Chapter 106: Closed Beta
Chapter 106: Closed Beta
Daniel and Jessica had to work hard to screen the applicants.
Selecting people after reviewing the applications was already work in itself, but sending out documents containing beta test instructions and requests, including the non-disclosure agreement, then receiving their consent, was absolutely not easy either.
If they had electronic consent forms like in 2025, it would have been much simpler, but in this world, the internet was only just beginning to spread. So even though this was an internet-related industry, all paperwork like this was still offline.
Even though they simplified and omitted many parts since the testers were ordinary gamers, they could not handle the legal consent portion carelessly.
And finally, they had to send the test version of TLF Online to the testers.
One might wonder why a game played over a network had to be sent through offline media, but the network environment was still so poor that in many places, even downloading a client of around twenty megabytes could take an entire day. They had no choice.
The one fortunate thing was that unlike before, they did not need to use floppy disks and could finish with a single CD.
In terms of both cost and stability, CDs were superior to floppy disks. The work was also a bit easier.
Jamie Miller was a fourteen-year-old boy living in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Originally, he had not been very interested in computers and preferred doing things outside, such as playing basketball. But after receiving one of his father’s work PCs and playing around with it, he became completely absorbed in computers and games.
Now, after promising to improve his grades and earning straight As on his tests, he had received a latest-model 586.
It was not that he was bad at studying, but he had usually averaged Bs. His obsession with computers created a miracle.
In any case, after obtaining a new computer, he began trying every famous game. From Slayer to The Metropolis, and then Parallel Soft’s TLF series, Jamie especially liked the TLF series.
Because of that, he was also active in related communities on PC communication services and the internet. Then one day, he saw a post on a community board saying they were holding something called a closed beta test.
“Beta test? What’s that?”
He felt like he had heard about it a few times before, but since it had not seemed very related to games, he had let it pass. Now that he looked, everyone seemed excited about it, so he searched a little more.
[What’s a beta test?]
[Before a game is released, the game company releases an unfinished version to gamers so they can test it and check for bugs or other problems.]
“Oh?!”
It was not a question he had posted himself, but an old Q&A he found. He felt a strong interest in the phrase “unfinished version.” Moreover, once he learned that this Parallel Soft was the developer of the TLF series, his interest doubled.
[They did beta testing before for TLF2, and it was subtly different from the official release later.]
[Ah! I wanted to do the beta back then too, but I didn’t get picked.]
After reading a few more posts, Jamie immediately found the recruitment notice and filled out the application.
It was a more proper document than he had expected, so he felt a little nervous, but there was nothing difficult in it, so he slowly filled it in.
It was just basic personal information, computer specification checks, gaming experience and interest level, and whether he could invest enough time.
It should be fine, right?
Jamie felt a little concerned about his young age, but since they had said anyone could participate as long as they had interest and passion, he judged that it would be fine.
At the end, he became slightly nervous when he reached the section saying he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and could face legal punishment if damage occurred due to leaks. However, Jamie did not think of himself as a blabbermouth, and the word “secret” actually increased his interest.
Things like not anyone being able to do it and having to keep it secret stimulated the unique sensibility of a boy his age.
After going through the process of receiving and sending back the documents, roughly fifteen days later, Jamie received the package he had been waiting for.
Contrary to what he expected, it was not a box but a slightly swollen bubble mailer in the form of an envelope. When he touched it, he felt padding inside.
“Oh!”
He brought it into his room and immediately tore it open with impatient hands, then found the CD inside.
There was also a piece of paper. It contained a warning never to leak it, along with installation instructions, a tester-only ID and password, and a bug report form.
Jamie nodded without realizing it.
When Parallel Soft’s QA team selected testers, they went through a fairly troublesome process, and since they had chosen people who seemed likely to test properly as much as possible, around half of them were enthusiastic like Jamie.
Only half might sound disappointing, but tests like this offered little proper compensation in the first place, so participation rates were bound to be low.
Still, because Insu came from the future, he knew about this kind of problem and its solutions to some extent, so he prepared countermeasures.
[Those who submit reports sincerely will be entered into a lottery to receive a three-month pass after official service begins and a special item usable in-game.]
This notice had been included in the recruitment post and was also written in large letters on the paper enclosed with the package.
Installation was quick.
Although it used a CD, the capacity was only a little over twenty megabytes.
“It’s really fast.”
In truth, by 1995, CDs were becoming widespread, and as games began using high-quality illustrations, videos, and sound, game sizes were rapidly increasing. By late 1995, games exceeding one hundred megabytes were already common.
However, TLF Online had to account for the internet environment, so it instead needed to slim down more than previous games in terms of capacity. Naturally, there were no videos or high-capacity sounds, and since it was an MMORPG, most of the game systems and data existed on the server. If they had wanted to reduce it further, they probably could have.
After all, Kingdom of the Winds, released in 1996, had a client size of less than four megabytes.
However, they could not lower the game’s quality too much, and if they placed too much burden on the server, there would be cost issues and possible delays during data transmission. Their compromise at an appropriate level was this twenty-megabyte size.
There aren’t any videos. Is it because it’s a test version?
Jamie, who was used to current trends, felt a little disappointed when it went straight to the title screen after loading. But this could not be helped.
Maybe later would be different, but in the current internet environment, putting videos in the client would increase client download time by several hours at least, or by several days at most.
Of course, they could drastically lower video quality to reduce size, but if they were going that far, it was better not to include it at all.
“Huh?”
Jamie was momentarily flustered when he saw empty fields on the title screen instead of being able to immediately run the game, but then he remembered that the paper contained an ID and password.
He used PC communication services too, so he was familiar with logging in itself, but doing it inside a game, especially through this kind of graphics-based interface, felt unfamiliar.
“Server? Is it like a region in multiplayer mode?”
Selecting a server in a game was also still an unfamiliar experience.
Fortunately, because he had experience with TLF2’s multiplayer mode, he was able to proceed without fumbling too badly.
[Please choose your character’s name. The first character’s name will become your family name, so think carefully.]
From this point onward, it felt similar to what he had done in TLF, so he proceeded with a pleased feeling.
“It is kind of different, though.”
The early progress of the game was similar too. But it was not exactly the same as the previous game. First, the background and character designs were slightly different, and more than anything, moving only with the mouse was different.
It was a slightly unfamiliar control method, but it was intuitive, so he quickly got used to it.
“It feels kind of wide too?”
Since this was an MMORPG where interaction was important, unlike single-player games where only the controlled character’s field of vision mattered, it had to show farther areas where other players might be. Because of that, the information windows were minimized, creating a refreshing sense of openness.
Following his experience with the existing TLF series and the tutorial quests provided by this game, he naturally arrived at a nearby city.
“Oh?”
The graphics felt even more refined than TLF2’s, and more than anything, the scale was large. The city walls were enormous, and the roads were not narrow paths like in single-player games but wide enough for several characters to walk side by side.
The buildings also had a scale that felt realistic compared to the characters.
When all of this combined with the wide field of view, it gave the feeling of truly entering a city.
This kind of expression came across especially strongly to young people like Jamie, who still had rich imaginations and sensitive emotions.
As he wandered around the city and looked here and there, another character entered his view.
At first, he simply thought it was an NPC. After all, in ordinary RPGs, everyone except oneself was an NPC.
But that character was moving, and even those movements were quite irregular. More than anything, it was not in a place where an NPC should be, like a shop, but was simply walking along the road like Jamie, making the sense of strangeness strike him all at once.
Ah! Is that another player?!
Only then did Jamie newly remember that this game was not a single-player game but an online game where he shared this world with other gamers.
Once he realized that, his reaction was immediate.
[Hi!]
At Jamie’s greeting, the character wearing a cloak and short blue hair immediately stopped and replied.
[Hi! You really can meet other people inside the game.]
Jamie chatted almost reflexively, but he was a little worried the other person might not respond. However, the other person seemed even more excited than he was. Jamie felt secretly relieved and tapped on the keyboard again.
[Right? It’s really amazing. I heard there are 203 testers total, so that means all those people are inside this world.]
[Yes. Two hundred isn’t a small number. Playing all together inside one game... I really never thought a game like this would come out.]
For some reason, the other person felt somewhat older. In any case, now that they had met, Jamie wanted to play the game together.
[Do you want to play together?]
[Party play? Sure.]
Meetings online were truly spontaneous and simple.
That made sense. All that existed here were virtual characters each person had created, so there was nothing complicated to think about.
<You have received an invitation.>
While Jamie was searching for the invitation menu, an invitation came from the other person first. He hesitated briefly because he wanted to be the party leader, but thinking that it would not be bad to try being a party member this time, he immediately pressed accept.
Then a small event window appeared. His character walked quickly inside it, moved right in front of the person who invited him, and faced them.
Speech bubbles appeared above both of their heads like in a comic, and simple pictures resembling emoticons appeared inside them.
Insu had casually introduced graphical emoticons, remembering Ragnarok as a means to help players communicate with each other better in online games. But this was still a world where only text-based emoticons existed, so this expression felt extremely fresh to Jamie.
The two characters displayed smiling emoticons above their heads, then soon displayed emoticons that looked like they were shaking hands. Finally, the other person’s character turned around, and Jamie followed right behind them, ending the event window.
<Companion Mode will begin.>
Then Jamie’s character disappeared from his screen, and the other person’s character appeared. It was the same method as the multiplayer mode in TLF2. Since party play merged the two players’ teams entirely, their characters were also merged in the field.
However, in TLF Online, this was not mandatory, and they could also split the party and hunt separately. If they did that, they could not attack the same monsters, and there was no particular reward distribution, so there was no benefit.