Chapter 114: Toward the Finish Line
Chapter 114: Toward the Finish Line
Early MMORPGs banned real-money trading in name, but in practice, they mostly pretended not to know about it, right?
It had not been a very effective response. They failed to stop real-money trading at all, so most of its side effects remained. At best, they had an excuse for legal issues, and that was probably what the game companies wanted.
While they continued pretending not to notice, gold farming workshops appeared, wasting computing resources and manpower, damaging the in-game economy, and even leading to criminal cases.
(Translator’s Note: Gold farming workshop — A business or organized group that repeatedly farms in-game currency or items for sale through real-money trading.)
That did not mean it was the game company’s fault. If someone committed murder with a kitchen knife, the kitchen knife manufacturer was not guilty. MMORPG companies simply developed and serviced games.
Every action produced unexpected side effects. If people had to take responsibility for all of them, no one in the world would be able to do anything.
Still, I should make as much effort as possible. Especially when I already know what problems will appear.
Insu suddenly recalled a murder case from the news in his previous life that happened because of a game. Honestly, he did not remember whether it was caused by real-money trading or just ordinary conflict.
After pretending not to notice, the next attempted response was to bring real-money trading into the open. In other words, game companies built systems that directly supported real-money trading. This was mostly the Western approach.
Insu was also leaning in that direction for now. In East Asia, companies tried to completely block personal trading and take even those profits for themselves, but as mentioned earlier, blocking free personal trading did not fit Insu’s vision.
However, it seemed difficult to immediately legitimize real-money trading. The reason was payments. The current real-money trades were done by individuals taking risks on their own, but if he systemized it, he could not use such a sloppy method.
And intermediary sites like ItemMania could not really be called proper legitimization either. If the goal was simply an intermediary site, then even if the developer did not make one, someone else eventually would.
Insu was not trying to legitimize real-money trading because he wanted the profits from those sites.
Of course, the profits would not be small. But as someone who knew the future, if he were going to build a system just to collect real-money trading fees, he would rather do another business. Even now, he had many ideas, but he lacked the physical and mental room to pursue them.
I’ll have to think about this again once WPAY is developed and the scale of real-money trading grows.
And right now, more than that, it was time to focus on the open beta.
After the final week passed, TLF Online’s open beta ended very successfully.
Of course, the development team had no time to celebrate.
“Now it’s really the last stretch! Just one step left! Everyone, let’s keep fighting until the very end!!!”
Insu encouraged the team with the same words as always, and the team members found it tiresome, but since they knew official release would come once the final debugging and adjustments were complete, they focused on their monitors with hollow faces.
Inside their minds, the glory and career boost from releasing the world’s first MMORPG, along with Parallel Soft’s generous performance bonuses, suppressed impulses like wanting to die or quit and somehow forced them to crawl toward the finish line.
There was a game development company called Elec Cloud in Pyongyang, one of Korea’s major cities.
“TLF Online’s open beta is over.”
Seong Chansu, one of the main developers, stared at TLF Online’s homepage for a long while before turning his head and speaking with a sigh.
“Then official release is next. Three months? Around that?”
The representative, Ahn Seongho, also wore a serious expression.
“If it’s fast, maybe two months.”
They were currently developing a graphical MUD, in other words, an MMORPG. The fact that there was already a company developing an MMORPG this early in Korea, where internet penetration and even the game market were not very large, was quite astonishing.
It also meant they were talented people with foresight, though perhaps it was also because Insu’s Parallel Soft had achieved major success in the game market and given Korean developers confidence.
“We have to start our open beta within a month somehow.”
In truth, Ahn Seongho admired Parallel Soft quite a lot. But right now, he had no room to dwell on that feeling. What he felt instead was competition, or rather, it simply felt like a landslide rushing toward them from behind.
“Isn’t that too much? The team members aren’t in good condition even now. TLF Online isn’t coming to Korea right away anyway.”
“That’s why I said one month. We’re still only entering open beta too. We have to move as fast as possible and establish our position before TLF Online comes to Korea.”
“Ah. That’s true.”
Seong Chansu clutched at his hair as if he felt helpless and frustrated. Even though he was not yet thirty, it seemed as though his already sparse hair was about to thin even further.
To pioneers developing graphical MUDs, TLF Online was like a disaster.
The difference in quality was too great.
“Is it the difference in capital?”
“That’s part of it, but there’s also technical skill.”
“Capital is technical skill.”
“Well, that’s true too.”
In a place like Korea, no matter how much money one had, it was difficult to find exceptional developers. But Parallel Soft had flown to America. It was a place where the world’s technical skill gathered and developed, so as long as they had money, they could probably form a team entirely out of developers considered geniuses in Korea.
“There weren’t any stories about TLF Online’s servers crashing or people being unable to play because of lag, right?”
“Uh… aside from downloads being delayed right at the very start of the open beta, not really.”
That meant not only development ability, but also investment in infrastructure such as servers for live service, was enormous. Ahn Seongho had no choice but to admit that they could never win in a head-on fight.
“That’s why our only option is to establish ourselves first, make revenue, receive investment, and update like our lives depend on it.”
“Haah.”
Seong Chansu knew it would not be an easy path, but he could not deny it. Otherwise, the only thing they could do was stop development here. And that was a path he could not bring himself to choose.
In truth, after seeing TLF Online, he had thought about abandoning what they were currently developing and starting something new, but this development project was not something he was doing alone. Besides, few people would invest in someone who failed without even releasing a game.
“Fine. It’s do or die.”
And so Seong Chansu entered crunch mode again.
While Parallel Soft’s development team entered its last spurt for official service, Seongcheol, Hyein, and Insu also had things to prepare for the official launch.
First was the pricing plan.
“It’ll be a subscription, right?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Many internet services, including PC communication services, had already shifted from hourly billing to subscriptions.
That was because internet infrastructure had stabilized to a certain extent, making it possible to provide stable service even when more users stayed connected for long periods. And as services moved onto the internet, user-generated content increased, making it more advantageous to expand the overall pie by bringing in more users and increasing usage time.
Above all, hourly billing pressured users and reduced immersion and satisfaction.
“But how much are you thinking?”
The important part was the price. Seongcheol had looked into the prices of PC communication services and other internet services in his own way, but it was difficult to reach an answer.
Considering the money already invested, the money that would be invested in the future, and honestly, the desire to earn as much as possible, he wanted to set a high fee. But if it became too burdensome for gamers, customers would decrease, and revenue would fall instead.
Finding the right line was not easy.
However, since Insu came from the future, he already had enough reference material.
“Let’s set it at ten dollars. No, 9.95 dollars would be better.”
He was not making a calculation. He was simply following the pricing of early MMORPGs from his previous life. Of course, he did at least review whether it was appropriate.
In Korea, the fees were much higher. Kingdom of the Winds was around twenty thousand won, and Lineage was almost thirty thousand won. At the time, ten dollars was about eight thousand won, so the difference was considerable.
But that was because of differences in market characteristics. In Korea at the time, the class of people who could enjoy MMORPGs was limited. Both the internet and computers were luxuries that households with a certain amount of money could enjoy, so companies followed a premium strategy.
In contrast, America had much broader distribution across different social classes, so it made sense to take a more mass-market approach.
“That does seem appropriate.”
It was slightly lower than services like PC communication and around the same level as MUD games. Seongcheol judged that Insu had chosen this price because he intended to pull in all existing MUD users.
“But you need to be more careful. Once you set this price, changing it won’t be easy.”
Seongcheol’s comment was quite sharp. In reality, online games often struggled to change their fees even after operating for over ten years, or even decades.
Other products were probably similar, but for some reason, online games faced especially strong resistance to price increases.
Perhaps it was because games were fundamentally not necessities, and the MMORPG market kept becoming more competitive, creating many alternatives.
“But if it’s higher than this, many people will hesitate to pay. Even now, plenty of people feel awkward about MMORPGs because there’s no physical package and they have to keep paying fees.”
And since Insu also knew how the MMORPG industry later solved the difficulties it faced because fees could not be changed easily, he was not too worried.
“True. The future can wait. For now, we have to succeed first.”
But deciding the fee was not the end.
They also had to decide how to receive it.
In 2025, this would not even be worth worrying about, but at this time, online payment itself was barely active.
That did not mean online payment was completely impossible.
“For now, the card payment web system is under development, and we’ll also need to expand the customer support team.”
There were already very inconvenient services where users entered all their card information and went through several steps to make payments. And the reason Seongcheol said they needed to expand customer support was that, in this era, many card payments were made over the phone.
The method was no different from web payment. The customer simply provided card information over the phone, and the company processed the payment on their behalf. At this time, there were plenty of computer-illiterate users who somehow managed to play games but could not handle web payments, while phones were still familiar, so many companies offered this kind of service.
Until two years earlier, Parallel Soft had no separate customer support team and relied on Velocity’s customer support center. Any inquiries that reached the headquarters were handled by Hyein, Seongcheol, or development team members taking turns answering the phone.
But after WET launched, they gradually expanded, and now they operated an external customer support team of thirty people.
Since this support team also had to verify checks arriving by mail in addition to card payments, they expected to need at least twenty more people.
Hyein felt dizzy again when she thought about the cost. But since they had already decided on unlimited investment, she chose not to point it out.
And another concern was package distribution.