Chapter 103: The First FPS
Chapter 103: The First FPS
After leaving development entirely to the development teams, Ras definitely gained quite a bit of free time. Of course, he was still busy with all sorts of business matters. But it was different from when he had to code all day.
“Ah. Mr. Ras, you’re here?”
As soon as the red-bearded Dwarf saw Ras’s face, he greeted him with a very friendly attitude. Part of it was because Ras was a well-known big shot, but the bigger reason was that he was a precious regular customer who boosted his store’s sales.
“Yes. Do you have any newly released games?”
“Ah, yes. As a matter of fact, there’s one game with pretty good reviews.”
Ras had not seen anything particularly unusual in the magazine, so he had asked without much expectation. Hearing that answer surprised him a little and sparked his interest. Of course, this owner was a true merchant, the type who would invent something out of nothing if it helped him sell, so Ras could not fully trust everything he said.
But his sense and skill were just as good, so he stocked everything customers wanted. That was also why many gamers, including Ras, visited often.
“This is it. It’s a newly released shooting game, and they say it’s quite unusual.”
Ras quietly watched as the short Dwarf owner stepped onto a small stool in front of a slightly high display shelf and took down the game. At first, the sight had seemed a little funny and a little pitiful, but he had seen similar scenes so often now that he no longer reacted to it.
“A shooting game?”
It was a Talados game.
Since it was a genre Ras was relatively uninterested in, he felt somewhat lukewarm about it. Of course, as the president of a game development company, it was not as if he never checked them at all.
“Yes. I heard the perspective is a little different. They say the immersion is incredible.”
Ras was only half-listening to the owner as he examined the package, but then his eyes widened when he saw the phrase explaining the game.
<First-Person Shooting Game>
Seeing that phrase made the package cover suddenly look unusual. Instead of showing the whole aircraft from the side or from above, the illustration showed the view from inside the aircraft, looking out while firing a machine gun at flying reptiles that looked like wyverns.
Ras bought it immediately and left the store.
“Thank you! Please come again!”
He had to check it as soon as possible. Ras was thinking only about that, so he barely heard the shopkeeper’s farewell and hurried toward his car.
“What’s wrong?”
Ella wondered what had happened when she saw him hurrying. Even then, he was not exactly rushing in a panic. Someone else probably would not have noticed anything strange. But Ella knew Ras better than anyone else in this world.
Normally, going out to buy games was when he enjoyed his leisure the most. That was why Ella found his slightly different behavior strange.
“Mm. I’m just really curious about this game.”
There was no real reason to make up an excuse, so he told her honestly. Ella looked deflated, as if she had been startled for nothing.
But although Ras had said it partly to avoid making a fuss, if this game truly was what he thought it was, then unlike Ella’s reaction, this was a major event.
Haa…
After returning to the apartment, connecting the Talados to the TV, and running the game, Ras let out a sigh.
It really is first-person…
The game’s setting was a dark space that looked like a canyon. The player’s fighter plane flew through it, avoiding terrain that approached in first-person view while shooting down various flying monsters.
Just hearing that, one might wonder why Ras was so surprised. But with the current graphics performance, creating a three-dimensional sense of distance and showing objects gradually approaching and growing larger was absolutely not easy.
Of course, with a few tricks, it was not completely impossible. And this game seemed to be using those methods. To begin with, the excessively dark background and the terrain outlines being expressed simply through dots and lines were probably some of those tricks.
And Ras was not only talking about the technical aspect.
What truly frustrated him was the title this game could claim.
That was because this first-person shooting game was precisely a “First-Person Shooter,” or FPS.
Ras played the game in a daze for a while.
The game was fun. At first, the forced three-dimensional feel created with insufficient performance was a little frustrating, but he soon became somewhat accustomed to it. Because of the limited graphics performance, his imagination was stimulated instead, which made it quite immersive.
He did not know exactly how they had done it, but the feel of firing the machine gun, the sense of speed from the bullets, and the blood explosions when they hit the monsters all felt quite good.
The sound was also well-made, and the monsters’ cries were represented in a suitably grotesque way. It seemed that while human voices were difficult, this kind of monster roar could be produced reasonably well.
Thinking about it, he should have expected this. In a world where shooting games were popular, there would naturally be attempts to make one in first-person eventually.
It was deeply disappointing.
It was not that Ras necessarily wanted to become the originator of every game, but FPS was a genre he really wanted. Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, and others were games Ras had enjoyed quite a lot, so he had wanted to make a game bearing the title of the first FPS.
But what had already happened could not be helped.
(Translator’s Note: Wolfenstein (울펜슈타인) — Refers to Wolfenstein 3D, an American first-person shooter developed by id Software and released in 1992. It is widely recognized as one of the games that popularized the FPS genre.)
(Translator’s Note: Doom (둠) — American first-person shooter developed by id Software and released in 1993. It became a landmark title for fast-paced FPS gameplay, modding culture, and network multiplayer.)
(Translator’s Note: Quake (퀘이크) — American first-person shooter developed by id Software and released in 1996. It was influential for its fully 3D environments and online multiplayer.)
(Translator’s Note: Half-Life (하프라이프) — American first-person shooter developed by Valve and released in 1998. It became known for integrating cinematic storytelling into FPS gameplay.)
If the quality were terrible, then even now he could make a proper one and say this was the real FPS. But that was not the case.
It was a very well-made game.
Even Ras’s Meta Soft would have had to wander around for quite a while to make something like this. Ras picked up the package and checked the developer’s name.
Superego Soft?
It was an unusual name.
In any case, he needed to remember a place with this kind of technical ability. And deep down, he felt greedy. He thought that if this developer had still been in the middle of development, he might have been able to invest in them or even acquire them outright and turn them into an affiliated developer.
A company with this kind of technical ability was not easy to find.
And considering that more complex games would become popular as computers developed, there would never be enough capable developers, no matter how many he secured. That was especially true for people with such unique technical skills.
This prompted Ras to form a specialized game investment team.
It was not that he intended to swallow every development studio.
Of course, since it was business, they would move with profit in mind. But the main justification was preventing decent games from failing to see the light of day or being released unfinished because of funding shortages.
Another reason was searching for useful developers and development companies, as well as gathering information on trends in the game industry.
“I’ll do my best!”
Martin seemed greatly encouraged by this.
In Meta Soft’s case, the management team was still small, and since Ras himself came from a development background, he often handled matters directly, so the department’s authority was weak. At a time like that, a fairly large block of work had come in, so there was no way Martin would not welcome it.
Moreover, this involved moving quite a large amount of money. And large sums of money naturally created authority of the same scale.
For Meta Soft’s management team, this was work worth getting motivated over.
And since Ras was already strengthening Meta Soft’s management team, he decided to assign them one more task.
That task was managing Meta Soft’s IP.
By “management,” he did not simply mean maintaining control. He meant developing sequels.
Until now, the existing development teams had simply made sequels from time to time. Land of Adventure 2 and Tetris 2 were examples of that.
But there were far too many games waiting to be made.
Moreover, instead of putting development teams with proven ability onto sequels, Ras wanted to use them to develop new games.
But it would be a waste to leave existing hit IPs alone.
In particular, many people were waiting for a sequel to Land of Adventure. Yet as other role-playing games continued to appear, its dominance was being threatened. They needed to release a sequel quickly.
So he thought of forming an entirely new development team to make those sequels.
After all, sequels to existing games already had established fandoms. The guidelines for how they should be made were also already set. Since the difficulty was relatively lower than developing a completely new work, it was a decent condition for assigning a new development team.
There were risks because of that, of course. But Ras judged that rather than making fans wait endlessly in pursuit of a masterpiece, it would be better to at least attempt it this way.
And even aside from sequels, many of the games Meta Soft made recently were designed with various IP uses in mind, so he had already been feeling the need for a specialized management team.
Even now, in the case of Tetris 2 and Bubble Bobble, he was considering making simple stationery products. And Project “Spirit” needed no explanation.
Even while busy with their newly assigned duties, Meta Soft’s management team did not forget their existing work.
“For now, employee morale did not seem bad.”
This was a report from a management team employee who had returned from a business trip to the Brunyad Development Team. He was a male panther Beastman named Pendrano, and although he reported with a respectful attitude, Ras honestly found his pitch-black panther head frightening, which made it slightly hard to concentrate.
“These are the copied work materials.”
Of course, Pendrano did not only report verbally. He also brought tangible materials that could be shown.
After telling him he had worked hard, Ras checked them on the computer.
It was still too early for something playable to exist. However, he could check the illustrations and some source code.
Since Ras was also a programmer, he had no problem judging someone else’s code by looking at it.
The unfortunate part was that all the diligent comments were written in Ruta Language, so he could not understand them. Looking through the code line by line would have no end, so if he could read the comments, he would have understood it more easily.
“Ella. Get me a Ruta Language dictionary later.”
“Okay. Got it.”
The character illustrations were subtle.
They were cute depictions of a bird, snake, and frog. They used primary colors, so they were intense in their own way and not bad, but they felt slightly lacking in character identity.
But why these animals, of all things?
As he was thinking that, he found an explanation of the concept written inside the illustration file.
They were a suicide squad modified by magic to protect the animal kingdom, gaining the ability to lay explosive eggs.
“…”
It was a little bizarre.
But it seemed fairly decent. So after thinking a little more, Ras wrote down a request to strengthen the characters in that direction. He suggested giving them either a completely insane feel or a tragic heroic beauty, and dressing them or applying makeup like a special attack unit.
Aside from that, the programming side did not seem bad. Their art sense was not particularly bad either, so with only slight revisions, it seemed like a decent game could come out.
And above all, what Ras liked most was that even though this was a distant development team, they were not just wasting time while trying to read the company’s mood. They were working hard.
Ras added a comment saying he liked it.
He also specified matters such as character shares and bonuses when the game sold well. This was already an existing system at headquarters, but since they were not a development team located at the head office, even if they knew about it, they might have doubts about whether they were included.
So he intended to inform them while also boosting morale.
At seven in the evening, after finishing dinner with Ella at a restaurant, Ras checked his pocket watch.
This was a world where wristwatches existed. But Ras thought the item called a pocket watch was interesting and wanted to own one. And after using it for a while, it started to feel somehow familiar.