Chapter 44: Climbing the Stairs
Chapter 44: Climbing the Stairs
The team members all let out sighs of relief. It made sense, since they had already gone through several cycles of thinking things should be finished by now.
“Now only the real final hurdle remains.”
Insu pointed at the schedule chart as he spoke, trying to pull the team members out of their relaxing mood.
“Fortunately, the Alpha Version didn’t reveal any major structural problems, and the response wasn’t bad either, so there probably won’t be any large-scale revisions. Once we finish the remaining incomplete sections, we’ll move straight into beta.”
Then Insu’s finger moved past beta and pointed toward the final section.
[Release Candidate (RC), Gold Master]
“Once beta ends, it’s basically complete. We really don’t have much left. But if we don’t push hard here, we’ll never reach this point. Plenty of development teams collapse during this stage.”
“And it’s also common for teams to loosen up at the end and release the game in a terrible state because they got sloppy.”
In truth, this was something Insu himself had heard during development training in his previous life. Realistically, it was far too experience-based a statement for an eight-year-old child to make. Even so, none of the team members took his words lightly.
After spending months under Insu’s leadership, they all came to clearly understand that their team leader was absolutely not an ordinary child.
Whether it reached the level of admiration or not, respect was definitely carved into their minds.
Thus, the final sprint toward the beta version began, and a few days later, the November settlement payment from America arrived.
“Insu...”
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
After returning home from work, Insu grew concerned when his mother called him in a trembling voice. However, the moment she silently handed him the bankbook, he immediately realized it was related to the settlement payment.
What is it? Did some kind of problem happen?
But when he opened the bankbook and checked the transaction history, he instantly understood why she reacted that way.
[Deposit VEL ENT INC USA 2,048,227.5 USD]
Two million!
Without realizing it, Insu clenched his fist tightly.
Already familiar with the American PC gaming market after hearing about it in many places, he also knew how hit-game sales trends generally unfolded. Typically, the first month started somewhat quietly, then surged sharply in the second month, continued gradually climbing until around the fifth or sixth month, and only afterward began slowly declining.
Last month had already been a good start. However, for the game to become a true hit, that momentum needed to continue, so he had not been free of anxiety.
But this result completely shattered those worries and showed an even steeper upward curve than he expected.
Roughly 220,000 copies?
Compared to the previous month, it represented a growth rate close to forty percent. The moment Insu calculated the figure, goosebumps spread across his body. If the modern internet and YouTube of 2025 existed right now, every gaming-related piece of content would probably still be talking nonstop about his game, The Land Of Fantasy.
The sales numbers and trends simply could not happen without that level of reaction.
At this point, it definitely became one of the legends.
Without realizing it, the corners of Insu’s lips curled upward. Especially because the PC market was still in its formative growth period and genres themselves were still being established, this would likely become one of those games people always mentioned whenever RPG history was discussed later.
Hyein froze before the overwhelming amount of money, but after seeing her son’s joy, she stared at him quietly for a moment before walking over and hugging him.
“Uh, Mom?”
“Yeah. Congratulations.”
“...Thank you.”
Insu felt a little bewildered, but he hugged his mother back and tried to share the happiness. One of his dreams had just come true. Originally, it was a dream he thought he would only be able to aim for much later in life.
But now that I think about it, most legends usually achieve it with their very first work anyway, don’t they?
Of course, there were development studios that struggled repeatedly before finally succeeding, but many legendary companies started with an overwhelmingly strong first impression.
That was probably because game development was such a harsh industry that if you failed from the beginning, there was a high chance you would simply disappear.
He had entertained fairly grand ambitions in this life, like conquering the world through games, but thinking he could succeed gradually, step by step, now felt too complacent and timid.
Looking back, he had been incredibly lucky. Somehow, after Japan, he directly signed contracts in America as well, sold his very first game there, and then it succeeded to this extent. If it had only sold domestically, things absolutely would never have turned out like this.
At best, it would have just become a domestic masterpiece, an unfortunate masterpiece, or a hidden masterpiece.
That level would never have granted the IP power and recognition Insu truly wanted. If his goal had merely been to create an MMORPG that achieved moderate domestic success, then maybe it would have been enough. But for the world conquest he always talked about, it would have been hopelessly insufficient.
They said success was seventy percent luck and thirty percent skill for a reason.
Insu had no intention of belittling the effort he put in. But at the same time, he could not help realizing once again that without luck, things could never have reached this point.
In any case, enough reflection. It was time to examine the money that had come in.
Insu entered the exchange rate into the calculator.
[1,474,723,800]
It exceeded 1.4 billion won and came close to 1.5 billion. Even considering only simple inflation, it was equivalent to nearly six billion won by 2025 standards, and when accounting for the opportunity value of being in the middle of a rapid economic growth era, its true value was even greater.
At this point, they had long passed the stage where game development costs were something to worry about.
Even the famous Kingdom of the Winds only began development later than now, around 1994, with a budget of merely fifty million won.
Of course, even at the time, that was considered an extremely small amount compared to other games. By this era, it was already fairly common in the West for game development budgets to reach tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
But if they’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars, how many copies do they even need to sell to recover the investment?
America’s market really was enormous. Although the game was still actively selling, realizing that all the money they had received so far combined only barely reached several million dollars made his swelling excitement shrink back down instantly.
Feels like we’re still not at the stage where we can relax yet.
Right now, they were operating a small development team and creating games at extremely low cost, but his ultimate goal, an MMORPG, would never be possible under those conditions unless he was willing to heavily compromise quality.
“Mom, please take care of this money too.”
“O-Okay.”
To achieve his plans, enormous funds would be necessary. Insu hoped these investments would help him gather that capital.
Even as development accelerated, time continued passing, and winter vacation finally came to an end.
“Insu!”
“Oh. How’ve you been? Long time no see.”
“Yeah.”
Sangshik briefly thought his friend’s way of speaking sounded strangely like an old man’s, but because they were still young, they were not yet mature enough to tease and insult each other over things like that, so he simply swallowed the thought.
At their age, that sort of thing usually led to fights.
“What did you do during vacation?”
“Uh... I mostly played games.”
Insu momentarily found himself speechless before barely managing that response. Thinking about it now, he had become so immersed in development that he had not created any of the ordinary childhood memories most kids usually had.
Well... once I earn a bit more money later, maybe I’ll just go to Hawaii or something.
Fortunately, Sangshik immediately latched onto the topic of games. He had always loved games to begin with.
“What games? I played this game called The Land Of Fantasy a ton during this vacation.”
“...The Land Of Fantasy?”
Insu was slightly startled when the name of the game he himself made suddenly came out of his classmate’s mouth.
“Yeah! It’s an RPG, and it’s super fun!”
“Aren’t RPGs kind of difficult?”
Since he had never targeted first-grade elementary school students due to the genre’s entry barrier, Insu asked with genuine curiosity.
“Yeah! It was really hard at first. I was gonna quit, but this older guy I know kept saying it was insanely fun. After playing for a while, I started getting the hang of it.”
Children often struggled to focus at first, but once they became interested, they sometimes adapted to games even faster than adults.
In his previous life, Insu remembered seeing tiny little kids in PC cafés who were unbelievably good at games. It always amazed him how those tiny hands and little heads could play so skillfully at things even adults struggled with. Though the noise they made was another matter.
“I like RPGs too.”
“Huh? You know The Land Of Fantasy too?”
“Yeah. I play it sometimes too.”
“Oh!”
After that, Insu and Sangshik chatted excitedly about games until the teacher arrived, just like the little kids Insu remembered from his previous life.
While Insu happily adjusted back to school life after the enjoyable new semester began, Velocity Entertainment, the company selling his game across the ocean, had fallen into a difficult situation.
“Parallel Soft says they do not need investment.”
Alex forced out his usual voice while suppressing his frustration as he responded over the phone. After previously confirming Parallel Soft’s stance and informing people about it, things quieted down briefly, but inquiry calls were now pouring in once again.
[How can we trust that?]
“...Excuse me?”
[For all we know, your company could just be lying to block contact with Parallel Soft.]
Alex was left speechless. He somehow managed to calm the caller down and end the conversation, but afterward, he slumped in exhaustion.
All of this was because TLF was causing an enormous sensation.
Given the era, it was not the kind of worldwide frenzy everyone would know about like in 2025, but within gaming circles and among RPG fans, almost nobody was unaware of it anymore, and most people showed interest in it.
Among TLF fans specifically, it probably genuinely felt as though the whole world was talking about TLF nonstop. People naturally gathered with others who shared the same interests.
As the game’s popularity continued rising, not only investors but also businessmen hoping to turn it into board games, cartoons, toys, and other businesses began appearing.
Even investors who had half given up reignited their enthusiasm.
As a result, Velocity Entertainment, the sole point of contact, was the only one suffering through this ordeal.
At first, the situation had not felt too bad. After all, they had already earned substantial profits, and with this level of attention, sales were unlikely to collapse anytime soon. They also felt pride in having recognized and distributed such a game.
They had even felt confident that by completely blocking contact, they were properly protecting this precious honey pot.
However, as the inquiries continued, fatigue piled up, and especially as suspicions spread that they were intentionally hiding Parallel Soft, the situation began feeling dangerous.
“Someone might actually file a lawsuit.”
“For what? Even if we were lying, there’s not really any legal basis to sue us over it, is there?”
Robert shook his head as though the idea was ridiculous after hearing Alex’s concern.
“Who knows what kind of absurd method they’ll come up with. More importantly, the problem is the lawsuit itself.”
“That’s... true.”
This time, even Robert could not deny it and hesitated before nodding. America was a country of lawsuits, after all, where people sued over all kinds of bizarre reasons.
And the moment suspicions spread to the public and legal disputes began, their image would inevitably suffer.
“And judging by their determination, even if we keep blocking them like this, they might still find some way to contact Parallel Soft eventually.”
“That’s possible.”
The first thing that came to Robert’s mind was how often TLF had already been featured in Japanese magazines. People could potentially obtain contact information through the Japanese distributor, and there was also a possibility that more information had spread around Japan already.
In fact, before the Japanese release, the magazine All Clear had already introduced it as a Korean game, and within Korea itself, information about Parallel Soft could be obtained relatively easily through packages, magazines, and other sources.