Chapter 84: Karkov’s New Product
Chapter 84: Karkov’s New Product
Although such a thing had happened, daily life still had to continue. Ras went back to work at the company. Meta Soft might be on vacation, but his other companies were not.
In particular, hard disk development was underway at Meta Hardware, so he needed to keep checking on it. He did not know much about the technical side, but as the president, there were many matters where Ras had to make decisions.
“For now, they responded positively regarding technical cooperation. It seems that their hard disk market is also extremely limited, so even though they developed the technology, they apparently do not have many places to earn profit from it.”
“That’s good.”
Utaro, who came to the president’s office, brought good news. If they could obtain the technology, they already had basic design capabilities thanks to Karkov’s joining, so it would not take long to create the product.
Ras approved the business trip expenses to the Kanish Kingdom for full-scale negotiations. Of course, the trip would come after they aligned the basic conditions to some extent through magical communication.
An airship...
Traveling by ship would take too long, and airplanes still lacked safety, so they planned to use an airship. Since this world’s airships applied a great deal of magic, they were technically closer to the flying ships that appeared in fantasy works than ordinary airships.
Ras was interested in this means of transportation. A flying ship, of course he was. Moreover, going overseas aboard one was just as exciting.
Of course, he could not actually follow the negotiations.
He had too many businesses underway these days and too many games to make, so it would be difficult for him to leave the company for a long time. Ras could only feel regret and promise himself he would do it someday.
In any case, unless something went wrong in the middle, there did not seem to be any major problem with commercializing the hard disk.
Because of that, he stopped paying attention to Meta Hardware for a while. But two weeks later, Meta Hardware ended up causing an enormous incident.
The person who caused the incident was none other than Karkov, the head of the development team.
That day, Ras was casually looking around Meta Hardware.
The development team was diligently preparing and submitting planning documents. However, they were not clearly developing anything at the moment. Of course, hard disk development was scheduled, and he had ordered them to build up their technical capabilities while waiting.
Still, it was certainly a situation where they could loosen up, so this was a patrol meant to create a certain level of tension.
Then Ras caught sight of Karkov playing Tetris 2.
Hmm.
Of course, seeing someone play a game during work was uncomfortable. But he did not immediately get angry. He did not yet know exactly what the situation was. It might not be simple goofing off, but something he was doing through the game.
And even if that was not the case, Ras himself was the one who left the development team waiting, so rather than scolding them not to do it, he needed to give them work.
Ras quietly approached behind him and watched him play. Karkov seemed deeply focused and did not notice him.
He’s good.
Ras thought Karkov was simply someone who worked hard on development, but surprisingly, his game skills were not bad. Then again, it was impossible to know every employee’s personal hobbies. Perhaps this man also piled up games at home and enjoyed them.
But after quietly watching for a while, Ras realized something was strange.
The first thing that felt off was that the game occasionally stuttered. Ras’s expression worsened. Unlike Earth’s computers, this world’s computers did not have diverse specifications, and Karkov was definitely using a Hammer 1 Computer.
That meant if this problem happened here, the same thing would happen on other computers too.
But that was strange. They had checked every stage before release and even conducted separate load tests. Moreover, even though the game had already been released for quite some time, no complaints of this kind had come in.
While looking at the game screen in confusion, Ras noticed that the right side of the screen was different from what he expected. Ras had clearly thought it was single-player, but there was a 2P player.
Huh?
He looked closely, wondering if he had seen wrong, but this was definitely Versus Mode. There was no one beside Karkov, yet it was Versus Mode, so Ras could not understand it for a moment.
No way?
Then an idea suddenly occurred to him, and the curiosity that came from it exploded. Ras could not hold back and decided to ask Karkov. The fact that he had been secretly watching had already vanished from his mind.
“Excuse me.”
“Huh?! Boss?”
Karkov was startled just by someone suddenly speaking from behind him, and when he realized that person was the president, he was naturally shocked. His already fierce eyes widened, and he turned around so quickly that his thick beard shook.
“Um, what is going on here? Are you really playing Versus Mode?”
Karkov frowned briefly at Ras, who was pouring out questions, then soon gave a bitter smile. Ras had startled him, but he liked that curiosity.
“Yes. That’s right.”
As he answered, he pulled his computer forward and showed the back of it. There, some unknown device and a long cable were connected.
Ras immediately guessed what it was. But Hammer 1 Computers did not have a separate communication slot. Wondering how Karkov had done it, he looked closer. Then Ras confirmed that the device was attached to the printer slot.
“Is this a communication device?”
“Yes. You recognized it right away.”
Karkov answered with his fierce eyes widening slightly in surprise.
Of course, this world was not completely without discussion about adding communication functions to computers. But that was mostly among people interested in computer hardware, so he had not expected Ras, a game developer, to point it out immediately.
But he soon assumed that Ras must have had at least this much interest, which was why he established a hardware company in the first place.
Ras was extremely excited. He was someone who had personally seen how great a thing the combination of computers and communication could accomplish. More than anything, when he thought about applying it to games, chills ran through his whole body.
First, if I apply this to the Pokémon game I’m making, no, should I call it Spirit Monsters? If I apply it there...
Of course, it would be a sufficiently fun IP even as a single-player game. But if players could exchange the monsters they collected and battle each other, just like on Earth, it would deliver an enormous shock to the people of this world.
“Can this be commercialized?”
Karkov felt slightly pressured by Ras’s excessive excitement, but it did not feel bad at all.
In truth, he was a fan of Tetris and Tetris 2. He was not very interested in other games, but he liked the deep gameplay of puzzle games like these.
And in the case of Tetris 2, he did feel that it lacked some depth compared to the previous title, but he truly liked the element of versus play.
However, actually playing versus matches was not easy. He had to bring someone to his computer, and for Karkov, who was not especially sociable, he did not want to go through such hardship just to play a game.
He expected that once the arcade version came out later, he would be able to enjoy matches at the arcade. But that did not exist yet, and he did not particularly feel like going to a crowded place like an arcade either.
So, since there was nothing urgent to do at the company, he thought about a method. The first thing that came to mind was the subject he had been interested in for some time: communication using computers.
It was not as difficult as he expected. Of course, he did not manage to create a decent device all at once. After repeated trial and error, he had only just barely created something worth testing.
And since he had already made it, he was planning to organize it and show it to the president, who kept telling them to submit planning documents. But Ras discovered it first.
For now, I can consider the review passed.
From Ras’s perspective, it was an incredible object, but Karkov merely thought that after seeing Ras’s enthusiastic reaction.
“But is this good enough to play Versus Mode with?”
“Ahaha. Right now, it is only at the level where being possible at all is meaningful.”
Unfortunately, the performance did not seem very good. When Ras asked the reason, it seemed the biggest issue was poor efficiency because it used the printer port instead of a dedicated port.
“Then would it be all right if we included it from the start when designing a computer?”
“Yes. Well, it would be much better than now, but I’m not sure about games where real-time response is important, like Tetris 2.”
Karkov scratched his head with a troubled expression. After all, he had started developing it because of this game in the first place. As he spoke, he thought about ways to improve it further.
But Ras understood it as meaning that it would be fine for games that progressed in a slower manner, and immediately began thinking about ways to use it.
“For now, please complete a product that connects to this printer port first. The target performance is being able to exchange simple messages and play turn-based games in versus mode.”
“If it is only that much... it should not take too long.”
Karkov answered, then seemed to think of something and opened his mouth again.
“But still, this will have to be connected through telephone lines, so I think we need to look into that environment as well.”
“Ah. Yes.”
Ras did not know exactly what he meant, but he roughly understood it as needing to check how telephones were connected, and nodded.
In this way, Meta Hardware ended up developing a communication card before making a hard disk. No, since Karkov had practically already finished developing it, calling it commercialization might be more fitting.
While Ras waited for the development team’s vacation to end quickly and burned with ambition to use the soon-to-be-developed communication card to create all sorts of amazing things and conquer the world, Barbal Soft was still working toward overseas expansion.
At one point, they had become discouraged because there had been no real results. But after achieving a fairly successful expansion into the Brunyard Federation, they regained motivation and were now actively moving again.
“Of course, Brunyard worked out not because we did especially well, but because the timing was right and we were lucky. But in any case, we clearly learned that our country’s games can work in other countries too, didn’t we?”
Johnson, the overseas sales team leader, was in the Pluta Constitutional State on the Gondwana Continent, constantly meeting local distributors. However, there had been no particular results. This situation could have discouraged him, but instead, he comforted his subordinates with these words.
That was his sincere feeling.
If he lacked confidence in the product, that would be one thing. But he was confident that if the games were distributed, they would definitely succeed. That was why his motivation did not break even after repeatedly failing in this distant place.
And his efforts eventually bore fruit.
It was one distributor. It was a medium-sized company called Dales Computer, and they too had initially shown an indifferent attitude. But when Johnson persistently clung to them, they said they would at least look at what kind of game it was.
“You’re quite passionate. I wish our people were like that too.”
They probably intended to show the minimum courtesy and send him away politely. But Johnson brightened and took out the game he had brought.
He hesitated. He did not plan to show only one game, but first impressions were important no matter what. However, since the Hammer Computer had not been introduced here, it would be difficult to show them overwhelming graphics.
So, among the older titles, after considering which one could leave a decent impression at first glance, he took out Sea King, with its striking blue sea.
