Chapter 18
Chapter 18
“But why?”
“It’s because I want to keep developing games together with you in the future. What do you think?”
“Huh? Ah...”
Eunha did not make a displeased expression, but she also did not immediately agree.
“So?”
“If you keep working with me, I can give you part of the profit share as equity instead.”
It was a stock option.
Since Insu had no money right now, this was realistically the only way he could hold onto useful talent like Eunha.
“I’ll reduce your profit share by two percent and instead give you one percent equity. This is actually a huge deal.”
Because Insu had seen several decades into the future, he viewed his company’s growth potential as enormous. Which meant this one percent was a very difficult decision and felt like painfully cutting off a piece of his own flesh.
“...Okay.”
“Huh? Really?!”
“But our game has to succeed first. We can’t keep making games if we don’t earn money.”
“Y-Yeah. Right.”
But Eunha did not accept because she understood the long-term value behind the offer.
Honestly, she could not even properly grasp what a twelve-percent profit share meant right now, let alone company equity. At most, she simply hoped to earn enough to live on, or perhaps about as much as a successful comic artist.
The reason she accepted the proposal was because she felt that Insu genuinely acknowledged her abilities and truly needed her, and because the experiences she had while making games together had not been bad at all.
In any case, financial matters were a major hurdle, and once they resolved them, a huge amount of tension disappeared.
“But what are we going to do now?”
“Hm?”
Come to think of it, four months was a long time.
Honestly, if he followed his heart, he wanted to rest properly for a while first.
Unlike his previous life, Insu was now at an age overflowing with energy to the point of practically seeming limitless. But the past year had been so absurdly dense that he felt mentally exhausted.
Unfortunately, this still was not the time to relax.
“...We still have to keep testing until release.”
“Huh? Didn’t you already finish it and send it over?”
“We did. But it hasn’t actually released yet. If there’s a serious problem, this is still our chance to fix it.”
“...Do I have to do it too?”
Seeing Eunha’s shoulders droop, Insu could not bring himself to say yes.
And honestly, forcing someone who already devoted herself to development for so long to continue working as a tester even after securing a distribution contract felt far too cruel.
Of course, human rights like that did not apply to Insu himself, the lead developer and actual owner of the company.
After sending Eunha home, Insu stubbornly continued testing by himself.
Still, he did not push himself nearly as hard as before.
Well, I should just think of it as playing a game.
More importantly, since the game was fully complete now, this was the first time he could actually play it while feeling some degree of enjoyment.
And ironically, that improved the quality of testing.
In Dad’s case, although he tested diligently, he still had to learn the structure of the game step by step, so naturally it took him much longer to reach the later endgame content.
Even though he reviewed everything using the guides Insu wrote and the explanations he gave directly, compared to the early sections, the testing density became noticeably lower.
But since Insu himself designed and guided every system, he could progress through later content relatively quickly and test each part individually.
And every time he did, anxiety made his heart pound.
He was checking things one final time right before release, but if a truly critical bug appeared now, it would cause absolute chaos.
If the worst outcome is just delaying the release date, that’s fine. But if they’ve already mass-produced the disks by then... ugh.
Every one of those disks would become a loss.
As someone without much capital yet, Insu could not easily handle something like that. Because of that, while testing, the thought would occasionally cross his mind that perhaps ignorance really was bliss.
Fortunately, it seemed the detailed testing across three separate stages, prototype, alpha, and beta, was not in vain.
Even after searching extensively, no catastrophic bugs surfaced.
A few minor issues appeared, but while they made his heart lurch, none seriously affected the game.
I don’t even know where this got tangled up from.
One of the bugs they found involved poison damage briefly restoring health instead under certain specific conditions.
But the trigger conditions were so ridiculously strict that even deliberately trying to reproduce it was difficult.
Honestly, this could just be treated as part of the game itself.
It was an unintended bug, but it almost felt like the kind of hidden mechanic players could enjoy discovering.
Still, he decided not to include it in any guides. If players deliberately tried reproducing it repeatedly, there was always the risk of some entirely different bug appearing.
Though would enough people even try something this obscure to trigger another bug?
For enough players to discover and exploit something this difficult to find to the point where it uncovered entirely new bugs would already mean the game had become a major success.
Even while believing his game was capable of that, Insu still felt a faint undercurrent of anxiety.
People could never truly know the future. No matter how carefully he planned or how well he believed he made the game, he could never be completely certain.
Well, if it fails, I’ll just make another one.
Thinking about it, even if this game failed and he saw the results firsthand, he would still only be seven years old.
Not even old enough to enter elementary school, or National School, as it was called here.
And the date would still only be late 1989 or early 1990. Even considering development time, he could probably release another game before 1992.
He still had plenty of opportunities ahead of him.
And now that I’ve done this once, I’ll be even better next time.
That was how Insu calmed his anxiety.
The game was already finished and handed over to the distributor. There was nothing he could do anymore, so worrying served no purpose.
But the next game, huh...
Come to think of it, even if this project succeeded, he still needed to create something new afterward.
And the next project would naturally need to surpass the previous one.
The vacant look in Insu’s eyes gradually sharpened again as he stared at the game screen he was testing.
Right. Instead of thinking of this as just testing, I should think of it as searching for things to improve for the next game.
That thought helped him recover some motivation and focus more intensely on playing.
Time passed like that, and in November 1989, the game finally released on schedule.
Shin Taeho was a boy about to graduate from National School the following year and enter middle school.
And right now, he was in an exceptionally good mood.
Because he finally got a computer.
Ever since visiting his cousin’s house and seeing one for the first time, he endlessly begged his parents for it.
Still, he had not simply whined mindlessly.
He promised he would improve his grades, and in fact, during sixth grade, he succeeded in earning fairly good marks.
In the end, his parents grew exhausted from his endless begging and eventually bought him a computer after making him promise to continue working hard even after entering middle school.
Hehe.
Without realizing it, Shin Taeho grinned while looking at the large metallic machine sitting on his desk.
Honestly, the biggest reason he wanted a computer was because of the games his cousin showed off to him.
But once he became interested in computers, he kept researching them and learned that these machines could do all sorts of things and would supposedly play an important role in the future.
That made computers seem even more incredible to him, which only intensified his desire to own one.
Perhaps because of that, simply having a computer in his room made it feel futuristic.
Now that he thought about it, every secret base, spaceship, or scientist’s room in cartoons always contained machines that looked just like this.
Well, enough admiring it.
Taeho immediately walked over, sat down at the desk, and pressed the power button.
Part of him did want to use it for productive things someday.
But first came the thing he wanted most: games.
Most likely, “productive things” would only happen after he became fully satisfied playing games.
Of course, when exactly that would happen was impossible to know.
Taeho watched the computer boot for a moment before glancing at the disk case beside it.
Inside were several pirated games provided by the computer shop.
My cousin said he got tons of games.
Taeho had only received three.
Feeling dissatisfied, he unconsciously puffed out his cheeks.
This was actually because of the recently enacted Computer Program Protection Act.
A similar law existed around the same time in the world Insu originally came from as well.
People might find it surprising that laws like this already existed so far back, especially considering how widespread piracy supposedly was in earlier days.
But rampant piracy in the mid-1990s became possible mainly because of the spread of the internet and CDs, which made enforcement much harder. The laws themselves already existed.
And one of the reasons this law was introduced was because, as computer adoption increased, the United States pushed other countries to protect sales of American software. Korea, heavily influenced both economically and politically by the United States, accepted those demands almost immediately.
That was why even computer shops started becoming more cautious.
Taeho frowned at the disk case before his gaze shifted toward several packages sitting beside it.
Perhaps it could be considered a positive side effect of fewer pirated programs being bundled in. Since Taeho’s parents felt it would be ridiculous to buy such an expensive computer yet have almost no software to use with it, they purchased several legitimate programs.
And among them was one actual game.
His parents probably did not want to buy it, but Taeho had sung “Games! Games!” so endlessly that refusing completely became impossible.
The Land Of Fantasy?
Since English classes only started in middle school, Taeho, still a National School student, had no idea what the title meant.
Still, it looked impressive somehow.
Compared to the plain pirated disks with nothing but titles written on them, the package looked overwhelmingly cooler, decorated with fantasy symbols painted in vivid colors across a medieval-style map: swords, monsters, magic, castles, and crowns.
Without realizing it, he reached for it.
“What? There are six disks?”
Inside were six floppy disks labeled 1/6, 2/6, 3/6, and so on, making it immediately obvious that they all belonged to a single game and indicating the order they needed to be inserted.
After reading the manual and checking the installation instructions, Taeho grew even more excited and began installing the game.
Still unfamiliar with computers, he awkwardly operated everything while constantly referencing the manuals the installation technician left behind.
The process took roughly ten minutes, and he had to manually swap disks each time.
But he did not find it annoying or boring at all.
Back then, computers themselves were fascinating enough that simply watching one function felt entertaining, and this was not an information age like the twenty-first century, where everyone demanded instant results. Spending ten minutes on something felt completely normal.
More than impatience, Taeho was instead focused on hoping all six disks worked properly. He heard stories about disks suddenly “dying” and becoming unreadable.
[Installation Complete.]
Fortunately, the game installed successfully.
“Phew.”
Letting out a sigh of relief, Taeho checked the folder listed in the game manual, navigated to it, and launched the game.
“Whoa...”
Taeho immediately gasped at the colorful title screen.
He had been to arcades before, so he had seen brightly colored games. But even arcades still had plenty of black-and-white games.
And every computer game at his cousin’s house was monochrome, which made him assume all computer games were black-and-white by default.
So when vivid color suddenly appeared unexpectedly, it pleasantly surprised him.
They said it was the newest model after all. As expected!
The music was nice too.
Honestly, he cared less about sound than graphics, but compared to the “beep beep beep” noises from his cousin’s computer, this definitely felt far more sophisticated.