Chapter 35: Prototype Evaluation
Chapter 35: Prototype Evaluation
The amount directly produced from one’s own territory was small. Most rulers maintained their military strength by collecting troops and resources from their feudal vassals.
There were upper and lower limits to how much could be extracted. If you squeezed them too hard, not only would national strength weaken, but the vassals would also rebel. But if you extracted too little in the name of being a benevolent ruler, the vassals themselves would grow too powerful and become more likely to rebel.
There was probably some proper middle ground.
But that value differed depending on the environment and the characters, and no matter what you did, it was impossible to completely eliminate the probability of rebellion. As he already explained, the rebellion chance also rose simply with the passage of time.
So from the very beginning, the game had to be played with the mindset of always being prepared to suppress a revolt at any moment.
To Koreans, or rather East Asians accustomed to centralized authority, it felt like a savage world.
Rebellion is basically a constant.
It was a world that lacked the very concept of loyalty from the start.
Like that, Lee Suhyeon somehow maintained his faction while developing technology and learning special military units and magic.
Then there were the subordinates he hired. The problem was that once these subordinates earned merit, they had to be rewarded with land, meaning they eventually became competitors over time.
Capable subordinates stopped being something you could simply welcome without reservation. But if you used incompetent ones instead, both administration and warfare efficiency dropped sharply.
You absolutely have to prioritize blood relatives.
Blood relatives could still rebel, but compared to others, they were far more reliable. Having read quite a lot of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Lee Suhyeon felt like he finally understood why Cao Cao relied so heavily on his own clan members.
Like that, Insu’s team members desperately struggled to maintain their own factions.
“Should we stop and eat first?”
Before they knew it, evening arrived, and Insu halted the testing session.
This dinner time was a form of welfare in its own way.
That statement was somewhat exaggerated, but it wasn’t entirely wrong either.
As was common with small game development companies, Parallel Soft had long working hours, so leaving work at seven or eight in the evening was normal. Most companies simply went home afterward, but all the team members here were unmarried young men. It wasn’t like they had anyone waiting to eat with them at home, so they often ended up eating together like this at the company’s expense.
Of course, it was also used as an excuse to squeeze a bit more work out of them, but in this era, overtime was considered completely normal. Simply buying meals for employees already counted as treating them relatively well.
At first, Insu felt a slight pang of guilt about it, but now he was thinking of it as something he would repay later with bonuses once the company succeeded.
“Yeongbin Restaurant? Or Jeongmigwan?”
They sometimes ordered delivery, but back then, the variety of food available for delivery was limited. The development room also wasn’t very spacious, so the smell lingered and eating inside was uncomfortable. Eventually, they shifted toward simply going out to eat.
There were several restaurants nearby anyway, so it wasn’t inconvenient. There were even two inside the same building as the development office.
In the end, they settled on a baekban restaurant.
When they first set up the office, they often went to Chinese restaurants, but that kind of food became burdensome if eaten too frequently. Rice dishes were simply more comfortable. Though, true to a male-dominated group, they still tended to eat greasy and strongly flavored meals like spicy stir-fried pork rice bowls.
“So, how was the game?”
As they descended the stairs, Insu asked the question, but the team members seemed unable to answer immediately as they reflected on it.
Park Yoonsu looked back on his own experience.
I was completely absorbed in it, though?
It didn’t feel like the kind of instant dopamine rush excitement. But outside the stairwell window, it was already getting dark. The fact that he focused so deeply without noticing the passage of time clearly meant the game was fun.
Even though it was only a prototype and still looked like a construction site with unfinished UI and design elements, it still managed to feel that way.
And even now, he wanted to go back and end another turn.
“...It’s definitely fun.”
“No, this is testing. Everyone has to be honest.”
“It really is fun.”
“Yeah. I don’t usually play PC games like this, but I completely lost track of time.”
Lee Suhyeon nodded in agreement with Park Yoonsu’s words.
“That’s a relief.”
Only then did Insu reveal a relieved expression. He himself enjoyed it too, but since it was a game he personally planned and created, he couldn’t fully trust his own judgment.
“Still, write down any improvements you find in the report later.”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
“Yes, sir!”
The prototype’s most important objective was achieved on the very first day. Of course, since testing had only just begun, it was merely a first impression, but first impressions were always the most important.
Afterward, testing continued.
“This is seriously fun?”
Seongcheol also played the prototype and gave it high praise. Even if there were already team members testing it, having even one more QA tester was beneficial, and since his game-obsessed father was also looking forward to it, there was no reason not to let him try it.
“Whew. That’s a relief.”
As a gamer, Seongcheol ranked above most of the development team in experience, so his brief statement that it was fun carried considerable weight.
Testing continued for ten days.
Unlike The Land Of Fantasy before it, this prototype was not something close to alpha level. It existed purely to determine whether the game itself was enjoyable, so the playable content was extremely limited, leaving little to do for an extended period.
The systems and overall volume were also small, which meant there was less room for problems to appear, so the revisions did not take long either.
Once testing ended, development resumed once more.
Beyond its original purpose of confirming enjoyment, functionality, and basic stability, the test had a major impact on the development team itself.
It feels more developed than I expected?
Yoo Juyeon stared at the work list Insu handed him with his dark circles deeply sunken beneath his eyes. As he considered what to develop first, the prototype suddenly came to mind. Everyone on the development team, including himself, had either very little development experience or none at all. They were coding desperately without even knowing how far they had actually come.
Moreover, they were not developing alone but dividing the code among themselves, making it even harder to judge progress.
In a long battle like this, the immediate work itself was exhausting, but an even bigger problem was losing motivation because the end was nowhere in sight.
But now, seeing the code he worked on come together into something capable of running as an actual game, he finally felt how far they had come.
They say starting is half the battle. At this point, we’ve gone far beyond the starting line, haven’t we?
On top of that, the development schedule pinned to the wall listed major milestones such as the Prototype, Alpha Version, and beta testing. Achieving one of those major milestones gave everyone the sense that they were truly accomplishing something, which boosted morale considerably.
Insu was satisfied with the atmosphere in the development office. He worried that the change in routine might make things chaotic, but instead, everyone seemed even more focused.
If possible, it’d be nice if we got some kind of buff like a ten percent increase in development speed.
Even that wasn’t enough for Insu, who quietly revealed his greed. But perhaps everyone was already being pushed to their limits, because development speed did not suddenly increase. It was only natural, but still disappointing.
At this rate, we might actually finish within the year.
Of course, the timetable already laid out projected monthly development progress, but plans were only plans. Once real work began, those strategies usually turned into garbage.
But development was proceeding faster than expected, and the team members worked together reasonably well. Even the prototype alone reached completion within the original four-month target.
More importantly, the prototype turned out exactly as intended.
There was still plenty of funding remaining, but if problems caused delays or the game failed commercially, not only would his grand vision collapse, but even maintaining the development team would become difficult. The pressure from that had weighed on him.
Of course, he understood all of this before forming the development team, but thoughts and reality were different things.
It really feels like a fuse lit far away is slowly burning toward me.
Anyone who had ever lived independently would understand. Simply supporting yourself was never easy. That was why there were half-joking sayings about “paid breathing.” Yet now, he was responsible for the livelihoods of five other people.
I hope this one earns a lot more.
He did have expectations. Computers were improving and spreading at an incredible pace in this era, so by the time this game was released, the market would probably be much larger.
At first, he felt slightly uneasy because it wasn’t an RPG, but after the prototype received positive feedback and after working on it himself, Insu gained a certain level of confidence.
He wanted to hit a genuine jackpot as quickly as possible and completely escape the constant anxiety of survival.
It was while he was immersed in development like that.
“Insu. Time to leave work.”
“Ah. Yes! That’s it for today, everyone.”
It looked a little awkward, but because of Insu’s age, his mother usually came to pick him up in the evenings.
“Yes! Great work today!”
“Boss, we’ll head home then.”
The “boss” here did not refer to Insu, but to his mother. She was officially the company’s representative director, and the employees needed to know that.
“Okay. Everyone get home safely.”
Fortunately, his mother was older than the employees, so the picture looked reasonably natural. If there had been someone in their thirties with extensive experience among the team members, it probably would have felt awkward.
“Noona, see you tomorrow!”
“Auntie, I’m heading out! See you tomorrow!”
“Alright. Get home safely.”
Insu, Eunha, and Hyein walked together for quite some time before parting near Eunha’s house. Eunha was not so young that she couldn’t walk around alone at night, but since she was the daughter of a friend’s family and they were asked to look after her in exchange for working with Insu, they usually headed home together like this.
After parting with Eunha, only Insu and his mother remained.
“Insu.”
“Yes?”
“The settlement from Japan came in.”
“Oh! Really?!”
Since he had been waiting for it the whole time, Insu immediately turned toward his mother with a completely different expression. Overseas transfers during this era were fairly troublesome, and there were also tax issues, so international settlements inevitably took longer than domestic ones.
At first, he grew impatient, but after looking into it, he learned that delays of one or two months were normal, so he endured it despite his frustration.
“How much was it?”
“You can check it yourself once we get home.”
Perhaps because he was still young, Insu asked carelessly right there on the street without thinking. Fortunately, Hyein merely smiled and answered like that. Insu also realized his mistake after speaking, so instead of pressing further, he simply nodded.
Even after returning home a while later, Insu exercised a bit more patience. Only after washing up and waiting for his mother to settle down did he ask again.
“Ah, here.”
Hyein had actually been about to call him over first since he refrained from immediately bringing it up again.
“Huh?”
The moment Insu opened the bankbook and saw the transaction history, a strange sound escaped him unconsciously.
[Deposit TechnoShoku JPN 131,419,200 yen]
130 million?! Wait, that’s yen? With the current exchange rate being around 630 won per 100 yen... that’s over 800 million won.
Of course, he expected Japan to outperform Korea by a wide margin since the market was much larger and the magazine response was so positive. But he did not expect the difference in scale to be this extreme.
“Mom was shocked too.”
Only after seeing Insu freeze while staring at the bankbook did Hyein finally voice the reaction she was holding back.
“Yeah. Me too.”
It was an absurd amount of money. In 2025 terms, it would probably exceed three billion won. Looking at the unreal amount, Insu once again keenly felt that he truly was a reincarnator from another world.
That means around eighty thousand copies sold.
Unlike Korea, Japan had stronger purchasing power and a more mature game market due to earlier computer adoption rates. As a result, new games tended to achieve a large portion of their sales during the first month.
Even so, eighty thousand copies was an incredible achievement.
Of course, it was difficult to compare it to console games, but within the PC game market, it was close to record-breaking.