quality quantity and number of simultaneous pre-work in has also from the emergence of music movie scenes the directors started to require audio rendering like the movies in the shutters up for bosses the storage was not quite enough yet to be used throughout the game and only in movies

scenes characters spoke the lines but to use the to elaborate the characters what equal button bosses were implemented you each will describe later [Laughter] but this became the standard in JRPGs this is when game not on the audio changed drastically my position one give ticking game you know stutters generally so the time of the place in was when the game changed a lot talking our pizza

Monica okay omit American culture talk did so the visual aspects for RPGs changed so much during this time next era of precision and Xbox everyone started to learn around methods of movie production and I believe this is the time where everyone started to look for better quality in audio because JRPGs require two three times as a number of sound files compared to other genre of games many in-house tools were created

to cut down the cost but at this time almost neutrals were used that is tools were developed for each and every project every time two tools the increase in storage help the audio quality tremendously every characters were boys boys movies became 5.1 channel also for results and methods developed in the movie scene in corporate oh yes

this is with the amount of interface the sense good exponentially as many interfaces such as character making became complex the use of certain time in the menus increased and more and more some effects were necessary to not just avoid redundancy but to establish the part of the game world in the menus game right from the factors such as emergence of MMORPGs the airtime action became the

main story so some aspects of JRPGs such as common style battles struggled to accommodate to the Parliament this was truly the age of technical innovation as an example in final fantasy 12 we were unsatisfied with fact the only movies were in 5.1 hundred and youth project to have certain environment throughout the game my piece to tear our nose around

ocuzi I picked a movie scene took our goat in channel 5.1 sorry no true in my sound came in and he was so how many will you have surround sound system at home when you play games kick boy there oh he won't take it was a vine there no I'm Michael speak of it back until the higher night 900 Thank You MA I know high up today sorry nanny machine dildo the high end of a game the tall man apart surrounded extent you can act a not so as you might know in Japan there's not much space for the surround speakers so most people use sound

headphones he said and that's getting popular in Japan like the high for the high in games we have to go like make the sound and surround so and this is when that was that tradition or that was starting to come in ormally what last of the history section comes precisely the xbox360 everything regarding to audio can now be landed in high quality I remember feeling that all in the in

education indication in other cases well remove cutting also ameliorated in QWERTY including a seamless reaction to user input as a result the number of pre learned early planted movies disk reads the decrease sound effects were required to be realistic and to be synchronized with user input also due to the quantity whisker estimation procedure techniques

were quickly incorporated addition we were able to use in-game material in cutscenes somewhat discs recent production steps however technical issues issues door optically became more complex to manage the copious number of audio materials cutscenes and ambient sound layouts used to be done by no audio sections of third team but with the enhancement of developing the development tools totals

G's processes are now concluded within the audio section this eco story helps in the brochure place where audio sections can make modifications at the hands counting in digits of 10,000 soldiers managed in database named mobile clinics it is distinguishable from the postal workflow that died including hydropower deserted in increasing production cost and the robots had have focused on decreasing

the total cost with the technology leading to higher quality and also mulch an environment is getting popular in most part of the game market but in Japan the market share of surround audio system is not a big as it it's a lot so in final fantasy xiii on unity we have theorized hybrid architecture to achieve high quality in both still our surround my precision wattage cannot all ran under the wall

PlayStation 4 is coming up so someone please do something in the next year that'll eat all that so you've seen the history right now and we're gonna go into the present and and see what's going on right now I'll break down the JRPG audio into three categories music sound effects and dialogues and how they were done and how the technology supports it there you go so first is music I'm sure avian loves the music so Western Games has the tendency to focus and creating the realistic and first wedding virtual world to bring the user into the game into the world in contrast JRPGs focus how deep they can bring to the story not like the world or the game so many GRP users cannot stop playing the game once they started this is because therapies are

created so that the users always want to know what's going to happen next next patient to say so music in JRPGs has a role to induce the users mind in factory by elaborating the characters emotions it allows the players supporting empathize with the characters ok here are some characteristic of therapies music ok some kind of music is constantly playing charities like yes miss I mentioned this is an asylum Japan there are many fans in the computers themselves and as a result the soundtracks becomes enormous when we often hear from the users abroad that this sounds nothing nearly like reality do you agree but I believe this is the thing an effective method to bring the user into the fantasy so barren music like techno rock or vocal songs is used

to build up the ants pitch in the game but a grandiose orchestral sound is almost always used at the stable scenes of JRPGs orchestral music is used to meet the players expecting expectation leading into deeper immersion into the scene or somehow this is Venice tradition also the percentage of emotional music tracks is is high in GRPs like short psychological sounds like in the Western games they're almost never used and instead melody is the most important thing in JRPGs and okay and they can deeper into the music so we have different jobs yeah yeah musics one is the custom music that's gonna create the empathy between the characters and users and we have the LaBelle exploration music and be called a field music or

feel BGM in this phase a boy and music use is to connect a part of their story to another and we heard the bell music this is the favorite of many music many JRPG music fans so there's different music for different maps different music or boss monsters right now the area acting music has came into the bell music and RPGs and now we switch between depending on how when how the player is winning or losing in the battle chains this is going to reuse the redundant barrels some what I think is good ok so no we're in Jerry piece the music stops well you know except for the now loading screen and because of that Jerry piece heavy bolts make this more natural and I

mentioned the big I mentioned a bit when I talk about Bella music but developments can actually changes and also to introduce how it's done in Final Fantasy and it's called what do you this we call it multi-layered musics transition system well here's an example of how here there are some example the transitions like fuel music cross-fading similar chattering - gala music calling back to heal music and from where left off and play players say enthused by the melody of music excited to know what's going to happen next so in the layers according to layer data music commands are done automatically to crossfade pause or jumped in always in the track because there are some cases

that the previous music must be continued from LF left off number of layers times two tracks are always available so each of the six in this case so three layers time sooth are synchronized and control of the play fade jump or pause depending on the command and this behavior is defined by the game designers or the sound designers and programs like us just provides the environment and the tools what's important here is how the player received this change in melody we change the melody for PvE the players understand what's going on in the game right now and brought deeper into the story so I probably do and I'm an example of the music lost the clear sea

[Music] [Music] Evo has a price [Music]

busy busy busy busy no music and Cortez I will take my book on a cookie with it so that was one minute but we had the fuel vision the enemy getting closer vo BGM back to the normal field BGM into the barrel music and to the fanfare that was one minute going on next are the sound effects so the basic idea would sound the hexie are same all over the world and they are made to make the oil much more fierce waiting as the visual aspect of the game advanced through the ages so did the sound effects so and you may think that there are many difference between JRPGs and games the games in the Western world but

some of these are something you'll never see in others okay here are the characteristics and first of them are interface sounds that's very complicated easy and we call them a system yet sound effects they actually and they count over 200 per game and sound designer thing is to control their behavior while various UI control being done so over here the players and consciously discovered the part of the world and the menu is not just in the game and next is the design of the ambient sounds it's and music is always being playing therapies as I just explained and ambient sound must be effective enough within the music so soundless iris meticulously strived you can connect the sound to the object on the levels waterfalls fires waves and whatever

during the past aquarium is ik ambient sound sounds going to increase their presence and players will hear the layout sound of the ambience as they see on the screen I think it's interesting that the wallah is in western games or so done like this but instead in JRPGs we have Wallace just being looped and recently we to adapt to the countless amount of sound effects and increasing among sound effects automations for Wells triggering and dairying sound in run times being done in the game consoles in square enix sound effects are starting to be generated and triggered automatically even without any designers or game scripts working on yeah this makes the various such sound possible without increasing the manpower

so here are some technologies that if he went all the technology of a sound specs it's gonna take a few hours and so I'm gonna pick up like a two out of the many okay this is a part of a list of the interface sounds in Final Fantasy 13 can see a lot I'm sorry saying Japanese but you sure you can count the numbers okay so in JRPGs setting interface for equipment parameters magic and whatever best in the game exists independently and know not only the menus select full interface everywhere in Japanese like the battleship just scene so the sound effects becomes the hint what the user is doing right now you may think they're having so many different soundtracks I

just counted 200 straight among different interfaces will cause confusion but these are carefully designed by the sound designers so that the sound effects in the same category like selecting sounds casting the sound share the same characteristics but even when the design even with that design sounds nice can I control what the user is going to do and when you guys so sound designers can program the behavior with system sounds with this design we create the interface of JRPGs to be fun to listen to this is actually where some sound designers like a Jameson spends most of their time in one of the latest technology in sound effects are the procedural sound triggering and generators five years ago in GDC years Messiah actually introduced

masks ma ma STS automatic sound training system for character motion other than that we have our menus triggering for passing the object where mass is used to compute the best-fitting sound for the passing object very family is changed in special moves and battles and more it's been researched right now also runtime generators are under research as well some of them include crashing sounds rocks explosions footsteps whether your car engines and more I think the benefit of these technology done in-house that we have native application tools visual debugger implementing the game system the audio program is like us in the company always try for high usability for these tools so sound effects I think where the technology prospered most and

the newest technologies in like Final Fantasy 15 or Kingdom Hearts 3 that's being developed right now last of the 3-yard of dialogues dialogues are the youngest of three categories as the adjacent mentioned in the history section this was not used to until the media surge was large enough and as the storage size grew naturally the number of voice files increased as well then with all the characters having the voice of their own gets more such and more sensible existence of the characters that they're here with the players okay there are main distinct characteristics here but all of them connected one word characterization in English dialogues diet dialects are used to show characters background like where they are from but Japanese voice is our own soy Steiner standard dialect what is

special Japanese dialogues are there many play on words like the special end of the sentence word like kupo and Mughal in Final Fantasy I brought some voices here and in English he sure is kupah she's working to create his very own new universe kupo I'll be right here cheering for you with all my money kuba so I'm sure you notices Coupole is like coming out from nowhere makes some kind of sense in Japanese buzz makes no sense in English right so I'm sure the local ice team is having some lots of trouble for this second one is the Bell voices when the player attacks gets damaged or have something action or reaction in the battles some kind of voice gets played in Japanese games when this is missing

mostly you having users thing feel disappointed in recent scenes this is getting more sophisticated actually to interact with the current shoot what's going on the battle right now oh I'm sorry yeah other characteristics therapies dialogues voice actors and actresses mainly due to the popularity animus the actors and actresses have many fans of their own and actually one of the reasons for the users to buy a game in Japan is because they want to hear the voice actor and the extras have seen the game okay so each of the actors have their own characteristics as well so this has a great effect on game characters as well when they're boys this okay and whoops

what's that okay I'm gonna come out sorry I'm losing the crisis okay what's next okay and of course we have to mention number and JP is the main characters are very passive in stare speech and that's going to increase the number of the lines and NPCs this implies that numb so the NPC said those who it's going to actually guide the storyline this implies that the numbers of line including NPCs the copious very quickly compared to any other genre give games to keep the worker for dialogues fast and low in cost database so that all small toy users simultaneously anything

used so I just mentioned some of the technologies but we're going to technologies of the dialogues so database what do we call a mobile it's used it's used to streamline massive amount lines during IDE label for script files linking audio sub-type subtitles translation code as dictionary management functionalities and can has simultaneous editing and viewing sport there was a session two years ago about this so you can check it out any balls just like the system is these sound effects I showed earlier Bella voices - are categorized mythical see and use

Prairie control system to speak the line that matches what's going on in the panel for this even the short excerpt such as yeah or @oc in Japanese games and may vary and be versions to express the state of mind for the characters in addition there are longer line to yell out the special moves in Japanese games obviously this will create a long list of battle voices to record okay so we went through three categories and let's see them all happen again [Music]

[Music] [Music] time to repent [Music]

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I've got something important to discuss with you - oh shut the point

it's ketchup thank you oh thank you thank you so much yeah coming back there you go so as I click over the categories the music is in charge of players emotions and the sound effects are there to create the environment and

voice plays a huge role and the sense of existence and characterization well with that said that's all forever we have in the present time and but what's going to happen in the future I believe we are prayer is going to be more active yeah I mean passive players adults who just received the story of the RPG the players will not now just not get the story but actively make action to go find the story they are looking for because Western games many steps ahead in such satisfying what user think should be corrupted in the butterworth I'm sure the Japanese games will be

following the current without losing the identity of JRPGs but it is difficult to change the story ending in RPGs so the past the ending is going to be adjusted according to users actions audio earth not changed drastically as deserved but with the change in the games it is going to ingest the users to make more action in the way each of the players own to happen in the game with that conclusion so so what's the

difference between the game in and out of Japan and we leave its freedom in intervals given the history and the role of audio calories in games you say that JRPGs or Brendan are rendered in such way that the players were strongly empathize with the characters and the story from the denotation of the role-playing game the Western games are much closer to Orson the original meaning in the Western games I won't feel that concrete stage the world for the players to freely play around it's a table tie aspect in them it is common that the complete thing the missions will reveal the story but the gameplay of the mission itself is the main focus and the story is more in the background and a and the reinforcement comparative JRPGs had missions to perceive story scenario is the main experience for the players and gameplay existed supported its opposite for example you're playing

the game and you see your door and has a doorknob and you're gonna expect that that's going to open right but nine JRPGs because it doesn't matter and it doesn't matter it's the story doesn't change if you can't open airy open that and there are always such tradition cliche scenario planning JRPGs how the characters collect information character gets in stronger and defeating the boss monster this of course decreased degree of freedom in JRPGs but users are more you just want the cliche another way to put this is Western games the player is that character character character himself but in JP Easter players is someone who experience a story was that with the characters I hope now you see why we kept meshing like reading a book or seeing a movie and finally oh we are

always looking at these difference when we develop games for the world and see how we can make the game enjoyable for everyone on the planet today we can discuss the years about how we can make the game more enjoyable so we're looking for more and more opportunity to discuss with everyone here the creators from all over the world do you find therapies and other games to for everyone in the planet to enjoy thank you so much for coming here and if you have any question oh thank you q if you have any questions please come up to Mike

so you guys are working on kind of sound effects for JRPGs or any kind of standards or rules you go by cuz they all seem to have a very similar sound like weapon attacks monsters menu UI so with a process for that process where please can you sing again JRPG sound effects in general like the more kind of exaggerated ones they don't get in western games mm-hmm you know like really meaty sword sounds when he hit things and all the crazy explosions during special attacks so what's the process for the ideas behind like creation creating the sounds creating a sound before JRPGs can record something or would you record RPG there I gonna go to kick me and all neat

Jamaica correlating Conan a little sooner Cooney no Boone cadet I've gotten a new Google Talk - well do you - still Final Fantasy VII in a 14 by the day today more sunshine and scary Final Fantasy do some diggin they do so much finer one touch that refinement as a coatl hematite amo Nova who shot a guy today San Gennaro big cigar they are busy no Barocco omakase no RPG cara cara so you wanna be tell what suppose I got so he's not quite sure actually because

he's but he's guessing that there's like thirty years of history in the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest the tradition is going around for someone so he's like missing his sound effects on the previous final fantasy dragon quest and building on it does that answer your question [Laughter] so a lot of Western users tend to get a little JRPG battles often feature a sort of dialogue repetition F after a while like there's a single sound file for a special attack call-out for example or there are a total of three I'm getting ready to it attack voice clips and these tend to repeat quite often over the

course of an entire game and I know that a lot of Western users tend to get quite tired of that after a while do you often take that into consideration when trying to do voiceover design and is the the perception of that the same in in Japan or do you think that's a bit differently received or how do you handle sort of voiceover repetition fatigue so how do you the question is how do you avoid voiceover repetition how do you avoid voiceover petition fatigue right yeah okay okay which requires continued sakuya no kaigan is that it's creating this you know trio do at the to congrat you come home at all sabine night or not even access a

machine the cogito someone called you in Japan maybe you just want to hear the voices but the westerns users the opposite right I want much dialogs happening so he saying that he's going to decrease the number of dialects in the next [Laughter] hello and thank you hi I wonder if you could talk a little bit about pitch and musical pitch or sound effects design pitch yes because it seems like in many modern Final Fantasy games that I play there is a lot of pitch matching for sound effects especially with music and sometimes it showed up in the last

battle since the end that we saw with lightning there and often that's difficult if you have a lot of different sound effects or a lot of different types of music to match sound effects with and I was wondering if you can maybe talk a little bit about pitch that importance for sound effects design so the question is how they match Celotex pitch with music right well making decisions on that because it seems like there are many sound effects there that were pitched where this similar sound effect heard in a western game would not be pitched I see so no sound the heck to go count yeah Contador bye-bye with any music that's so nice design your own kind of sound Moskva

music everything's kinda at all cool some do have to design good scan negative cool you're stuck with a Epperly could cancel on too girly so good a sound effect on whole day is commonly as know whose austerity monopoly then tied in medical a conjugated JRPG talks on them which they are you could easily hire you may be hundreds killed I mean yeah I could all sit on the market annuities [Laughter] okay how straight hands like this so the

melody is the important money JRPGs like we just explained right so when the music is kind of boring the user wants is something like some kind of L did you happen and the sound effects are in charge of that so and well of course they the composer and the sounds there is it taught so they didn't crash but but I guess that's the reason Carol you know yeah sometimes okay and he wants know why that doesn't happen games to

Tokyo canal big boom you denied a scientific toning up running the same only inflation to see a little tone at all so moqueca Coco you can knock you guys an attic there and talk about you know why he's only Keiko so in the parent sound is just doesn't work alone so there's there's like the poorest and that so ambiguous and sound that it's workers the plan area sounds and sorry the composers and sometimes the result is MPs too but the result is the sheriff use thank you Wow you have any more questions please go to wrap up room and we'll be there

thank you so much thank you [Applause]