Chapter 164: MTC Player
Chapter 164: MTC Player
“Not bad.”
It was some sort of reception room. Thick cigarette smoke filled the air, while crystal bottles and glasses filled with amber-colored liquor sat on the table. Several middle-aged men who appeared to be in their fifties sat around it playing cards.
Jin quite liked the new game after trying it once at Kyle’s recommendation.
“Right? Apparently it’s a game that’s popular on computers these days.”
Kyle, whose round face and beard gave him an onion-like appearance and earned him the nickname Onion Head, was the type who enjoyed new things the most among the men gathered here.
“Yeah. We’ve gotten sick of playing poker all the time anyway, so this is nice too.”
“Well, it does feel a little childish.”
When they were younger, they used to enjoy sports or go wild at entertainment establishments. But as they aged, their thoughts and hobbies changed.
Some came to enjoy golf, some liked reading books, and others preferred listening to music. Of course, some people remained the same as before.
In any case, it became difficult to maintain relationships the old way, so they had shifted toward simple activities like poker that did not require much time to learn or enjoy, drinking while talking together.
But even poker had been played for too long.
Kyle especially had gotten tired of it early on and had been searching for something else they could do together. But perhaps because his friends had grown older, they found anything too unfamiliar troublesome, so he had struggled to find something suitable.
Then he heard about a new card game, became interested, learned it first, and introduced it to the group. The reaction turned out to be better than expected.
If this had been Earth, middle-aged men like them probably would have struggled to accept it so easily.
But in this world where magic and monsters truly existed, this level of fiction was fairly acceptable.
“But seriously, aren’t the magic effects way too cool?”
Chabranis smirked after sweeping away Otto’s creatures with a magic card and said that.
“Well, there are ancient spells somewhat like that anyway, right?”
Although his creatures had been wiped out, Otto was not particularly flustered and simply summoned more creatures.
“Ancient magic... Well, the creatures and everything else definitely don’t feel modern.”
In truth, these men were all mages.
Perhaps because they were people who actually used magic, they found it easier to immerse themselves in this card game without resistance.
In any case, those who liked the game began playing it every time they gathered afterward. And once Kyle started bringing unfamiliar cards and winning with them, everyone began buying card packs and building their own decks.
At first it felt somewhat unfamiliar, but after seeing that they were not the only ones buying these card packs in crowded places like Arcade Game Land stores, and once their competitive spirit to beat their friends ignited, they became the sort who regularly bought card packs just like online players.
There were quite a few people who ended up playing Magic and Creature this way despite being far removed from computers.
The familiarity of card games, the low entry cost, and the convenience of being playable anywhere with just cards attracted many people.
In particular, even though Ras had led the boom of computer games, the wealth gap was so extreme that no matter how amazing a game he made, only a tiny fraction of the population could actually enjoy it.
But this TCG reached even those people.
As a result, within just two months of release, Magic and Creature sold 1.5 million Starter Decks.
Ras felt pleased but also slightly bewildered that something released almost as a service ended up selling this much.
But while he was still surprised, the company he created had already responded by forecasting future sales, expanding distribution networks, and increasing the scale of printing facilities.
Of course, Ras also reviewed the reports and approval documents, judged them reasonable, and stamped them accordingly.
“I believe we need a more aggressive strategy.”
The person most excited by Magic and Creature’s massive success was naturally Georg from the IP Management Team.
Both the online and offline versions had been developed by his team, and since it was a business direction different from Meta Soft’s, he could expect independent growth.
In truth, he had secretly envied the massive success of Arcade Game Land.
“A more aggressive strategy?”
“First, we need to hold tournaments.”
Ras nodded at Georg’s words.
Tournaments were indeed the best way to promote competitive games.
But at the same time, it was also an obvious idea.
Moreover, Ras had held tournaments for nearly every game release until now, so even if Georg had not come to suggest it, he would have organized them anyway.
If Georg’s proposal had ended there, Ras probably would have been disappointed.
Fortunately, that was not the case.
“And we need to provide players with spaces where they can play.”
This game certainly had the convenience of requiring only cards.
But it also had one major problem.
It required another person to play with.
Computer games could be played alone, and Magic and Creature’s online version could find opponents endlessly through Spirit Space.
Offline play could not.
Of course, if people only intended to casually play with acquaintances, it would not matter.
But Ras and Georg were in the position of needing to spread and sell this game as much as possible, so they needed to minimize even this small limitation.
That led Georg to think of Arcade Game Land.
“We create gaming venues where people can battle. We decorate them like cafés so people can relax there and play with other customers who stop by.”
“That sounds good.”
To Ras, it sounded fairly familiar.
In other words, Georg was suggesting something like a board game café.
Of course, people usually visited board game cafés with acquaintances rather than playing with random strangers.
Still, Ras had heard that in places like America, there were locations where people enjoyed games like Magic: The Gathering in this way.
Actually, even old baduk parlors were fairly similar if one thought about it.
Those were also gaming venues where strangers gathered to play Go together.
The more he thought about it, the more it sounded like quite a good business.
He did not know how far the potential of this TCG could reach, but if it became as widespread as games like Go or Janggi on Earth, it seemed possible to build an enormous business from this alone.
“Very well. Let’s proceed.”
Since the idea had potential, and since they already had experience operating Arcade Game Land and Quick & Fun Burger, Ras approved the business rather easily.
It also happened that funds kept piling up, and they needed new investment opportunities.
“Haha, I won again.”
“Damn it. Luck-based game.”
Kyle was completely obsessed with Magic and Creature these days.
At the moment, he was not gathered with his usual friends but instead playing with other mages.
This game was especially popular among mages.
There were many reasons, but first of all, cards themselves felt familiar to mages.
Mages dealt with mysteries, and cards were objects commonly used in divination, one branch of the mystical arts.
In the past, there had even been many mages who inscribed Rune Language onto cards and used them for magic.
In modern times, after magic separated from ancient magic and became systematized, almost no mages used such cards anymore.
But the sense of familiarity remained.
Beyond that, the game’s themes themselves were heavily related to magic, and there were many stories about the primordial beings connected to it, giving mages many elements that attracted their interest.
And after playing so much, many mages became genuinely serious about the game.
Mages were still people, after all, and sometimes people became excessively immersed in hobbies or entertainment.
Kyle was one of those people.
He became so deeply invested that merely playing with friends and acquaintances was no longer enough, so despite his somewhat late age, he learned computers and even challenged online battles.
It was truly remarkable passion.
But meeting people directly really is more fun than online.
Online battles were certainly enjoyable.
But something felt lacking.
So even after learning online play, he still mainly preferred meeting people in person to play.
That was why he had been extremely pleased when he heard Meta Soft would create offline gaming venues.
Still, offline play was not completely without drawbacks.
Compared to online, it’s definitely more troublesome.
One had to separately record and calculate mana, mark cards as active or inactive, and physically move every single card by hand.
Of course, that could also be considered part of the fun.
But after experiencing online play, those things started feeling inconvenient.
Naturally, that led him to wonder what it would be like if such things were automated offline as well.
If this had been Earth, perhaps someone would have designed some sort of mechanical device.
But Kyle was not an engineer.
Or rather, since he was a magic engineer, it was more accurate to say he was also a mage.
In any case, because of both his personal interests and the belief that this game possessed tremendous commercial potential due to its popularity, Kyle began considering the creation of a Magic and Creature Player.
This doesn’t seem that difficult...
Though now older and working as a manager stamping approval documents, in his youth he had been an exceptionally capable magic engineer.
Perhaps because of that, once he seriously began the work, the design progressed remarkably quickly.
Since all the backs use the same pattern anyway, there’s no need for overly complicated recognition magic. And since the game rules are mathematical, expressing them through Rune Language isn’t difficult either...
For ordinary mages, the design likely would not have been easy.
But for someone like him, who had mastered countless practical and industrial magic techniques over the years, it was not particularly difficult.
As a result, the design finished faster than expected.
That made Kyle feel somewhat unsatisfied.
Since I’m making it anyway, maybe I should add illusion magic too?
After learning computers, he had tried several famous games.
Honestly, electronic games did not perfectly suit his tastes.
But fighting monsters with magic in games like Land of Adventure had been quite fascinating.
And recreating ancient magic, which had nearly disappeared in the modern age, even within games, gave him a unique emotional impression.
That was probably why the thought occurred to him of using illusion magic to represent creatures and spells.
It likely would have been difficult through science and technology alone.
Even back when Ras lived on Earth, technologies like holograms had never become fully commercialized.
But magic was different.
Projecting images into empty air was not difficult, and illusion magic did not even require individually constructing every image.
Since illusion magic manifested through the imagination of the viewer, it could relatively easily provide a powerful sense of realism.
If I cast magic onto the illustrations, the players who see them will imagine them naturally, and if I link that to the opponent’s play, it should produce fairly convincing illusions.
With a passion burning within him for the first time in a while, he created the Magic and Creature Player, and two months later, he succeeded in producing a prototype.
“Oh. This is good.”
The testing took place during a game with his friends.
At first, they wondered why he had brought out a palm-sized box and placed it down.
But once cards were placed on top of it, they were amazed as the cards automatically arranged themselves on the table, and the game proceeded automatically through a simple interface where players merely pushed and pointed with their fingers.
Moreover, the summoned creature illusions appearing across the table alongside unfolding magic effects were truly spectacular.
Of course, since they were all mages, they quickly realized it was illusion magic, so none of them screamed in shock.
But because they understood magic well, they were in some ways even more impressed.
Footnotes:
Translator’s Notes:
Magic: The Gathering — Trading card game created by Richard Garfield and released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993 in the United States. Widely regarded as the originator and standard-setter of the modern TCG genre.
Go Parlor / Kiwon (기원) — Traditional Korean establishment where people gather to play Go (baduk). Often functions as both a gaming venue and social gathering space.
Hologram — A three-dimensional projected image technology. Despite decades of research, fully interactive commercial holographic systems remained limited even on Earth.