Chapter 134: Shadow of a Legend
Chapter 134: Shadow of a Legend
Insu unconsciously opened his mouth wide at the amount, which was far beyond what he imagined. At that, Seongcheol and Hyein laughed aloud because it felt fresh to see that even their genius son had areas he did not know well, and his childlike reaction was amusing.
But Insu could not pay attention to his parents’ reaction. He had thought it would be expensive because this was LA in America, but this was beyond imagination.
“Is it possible?”
He had thought building a headquarters would also be a kind of investment, since LA would continue growing in the future, land prices would rise, and construction costs would also increase. But now that it was this expensive, his thoughts shifted toward wondering whether simply paying rent and enduring some inconvenience was not that bad after all.
Seeing Insu’s reaction and roughly reading his thoughts, Hyein smiled and said, “Of course it’s possible. That’s why I’m bringing it up.”
“Do we have one hundred million dollars?”
If they added up all the revenue they had accumulated so far, it probably exceeded one hundred million dollars. But they also had to consider the money they had spent, especially the money that had gone into servers and various other infrastructure, investments in other companies, and operating the company itself. There was no way they had that much money.
“Of course we don’t. If not for the investment funds that came in from China, we’d already be scraping the bottom.”
“Then how?”
“It’s not like we’re buying snacks. We don’t have to pay it all at once.”
“Huh? Ah.”
Only then did Insu realize it. Even with memories from his previous life, he had focused too much on development all this time and forgotten common knowledge in this area. Even now, he did not know much about construction, but he remembered hearing somewhere that large businesses were never done entirely with one’s own money.
“We only need to secure around ten million dollars. Even that is a rough figure with plenty of leeway.”
His mother’s following explanation was similar to what Insu had just recalled.
The plan was to use the company’s credit and the building to be constructed as collateral, take out a loan for about eighty to ninety percent of the cost, and sign a contract with a construction company under an installment payment structure.
“Bloomberg judged our company’s value at over 1.5 billion dollars, so borrowing around one hundred million dollars shouldn’t be a problem.”
Even if the value was inflated, it could certainly be used effectively at times like this.
“How long will it take?”
“They said it usually takes around three to four years.”
Then the situation was different. Even now, considerable funds were constantly flowing out here and there, but WET and TLF Online, Parallel Soft’s current core businesses, were already generating significant revenue, and that amount was steadily increasing.
Unless things flowed in an extremely pessimistic direction, paying one hundred million dollars over three years would not be a major burden.
‘Even TLF Online’s most conservative forecast is around thirty million dollars in annual revenue, and WET is around twenty million.’
And those numbers were growing explosively. In WET’s case especially, they saw its growth potential as at least triple its current scale.
‘We could build it even bigger, couldn’t we?’
That thought briefly crossed his mind. But reality was not Blue Marble, and funds were always limited. The larger the building, the harder it was to find a site, and the longer the construction period would inevitably become.
(Translator’s Notes: Blue Marble — Korean board game similar to Monopoly, centered on buying cities and constructing buildings. The line emphasizes that real corporate construction and financing are not as simple as a board game.)
Above all, rather than making an impulsive decision in an area he did not know well, it was right to follow what the planning team had carefully calculated and recommended. Moreover, his father and mother had already finished reviewing it.
“Then we’ll proceed with this?”
“Yes!”
But they probably would not be able to move into this headquarters until 1999. Until then, they would have to endure by securing buildings as close to the main office as possible and keeping the teams clustered together.
They had also considered leasing a separate building, but compared to other major cities, LA had relatively few large-scale buildings. With the American economy in the middle of recovery, building vacancy rates were low, making it difficult to find a building suitable for a company like Parallel Soft.
Moreover, since the company had a lot of equipment, moving was not easy. Considering that they would have to move again into the newly built headquarters three years later, it would waste too much money.
In the end, it seemed they would have to hold out like this for a while.
The person in charge of Parallel Soft’s ESD project was a thirty-five-year-old man named Michael Reynolds.
He was still young, but he had considerable experience. After graduating from Berkeley’s computer science department, he earned a master’s degree in technology management from MIT. He started as a systems engineer at IBM, then later worked as a technical PM at Sun Microsystems.
(Translator’s Notes: Sun Microsystems — American technology company known for workstations, servers, Java, and network computing.)
For someone like him, the position of PM for a new project at Parallel Soft, a rising star in the internet world, was just right.
“This is not an easy project.”
After joining the company and signing a confidentiality agreement, he listened to the detailed explanation of the project and narrowed his brow.
The concept itself was easy. Implementing the functions also did not seem especially difficult, but he saw several points that would get caught in the details.
First, security was a problem.
“Encryption, authentication, and integrity verification will be essential.”
“Exactly.”
Seongcheol’s expression immediately brightened at Michael’s words. When Michael said it would not be easy, Seongcheol wondered whether he lacked confidence, but seeing him point out the core issue right away made him feel that they had not hired the wrong person.
But security was not the only problem. Version and patch management would not be easy either, and responding to various network environments would also be anything but simple.
Above all, user experience was an issue.
Even looking at Steam or the Epic Store, which were widely used as of 2025, they honestly felt complicated and messy. That meant that even after more than ten years of refinement since their launch, their UI and UX still were not fully satisfying.
(Translator’s Notes: Epic Store — Real-world digital game distribution platform by Epic Games.)
So at this point, when they had to create this from nothing, it could only feel overwhelming.
‘The planning and design are quite detailed.’
At least Insu remembered the future and had created a planning document based on Steam’s structure, so Michael could feel somewhat relieved. If they had just thrown him the concept and told him to figure it out, he would have done it, but it would have come with tremendous trial and error and pain.
“Then I’ll leave it to you.”
“Yes. I’ll proceed right away.”
Project Volder, which would replace Diablo, was progressing smoothly.
At first, it had taken some effort to make the team members understand the planning and design. Although Insu documented it, the documents could not perfectly contain everything inside his head.
“So all the options are random?”
“Yes. But the values are random, not every option itself. It’s a weapon, so we can’t leave out attack power.”
“Right. But if we do this, won’t it take too long to get the options players want?”
“That’s exactly what we want.”
Taylor, one of Volder’s team members, listened to Insu’s explanation and thought it was vicious. At the same time, however, he felt it would certainly make farming fun.
In any case, Insu was quite tired at first from this communication process, but once everything was conveyed, things became easier. He had stopped doing coding work himself.
And now, the basic level of developers entering Parallel Soft was high, so Insu no longer needed to cling to coding personally. Besides, even if Insu stepped in and did one person’s worth of coding, it would only save around one hundred thousand dollars in annual salary. At this point, he did not want to spend all day coding just to save that amount.
In fact, considering the other work Insu could do with that time, it would be more wasteful.
Of course, he did not spend all that time on work either.
While Insu was developing this new game, other developers were also working hard on their own games during the boom period of computer games.
“Christforge sent over a prototype.”
“Oh? Really?”
Insu received the CD from Seongcheol. Christforge was a company similar to Blizzard from his previous life, and after succeeding with The Others 2, this world’s Warcraft, they immediately began their next project.
But the prototype he received this time was not the first version.
Five months earlier, at the E3 Game Show, they had already shown a prototype for their new title after The Others 2. Despite already having a successful series, they attempted a game with a new setting and revealed an extremely early prototype at a game show. That likely meant they had some confidence.
(Translator’s Notes: E3 — Electronic Entertainment Expo. A major American video game industry trade event first held in 1995.)
(Translator’s Notes: E3 Game Show — Major real-world video game trade event held in Los Angeles, historically used for major game announcements and prototype demonstrations.)
But the reaction had not been very good.
“What? This is supposed to be a spaceship?”
“It looks like a toy is flying around.”
That was understandable. The new game had a space science-fiction setting, but they had reused too much of The Others 2’s engine and resources, which were suited to a fantasy setting, creating a strong sense of mismatch.
Moreover, since it was a prototype, they had focused on implementing functions, so the interface and unit designs were far too rough, making that mismatch stand out even more.
Insu did not know what judgment Christforge had made after that. But once he ran the prototype he received today, he could clearly tell.
‘They completely overturned it.’
It seemed they had even changed the development environment itself. The previous one ran on Astra, like DOS, but this one had to be launched by clicking an icon in Astra95.
From the first loading page, it gave a good impression. Against a dark background, it showed humanity in realistically depicted space combat suits, aliens with strange appearances, and space monsters.
At this point, Insu already thought of the name of a famous game from the future.
But he did not jump to conclusions and maintained caution. Illustrations like this were relatively easy to make, so he had to check the in-game content.
‘The interface is still a bit clumsy.’
It had atmosphere, but since it was a prototype, it strongly felt unorganized. Still, one thing was certain: it was not reused from the previous game. It had been newly created.
And finally, he entered the main game screen.
“Oh.”
The first thing that caught his eye was the unit size, which had become much smaller compared to the previous work. Thanks to that, the barren background was emphasized, and at the same time, it felt more realistic.
But that did not mean the unit shapes were impossible to distinguish, like in Dune II. The 640x480 high resolution allowed the forms to remain intact even at this small size.
Of course, later, once graphics advanced further and people saw truly high-resolution visuals, looking back would create a strong reverse-sensation effect. But at the current point in time, that was how it felt.
The designs of the units and buildings had also changed. They were more angular and used a higher proportion of achromatic colors, making the science-fiction feeling stand out strongly.
At the same time, Christforge’s distinctive exaggerated expressions were mixed in, giving it good visibility. Simply put, it felt like something between Warcraft and Command & Conquer.
‘This is definitely StarCraft.’
Insu felt a strange emotion: relief that this game seemed likely to be released safely, and the feeling that, after falling into a distant past, he had finally caught up to an era he at least recognized.
After that, he played it briefly, and as expected from a prototype, it had many shortcomings.
Some parts reminded him of StarCraft, but others were so incomplete they did not even feel like a game, and there were many bugs, causing frequent errors.
But Insu was already an experienced game developer, so he knew very well that such issues were natural in a prototype.
‘Will StarCraft become a hit in this world too?’
But when that question suddenly came to mind, it was difficult to give a positive answer. StarCraft was certainly a well-made game. But Korea had an enormous influence on its success, and that success in Korea was heavily affected by the rapid environmental changes caused by the IMF crisis.
However, in this world, Insu had things he was preparing.
If those worked, he wondered how things would change.