Chapter 148: Independence
[This feels more fun than most console RPGs.]
[It does feel a little simple, but the action scenes are fun to watch, and following the story is enjoyable.]
[But if this is called Part 1, doesn’t that mean there are sequels?]
[Yeah, this is a Japanese game, and the series has a ton of titles.]
Insu was reading the posts with great interest when he suddenly frowned after noticing that one of them contained a link to an illegal download site.
‘At least it’s the Japanese version, thankfully?’
And since related laws had not yet been properly established, punishment would be difficult. Copyright awareness was also still lacking at the time, so getting angry over it could instead worsen the company’s image. Although it irritated him, he decided to let it go for now.
However, if someone hacked the version uploaded to WGAME and distributed it, then even if he could not recover the lawsuit costs, he intended to pursue them to the bitter end.
‘The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the DMCA, passed next year, right?’
(Translator’s Notes: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — A United States copyright law passed in 1998 that strengthened protections against digital piracy and unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material.)
He planned to gather evidence and prepare in the meantime, then swing the hammer once the law passed.
Still, America was much better than Korea in that regard.
There was plenty of piracy, but there were also many people who actually bought games.
Perhaps because of the era, people lacked a strong concept of game copyrights specifically, but general awareness of copyright itself was higher than in Korea. And since it was a lawsuit-heavy country, there was also a certain degree of caution.
And perhaps it was also because the general level of economic power was higher.
In any case, the first Anis Continent Story title was introduced to the American market as a game that was reasonably enjoyable.
It had already been around a month since the Spirit content update was added to TLF Online.
“The response has been very good.”
Daniel, the QA Team Manager, spoke with a bright expression.
Originally, he had straddled both programming and QA, but as the development team grew and there was no longer any need for him to handle both jobs, he had been forced to choose one side. After much consideration, he ended up taking the QA side.
It was not as though all his passion for development had disappeared.
However, he had realized that QA and community management were extremely important in MMORPGs, and since he had already held a manager title before, he believed he could reach a relatively high position more easily if he moved into that field. That was why he ultimately chose the QA team.
“The proportion of Spirit-related mentions in the community is quite high. And more than sixty percent of users have completed the Spirit quests.”
“That’s a relief.”
Insu’s expression brightened immediately when he heard the number sixty percent.
Right now, MMORPGs were still in their absolute infancy, so there was no accumulated data yet, but in Insu’s previous life, there had already been many benchmark figures. And for completion rates of updates like this, surpassing even thirty percent was considered enough to call it content that users enjoyed and that was reasonably successful.
‘Of course, Spirits are the first major update, so it’s inevitable that the attention level is high.’
Even so, sixty percent was an extremely impressive figure.
Insu smiled unconsciously.
“What about the selection rate among new subscribers?”
“It’s around eighty-two percent.”
Daniel answered proudly, as if he had been waiting for the question, and Insu looked slightly surprised.
Among new subscribers, there were all kinds of people: those who signed up and never actually played, those who wandered around blindly without knowing anything about updates, and more. So at that level, it was practically fair to say that almost all new subscribers had progressed through the Spirit content.
It seemed adding low-level quests to make it easier for beginners and making Spirits advantageous at low levels had definitely been effective.
However, these functional elements were not the only reason for the success.
“It also seems like people are responding very positively to the quests. We didn’t conduct a separate survey, but if you look at the posts on the communities, you can clearly see that people are very interested in the quests and their lore.”
The reactions were not to the extent of people posting emotional story reviews like book reports or movie critiques.
However, there were many strategy guides for the quests, and there were quite a lot of responses showing immersion without rejection toward the story itself. That alone was enough to call it a successful reaction.
[It definitely feels like Salamander’s flames could burn all the tree monsters down.]
[But what kind of world is the Spirit Realm? Does it have nature there too?]
[So does that mean the Ice Castle is gone now?]
[No, wait. Then did that pervert, no, Spirit enthusiast from the quest have children with Kenin?]
[Whoa...]
If the popularity lasted a little longer, it even felt like fanfics might start appearing.
And there was also a great deal of praise for the Spirits’ designs.
In truth, unlike the Spirits that appeared in Western medieval fantasy, they had all been designed with a very cute feeling, which had worried him slightly.
‘I thought maybe we copied Pokémon too much.’
However, TLF Online’s art style itself was already anime-like and cute, and among the existing monsters, there were already cute designs like Horn Rabbits and Flame Leopards. So it seemed players did not feel that much of a sense of incompatibility.
The setting that Spirits were beings from an entirely different world probably also helped reduce the awkwardness.
“There are a lot of users drawing and uploading Spirit fan art.”
Later, when the internet developed further, people would upload many videos and images online, but most of the time they simply cropped or modified existing works.
But this was still the era that had only just moved beyond text-only PC communication networks, so uploading images to the web itself was the latest trend.
Moreover, since there was barely any accumulated material online, people often drew even simple doodles themselves with a mouse and uploaded them. It was an era when many people felt excitement from directly creating content and participating in building the online world.
So drawing random pictures and uploading them to the web was common, but the fact that many of those drawings were of Spirits was definitely a good sign.
“Especially on TLF Online fan sites, we’ve confirmed that there are quite a lot of high-quality Spirit illustrations being uploaded.”
Insu connected to the site Daniel told him about and looked through the images users had drawn.
There were not many truly excellent drawings, but perhaps because of that, he could feel even more clearly that they were ordinary users’ works, filled with genuine interest and affection.
‘Oh! This one’s pretty well drawn.’
And some of them were at such a high level that they were barely different from the development team’s artwork.
A thought suddenly crossed Insu’s mind that recruiting graphic designers this way might not be a bad idea.
In any case, at this level alone, it no longer seemed likely that Spirits would end up buried like the Summoner class in the previous TLF2.
Of course, that did not mean they were drawing explosive popularity like Pokémon.
But Pokémon had not possessed such overwhelming IP power from the very beginning either.
In fact, when the first Pokémon series was released in 1996, the game itself succeeded by selling over a million copies, but the reaction to the characters themselves was not hotter than the current Spirits.
That was because Japan’s internet at the time was barely active, the game’s graphics were not especially impressive, and the anime had not yet aired, so the Pokémon character images themselves were not very firmly established.
‘Pokémon only started showing potential as an IP business after the anime came out.’
Pokémon was a classic success story of Japanese-style content business.
When one type of content became popular, they expanded it into other forms of media to build recognition and public appeal, then released related merchandise to increase revenue.
‘An anime, huh.’
But making an anime exactly like Pokémon had done would be difficult.
Right now, in 1997, Japanese anime production costs were around ten to fifteen million yen per episode. Pokémon’s first season had eighty-two episodes, meaning it required roughly one billion yen in total.
And Pokémon’s first title, released in 1996, had already sold more than one million copies that year alone, meaning total sales revenue exceeded five billion yen.
It had achieved enough success to justify investing in anime production.
But even though the Spirit content had received good reactions, the actual profit it generated was limited.
“Peak concurrent users increased by around twenty thousand. Paid users increased by roughly one hundred sixty thousand.”
Even before the Spirit content was added, growth had slowed somewhat, but the number of users had still been increasing continuously.
So those additional one hundred sixty thousand users could not all be attributed solely to the Spirit content.
But even assuming they were, that would only mean a total of 1.6 million dollars this month, and even if the content’s user-attraction effect lasted for an entire year, that would still only total around sixteen million dollars.
And in this world, there had been no IMF crisis, so the exchange rate was still around 900 won per dollar.
Even calculated that way, it amounted to roughly 14 billion won. Considering anime production costs were around 10 billion won, it was almost a gamble where they would be pouring nearly everything they earned right back into it.
‘Of course, if success were guaranteed, it wouldn’t be impossible.’
Spirits were not Pokémon.
And since this was a parallel world, even if it were Pokémon, there was no guarantee it would achieve the same success.
‘To begin with, even if we made an anime, there’s no guarantee it would turn out like the Pokémon anime either.’
To attempt something like that, the scale of the Spirit content itself had to become much larger than it currently was.
And there was another weakness Spirits had compared to Pokémon: they were subordinate content within TLF Online.
Still, just in case, Insu casually asked Eunha about it.
“An anime?”
“Yeah. The Spirit characters are pretty cute. It feels wasteful to just consume them as content, so I was wondering if we could grow them into an IP somehow.”
“They are cute, but wouldn’t an anime be too much?”
Instinctively, Insu had already reached a similar conclusion himself, but since his thoughts were not fully organized, he asked Eunha for the reason.
Eunha also failed to answer immediately and struggled for a while before finally replying hesitantly.
“First of all, the depth is shallow. We added story and lore in our own way, but in the end, it’s just added content. There’s not really enough there to make an anime.”
“But anime adaptations often don’t follow the original work exactly anyway.”
“That’s true, but you want to turn this into an IP business, right? It’d be one thing if the anime added depth to the original work, but if it becomes a complete recreation, wouldn’t that be a problem?”
“Now that I think about it, you’re right.”
The Pokémon anime was not exactly the same as the games either, but it could still feel like “this could happen in the game’s world” precisely because the original work already had a proper world setting, characters, and lore.
And if Spirits remained inside TLF, there would inevitably be more and more new content added afterward, so the attention focused on Spirits would naturally decline over time.
‘If an IP is going to have an independent life of its own, it really needs completely independent content.’
And now, unlike before, it finally seemed possible for a PC game to succeed on its own.
First, Spirits had already built some degree of recognition and popularity by leaning on TLF Online.
Second, they now had an independent platform called WGAME, giving them the power to push strong marketing.
Moreover, if development started now, the game would probably release around 1999. Considering computer ownership rates by then, it might even be a more favorable battle than Pokémon’s first title had on the Game Boy.
‘We could even use Spirits themselves as the killer title and grow WGAME in reverse.’
And if that game became a major success, it would also positively affect TLF Online.
If a hugely popular game turned out to actually be a spin-off of another game, there would definitely be many people curious enough to try the original.
And so, Insu once again began preparing another new project.