Chapter 58: New Party Members
Chapter 58: New Party Members
Brian no longer dared to attempt one-man development. It was not impossible, but after trying it several times, he felt it did not suit him very well. His ideas were grand, and if he wanted to make them, he did not have the confidence to endure the long time spent facing a wall and building everything alone.
Moreover, he had a tendency to lose motivation as development progressed, so he needed someone or some environment that would apply pressure.
I really do need to join a development team somewhere.
However, he was not yet certain enough to take the plunge. He did think there was not much he was learning at school, but he had still made decent friends there, and it felt like a waste to abandon the time he had spent attending. Most of all, there was no development team that really drew him in as “the one.”
After school, he returned to his studio apartment and habitually connected to DataHorizon again to look through game development teams and projects.
“Huh?!”
One post immediately caught his eye.
[Parallel Soft is looking for new colleagues.]
He had heard the name Parallel Soft too. He was not exactly a fan of The Land Of Fantasy, but he did think it was quite an interesting game, and for a while, he had played and analyzed it.
After playing for quite a long time, finishing his analysis, and figuring out what kind of game it was, he had put it aside without continuing. Still, it left him with the image of a place that made original, high-quality games.
And they released another game recently, didn’t they? Medieval Fantasy something? There’s been a lot of talk about that too.
He left the board open and sat there frozen in thought for a long while.
If it’s Parallel Soft, it really does seem like it’d be good enough.
It was a somewhat arrogant perspective, but this was like a defense mechanism held by people who were confident in their abilities, not particularly skilled at communication, and deeply immersed in their own worlds.
In reality, Brian was writing his application documents in an earnest tone, practically begging them to please choose him.
At the development studio, Insu quickly finished lunch with a hamburger, then went up to the office on the second floor. The hamburgers in this neighborhood still tasted salty to him, but he had more or less gotten used to them by now.
“Dad.”
“Oh? You’re here? Did you eat?”
“I ate a hamburger. So, did you find anyone?”
He had come up because he was curious how the search for developers was going.
“We’re still looking. Why? Is the work not progressing because you’re short on manpower?”
“No. That’s not it. It’s actually going too smoothly.”
It might sound strange, but if a new hire joined after development had already progressed too far, it would take time for them to understand the project, and they might start working while still lacking proper understanding.
Psychologically, too, because they had not been there from the beginning and had joined midway, they might not develop attachment to the project or might have trouble focusing.
“So I’d like to finish recruitment before the prototype comes into view, if possible.”
“Ah… But I don’t think you need to worry. There are more applicants than expected.”
“Really?”
Insu, Seongcheol, and Hyein had all felt slightly intimidated by the unfamiliar environment and by the thought that this was America, the center of the world and the center of gaming. Because of that, they had worried whether developers here would actually apply.
But that meant they had underestimated the recognition of their own company, Parallel Soft.
A developer that had already scored a mega-hit with its first game and was showing a successful start with its second, drawing public attention, naturally had plenty of developers who wanted to join. Moreover, LA was a neighborhood with an enormous number of game-related technicians.
Oh!
Insu briefly looked over the applications his father showed him. There were already more than a hundred, and because of the recruitment channels they had used, the applicants were mostly young. None of them had particularly remarkable work experience, but if what they had written here was all true, there were many with considerable ability.
There were people who knew not only C, but also various development languages, including assembly. Some had made graphics routines or toolsets, and others had even made their own games.
And as people who had learned the latest technologies at American universities, some were confident in the latest algorithms, data structures, and operating system theory.
Brian Whitman?
This person had even written that he knew TCP/IP-based network programming.
“Dad. Make sure to hire this person.”
“Hm? Got it.”
This was technology absolutely necessary for making network games. But at this point, very few people knew how to handle it. Unless someone learned the latest technology at university, or personally foresaw the coming internet and online era and studied it alone, there was almost no chance to acquire such knowledge.
After all, this was still an era when the internet had not properly spread. Insu felt once again that this was America, and that this was LA.
Seongcheol was not completely ignorant of computers or programming, but he did not have the same vision or depth of knowledge as Insu. However, he fully trusted his son’s ability.
Together with Hyein, he did his best to select talented people from among the applicants who came to them. In truth, it was not easy to evaluate someone’s ability through a short meeting like an interview. Still, they had already experienced it once in Korea, and computer skills were relatively easy to verify through tests, so they were able to screen them somehow.
“How was it?”
“Oh! More than enough. As expected of a Caltech student. But if you’re a student, after graduation, couldn’t you go somewhere better, like Technobit? Why did you apply to a small company like ours?”
(Translator’s Note: Caltech — Short for the California Institute of Technology, a prestigious American science and engineering research university.)
After testing his coding ability, Seongcheol asked a scheduled interview question, but it was also something he was genuinely curious about.
Ryan Cooper flinched briefly at the unexpected question, but soon straightened his expression and answered.
“I’ve wanted to make games for a long time. It’s partly because I like games, but I also think that in a world where science and technology continue to advance while resources are gradually depleted, games are something that can replace material rewards and provide enjoyment. That’s why I see great potential in them. And in my judgment, the game development company with the highest potential right now is this one.”
“I see.”
Seongcheol was pleased by the applicant’s ability to respond and his high evaluation of Parallel Soft, but he did not show it and simply nodded with a calm expression.
For now, he had passed the evaluation so far. But the most difficult hurdle remained.
“What do you think is important in a team leader?”
“…Leadership? And I think the most important thing is a vision that can lead the team forward.”
“Then what do you think about factors such as age, gender, or appearance?”
“They may have some influence, but I don’t think they are very important compared to ability.”
Ryan wondered whether Parallel Soft’s team leader was perhaps a woman or someone younger than him. For now, he had given a model answer, but it was not exactly false either.
Rather, if someone had created a masterpiece like TLF despite those unfavorable conditions, he wanted to meet and learn from that genius.
“Good. Then let’s have you meet our team leader.”
Seongcheol led Ryan to the room next door. Ryan’s heart began pounding at the thought that he was finally going to meet Parallel Soft’s main developer.
And inside, a small child who looked about ten years old was sitting in front of a computer, looking at them.
“Now’s fine, right?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“This is Kim Insu, the development team leader of our Parallel Soft.”
“…Excuse me?”
For a moment, Ryan thought it was some kind of joke. Of course, he had often heard that East Asians looked young, but even so, this child truly looked like a little kid who was not even in his teens.
“I really am the team leader. Come over here. I’ll show you that this isn’t a lie or a joke.”
The child smiled as if he understood Ryan’s confusion and gestured to him. Ryan slowly approached, his face stiff with suspicion and bewilderment, and sat where the child indicated.
“First, I’ll tell you what I was thinking when I planned TLF.”
The child called Insu began explaining, in slightly awkward English, the planning process, game design, and how he implemented, coded, and developed the game in vivid detail.
“This is in Korean, so you probably can’t read it, but it’s the planning document. And this side is the source code.”
As the child said, Ryan could not read the planning document, but after looking through a few lines of code, he quickly realized that it was no joke. It was the real code of some actual game.
…It seems real.
The vivid development story and the professional knowledge mixed into it were not something created through acting or a script.
Just in case, Ryan exchanged a few words with him, but nothing fell apart.
The moment he realized this, his hair stood on end and goosebumps rose over his skin. He knew he had met the real thing.
He had attended a prestigious university and seen many smart people. But true geniuses were something he had only encountered in books. They were great beings who had definitely existed and built up this world, but whom he could not meet.
And now that he had encountered such a being right in front of him, a disturbance beyond anything he had imagined surged through him.
“So? Would you like to develop games with me?”
That genius was asking him to join.
Ryan had learned that he was not the amazing genius he had dreamed of being when he was young, but he still had not completely abandoned the hope of accomplishing something great. In this moment, Ryan felt as though a miracle had come to him.
“Of course!”
Without realizing it, he firmly clasped the child’s hand, accepting the genius’s offer.
Afterward, Insu continued meeting applicants, and unlike in Korea, none of the developers here refused to join after seeing him.
Cases like Ryan, who was deeply moved, were exceptions, but most were still quite willing.
For Insu, this was a good thing. Since they felt less resistance, the burden of having to lead them would also be reduced.
“This is one of our new people. He looks the same as us and is actually Korean-American, but he can barely speak Korean, so keep that in mind.”
Perhaps because this was LA and they were based in Koreatown, there were quite a few Korean applicants as well. However, since they chose purely based on ability, only one Korean-American man named Daniel Choi actually joined the team.
The rest were all white.
Is it still before Indian developers started coming in?
In reality, Indian IT talent had already been entering America since the 1960s, but the game industry was not yet regarded as especially mainstream, and India had not yet begun intensively cultivating such talent. So at this point, it was still not easy to see Indian people in the game development industry.
However, LA also had a significant proportion of Black and Latino people besides white people, yet strangely, the developers were almost entirely white, with only a few East Asians mixed in.
And most of them were men. As a result, most of the new hires were also men, but somehow, one person, Emily Brooks, was a woman who showed considerable skill and enthusiasm, so she joined the team.
In terms of physical condition, however, she felt the strongest among the new hires, no, among the entire development team. She was nearly one hundred eighty centimeters tall, with broad shoulders and plenty of flesh and muscle. If someone looked down on her because she was a woman, it seemed like she might fold them in half.
The new team members joined the team sequentially as soon as they passed.
A somewhat greasy-looking guy named Chris Davis was added to the graphics team, while Daniel Choi was scheduled to handle programming while also managing QA. Since he was still a new hire, it would be difficult to entrust management to him immediately, so for a while, he would work with Insu and gradually take over the work.
And the remaining three were all programmers.