-The Type-Moon fanbase is much larger than what Niino was prepared for. He wasn't expecting his new studio's name to be trending on Twitter the day it was announced. Now he got a feel of the scope of his project and the pressure is big.
-Niino's first contact with Type-Moon was 13 years ago. After finishing Etrian Oddysey, he needed a new project to start working with and since he was a huge Tsukihime, he asked Type-Moon to let him make a Tsukihime game for Atlus. Type-Moon said no because they were focusing on the Fate/ side of the franchise at the moment.
-Later, when Niino was already working at Image Epoch, he went back to his idea of making a Type-Moon RPG, but this time he asked about Fate/ instead of Tsukihime because that was more "current" at the time.
-Niino was trying really hard to impress, so he pitched Nasu the most sci-fi project he could: "The solar system's oldest object was discovered on the Moon: the Type-Moon, a 3cm³ omnipotent wish-granting cube." Nasu accepted but changed the name from Type-Moon to Mooncell because it was embarrassing.
CCC was pitched early into /EXTRA's development because Niino is a Sakura fanboy and wanted to make a game where you chase a bunch of Sakura in a dungeon.
-To no one's surprise, the studio was named both as a joke about it being the B studio and for Niino's personal waifu reasons.
-Studio BB's story starts when Niino was at Square Enix and Naoki Yoshida (producer/director of Final Fantasy XIV) says he wants to make a game with Type-Moon. Niino had just finished directing Dragon Quest Builders 2, so he's was ready to have his next project with Type-Moon, but unfortunately, the Square Enix' higher-ups answer was "Ok, but not now". Niino is already past his 40s, so he's worried about how many games can he still make before he retires. At this point, he wants to focus only on games he actually wants to make, so "not now" is not an acceptable answer for him anymore. He explained his situation to Type-Moon and Takeuchi is like "Dude, just work on our place". Suddenly, they start looking for offices for a new studio and made that "We're hiring" thing on the website.
- It's a new separate studio because the roster of employees in the main Type-Moon studio is pretty much the same for the past 20 years and factoring in new people into that could be messy. Also because Niino was advised into developing his games independently (although working together and receiving help from Type-Moon).
-The main Type-Moon studio wants to develop their current series at their own pace, so Studio BB should develop TM titles on a different axis from them. So, no Studio BB speeding up the remake's release. But Niino did tell Nasu and Takeuchi that the game he's currently aiming for will be big enough to compete with the remake when they both release in about 5, 6 years.
-He can't give details about the 3 games Studio BB is producing because they are not in a presentable stage yet. They already started development in August for 1 of them, a mid-sized project in collaboration with another company. Then when the year started, they started the development on the other one, a small-sized project that can be done entirely within the Studio BB. Both of these games will serve as a build-up for the aforementioned Tsukihime-sized 3rd project, both in the TM lore they will present and as way to make the Studio BB team more experienced.
-Niino says is ready to retire if that bigger project is satisfactory. He talked with Nasu and Takeuchi before about how since his days are counted, he has to work only on what he really wants to do and make sure every game counts.
-Studio BB's games will be canon to the Nasuverse and will stay true to all the lore and worldbuilding, but they won't be sequels or spin-offs to any existing title. At least one of them will be almost entirely brand-new stuff.
-We already know enough about the games Niino makes, so the interviewer asks instead about the games Niino plays. He usually about 30 games that he plays without finishing. One he's really enjoying right now is Borderlands 3. He praises its difficulty curve and its Japanese localization.
-The worst thing you can say to Niino is that one of his games was ok. He wants all the players to consider them either really good and a complete trainwreck, no inbetweens. However, when circumstances demand his game to be limited, he redistributes the work in order make the game have at least one part that's really good instead of making the whole game consistently ok. Because he believes no one will want a sequel to a game that was just ok the whole time, but they might want a sequel for a game that had one really good part.
-When asked for an example, Niino says his default response is usually focusing on the OST as the one part to make really, as he believes a good OST can often emotionally carry a whole game and keep the emphasis on the right spots. He goes on a bit more about that, but I don't really understand music enough to explain that part. Sorry. Niino's games do have quite memorable OSTs though.
-Back to the previous question, the interviewer now asks about what Niino played as a kid. The was big fan of RPGs and PC games, but he didn't have a PC to play the latter, so he just collected magazines and imagined what it would be like to play all those games there. People often tell him he knows a lot about old PC games, but he actually just read a lot about them and never played most of them.
-Judging by his work in Etrian Oddysey, the interviewer guessed Niino was a Wizardry fan. He answers he played the Famicom version as a kid and didn't like, but grew to appreciate it a lot as the years came by. But the interviewer was right in his guess that EO was somewhat an attempt to fix everything Niino didn't like about Wizardry. Another recurring trait in his dungeon crawlers is making the first floor of the dungeon the hardest.
-Studio BB's team is was 7 people before the hiring campaign. 1 director, 1 developer, 1 writer, 1 programmer, 1 2D artist, 1 3D artist and 1 project manager. Niino thinks that's enough to make a 2D game, but for a tried his ideal was to hire at least 3 more programmers. The interview was taking before the campaign was over, so we don't know if he managed or not.
-Studio BB's games are current planned to go on the PS4, Switch and PC, but Niino wants them be playable in as many platforms as possible, so he's also considering smartphones, Xbox and Cloud.
-Niino wants his work in Studio BB to be his manner of passing the torch to the future generations, teaching his new employees all he can to keep his style going even after his retirement, sorta like how it was done with Dragon Quest.
-Niino's favorite Type-Moon elements are Dead Apostles and FGO's Wandering Sea.
-The official TM terminology is a big part in making TM games, but many fans are new and there's so many new terms that even a 20 years fan like Niino is finding hard to keep up, so his games will constantly have simple explanations for all the terms, so we can all "study the Type-Moon lore" all over again.
-As we already know, the writer for Niino's games will be Tsukada, who already worked for him making the entire script for both Dragon Quest Builders games. It was a rocky work where the two disagreed a lot, but ultimately they think their constant clash of opinions is what made the DQB good and they want keep doing that for the Studio BB's games.
-Tsukada normally feels a huge pressure from having to write alone for someone as attentive to the script as Niino, and Type-Moon's reputation as story-centric titles only makes it worse, but Nasu encouraged him saying the bigger the pressure, the more the writer gains EXP to level up.
-The most memorable thing Nasu said to Niino when making /EXTRA is to do whatever he wanted, as something that could work as a finale to Fate/ series. He just had to do something that didn't ruin Fate/stay Night's reputation. As a result of his works, Fate/ got a ton of spin-offs and became what the interviewer describes an endless party. To that Niino responds that no party lasts forever. He says Fate/'s 10-year long party is ending and that he wants his work to help setting things up for TM's next 10-year long party.
Originally Posted by BeastXxx
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