Chapter 47: Gold Master and the Contract
Chapter 47: Gold Master and the Contract
Bang!
While nodding off sleepily, Insu suddenly jolted awake at the sound of something being struck hard nearby.
“Insu, you shouldn’t sleep during class, should you?”
When he opened his eyes, he found himself back in the classroom. His homeroom teacher stood there holding a switch, smiling with a trace of anger as she looked down at him.
“Ah! Yes! I’m sorry!”
The teacher lightly tapped Insu on the head with the switch and said, “Good. Let’s do better, okay?”
The surrounding children giggled quietly.
Without realizing it, Insu touched the spot where he had been hit as his face flushed red. Still, he had gotten off lightly. His young age probably played a role, along with his consistently good grades on homework and exams.
In any case, thanks to the way he pushed both himself and the team, the post-test revision phase did not drag on excessively either.
“Yes! No major bugs are being found.”
“Okay! Then we’ll stop here!”
After completing one final sweep of revisions, Insu had the team members continuously play the game for five straight hours. When no major issues surfaced, he immediately declared the stability test finished.
If they kept running tests forever, something would eventually appear no matter what. Bugs were constants in programming. By game industry standards, if this many people could play continuously for four to five hours without any serious problems, it was usually considered cleared.
Good. Good!
The moment Insu declared the test cleared, the team members all cheered in relief. Yet even more than them, Insu himself felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
It made sense, because it was already mid-May. June, which had effectively been their first deadline, was practically impossible now.
If we really push it, maybe we could still finish by late June.
But Insu judged that forcing things that far would not be worth it. For one thing, the team’s fatigue had already accumulated far too heavily to continue driving them harder.
Moreover, this deadline was not tied to any formal contract. It was simply a target date Insu had arbitrarily set himself. Of course, since it had already been mentioned in magazines, it could also be considered a promise to gamers, but Insu had clearly said it before.
I did say June at the earliest and October at the latest.
And after struggling this hard to reach this point, if they rushed at the very end and overlooked something important, then all the effort they had invested until now would effectively become meaningless.
Since they had already raised gamers’ expectations this high, they needed to secure at least this level of quality.
“Now we’re entering RC, Release Candidate. This is truly the final phase, so let’s put the finishing touch on the dragon’s eye properly.”
The team members had assumed beta testing was the end, so they froze momentarily. However, RC was clearly written on the schedule chart as well, and the phrase “finishing touch on the dragon’s eye” quickly restored their focus.
Unlike what he had just implied, however, Insu intended to run RC rather tightly, perhaps even across several separate phases.
Since this was his first time leading team development rather than working alone, maintaining quality control was much more difficult compared to the previous title, so he judged it necessary to polish things through repeated filtering like this.
Of course, it would not be as brutal as alpha or beta testing had been, but even running an imperfect sieve several times would hopefully filter things more cleanly in the end.
“This really is the last stage. Once this finishes, we’ll move into the Gold Version.”
“...Okay.”
The team members, completely deceived by Insu’s thoughts, continued pushing forward one step at a time like hikers endlessly being told the summit was just ahead. And in the end, they spent another full month solely on RC.
Thus, July 9 finally arrived.
“Alright! Great work, everyone!”
“...”
Standing in what resembled a field of corpses masquerading as a development room, Insu held up eight floppy disks and shouted triumphantly. But the team members, who had already become half-corpses themselves, could barely react. They remained collapsed against their desks, only rolling their deadened eyes toward him.
Seeing that stirred a slight sense of guilt in him, but at least things were almost over now anyway.
Ah... no, wait. Even after handing it over to the distributor, we still have to keep testing until release... although those tests will be fairly relaxed, so I guess that basically counts as resting.
While entertaining thoughts that would have enraged the team members if they heard them, Insu picked up the phone and called home.
After all, he needed to report completion to the CEO before proceeding with the distributor contract. More precisely, they had already signed preliminary agreements promising distribution once the completed product was delivered. What remained now was negotiating the final terms while presenting the finished physical version.
“Mom! We finished it! Yes. Yes!”
The moment Hyein received her son’s call, she immediately contacted the three distributors they had previously worked with.
She had not completely ruled out searching for a new distributor. However, all three companies had faithfully fulfilled their contracts and had also transferred enormous settlement payments, so she felt that at the very least, they deserved the courtesy of being contacted first and given a chance to discuss conditions.
[Ah! The Gold Version is complete? Would you like us to come visit?]
“No. I’ll come over myself. When would be convenient?”
[Anytime is fine!]
“Alright. Then I’ll visit tomorrow. Yes.”
Hyun Soft reacted with remarkable enthusiasm. It made sense, considering The Land Of Fantasy had achieved a level of success unmatched by any other domestic PC game, and Hyun Soft was not completely ignorant about overseas gaming markets either.
Parallel Soft had now become a globally recognized development company.
Ever since seeing the magazine article, Hyun Soft had secretly hoped the next title would also come to them, so during every settlement payment, they had deliberately emphasized how strong sales still were and how well the game continued performing overseas.
Of course, they had not only hinted indirectly. They had also asked directly before. However, Hyein had never given a definitive answer, merely saying the game was still under development and that they would think about things after completion.
As a result, Hyun Soft had been growing increasingly anxious internally, so the moment they received the call first, they practically sounded ready to rush over immediately.
The next day, Assistant Manager Cheon Wooil of Hyun Soft found himself filled with both anticipation and nervousness.
He recalled his very first meeting with Parallel Soft. At the time, his impression had simply been that it was a development company with unexpectedly decent skills whose game had come through personal connections and seemed fairly promising.
Honestly, while he had expected the game itself to do reasonably well, his colder business judgment had focused less on the game’s quality and more on securing worthwhile software while the computer market rapidly expanded. That had seemed like the real advantage for the software market.
But I never imagined that game would become such a massive hit in Japan and America.
Especially America. He heard the reaction there was unbelievable. After learning that, he personally tracked down another copy of The Land Of Fantasy and replayed it himself.
And after spending enough time with it, the game became so strangely fun that he could hardly understand why he had not fully realized it at first.
Of course, part of that came from the game itself genuinely being good, but the halo effect played a major role too. Simply hearing that it had become popular in America and Japan made every little detail that once seemed ordinary suddenly appear impressive and meaningful.
That was why becoming famous first mattered so much.
They’re really coming, right?
They had already arranged the meeting over the phone, but Parallel Soft’s status had grown so enormous that countless companies were surely chasing after them now. That lingering worry kept creeping back into his mind.
But we treated them well, didn’t we? The revenue split, and we even proposed secondary marketing recently too.
Of course, that marketing proposal had not been purely an attempt to flatter them. Since the game had become famous overseas, there was now demand flowing back from that recognition, and with the domestic computer market continuing to expand rapidly, Hyun Soft genuinely believed The Land Of Fantasy, still close to cutting-edge specifications, had room to continue selling.
In any case, since they were promoting the game without demanding anything extra in return, there was no reason the developer would view it negatively. Thinking about it that way calmed him slightly.
Ring, ring.
Cheon Wooil immediately picked up the phone.
[The CEO of Parallel Soft has arrived.]
“Ah! Tell her I’ll come down immediately!”
[Yes!]
Before the other side even finished responding, he had already leapt from his seat and hurried out of the office.
“CEO Hyein, you’re here.”
“Yes. Assistant Manager Cheon, you’ve been well too, right?”
After inheriting the CEO position from her husband, Hyein had visited Hyun Soft several times to establish familiarity. This large-framed man was surprisingly courteous, so her impression of him was not bad at all.
“This way, please.”
Once they arrived at the office, they briefly exchanged small talk about how The Land Of Fantasy remained highly popular and how rapidly the computer market continued developing.
“Here. This is the new title.”
“Ah! Yes!”
Cheon Wooil carefully accepted the disks Hyein handed over. After bowing once, he immediately began installing the game.
“Oh! The atmosphere of the title screen is excellent! The sound also feels much more polished...”
[Medieval Fantasy Nobility]
The original working title had remained mostly unchanged. The only difference was that it had been adjusted into slightly more natural wording after Hyein reviewed it. Fortunately, Cheon Wooil seemed to find it fairly convincing.
He had already heard over the phone that the game’s genre was a turn-based strategy simulation.
There’s race selection?
When customization settings appeared, something even the previous RPG title had not featured, Cheon Wooil tilted his head slightly in surprise before selecting Human for the time being. Then, upon seeing the following illustrations, he let out another impressed reaction.
He had already thought the previous game’s graphics were excellent, but they possessed a somewhat straightforward simplicity. This new title, however, felt as though genuine artistic sensibility had been layered on top.
[The map will now be automatically generated.]
Automatically generated? No way...
“Excuse me, CEO Hyein. By automatically generated... does that mean the map itself is newly created?”
The message appearing at the start of the game immediately sparked a thought in Cheon Wooil’s mind, prompting him to quickly turn toward the CEO of Parallel Soft.
“Yes, that’s correct. It uses a system that randomly places tiles, automatically creating a new map every time a new game begins.”
“Oh...!”
The concept of generating maps this way was not itself an entirely revolutionary technology. It had already existed since the early-to-mid 1980s. A representative example would be Rogue, the RPG considered the originator of the roguelike genre.
Since games using such systems had already existed long ago, the reason developers struggled to implement random generation was not usually technical difficulty, but rather the inability of other game systems to properly support it.
For one thing, game AI at this time was still generally simplistic, making it difficult to respond properly to randomized environments without causing the entire game to collapse. Furthermore, games heavily focused on characters, story, and settings also struggled to incorporate random generation systems effectively.
There was also the issue that randomly generated maps might simply fail to look visually appealing. Since graphical presentation was extremely important in games, that concern could not be ignored either.
Yet despite all these problems, the system had never completely disappeared for good reason.
Turn-based strategy games in particular carried strong simulation elements, so repeatedly playing the same maps limited variability, accelerated player learning, and drastically reduced both difficulty and enjoyment over time.
As a result, many people had already considered using random generation systems out of frustration. However, because of the previously mentioned issues, few could implement it properly. And now this game was presenting the concept confidently.
Well, since this isn’t based on real history, they probably have much more freedom with it.
And after playing for a while, he realized that although the game did not possess some extraordinary artificial intelligence, its systems themselves heavily restricted the areas where AI behavior could completely collapse.
Building a massive empire was intentionally difficult, rebellions constantly occurred, and adventurers plus countless events created an endless number of things requiring management. As a result, even if some AI behaved stupidly, the game did not suddenly spiral catastrophically out of balance.
If anything, slightly irrational AI behavior actually introduced additional unpredictability and variety into the experience. And thinking about it carefully, reality itself was also full of people who made incomprehensibly stupid decisions.