Chapter 61: Free China’s Game
Chapter 61: Free China’s Game
Even if it had been possible to attempt it somehow.
There was also a high chance it would have failed. They might not have implemented the functions properly, or they might not have completed development at the right time.
Moreover, an OS business like this was a zero-sum game. Unlike games, it was not enough to simply make something fun. Almost nobody used two operating systems at the same time, so whenever one side made a sale, the other side lost a customer.
Back when Bill Gates had been actively running his business, people used to call him a devil without blood or tears. They said that unless one could go that far, even creating a proper OS would never lead to success like Microsoft’s.
(Translator’s Notes: Bill Gates — Co-founder of Microsoft, influential figure in the personal computer software industry.)
Insu wanted to save his energy for later, when he would conquer the global market with an MMORPG.
At that time, I’ll have to play a zero-sum game too.
After tinkering with Astra-G for a while, Insu soon lost interest and shut it down.
It certainly had its own significance, but there were still far too many shortcomings, and it was obvious that it would not have much influence on the game development environment yet.
In fact, even in Insu’s previous life, it was only from Windows 95 onward, with things like DirectX being developed, that operating systems truly began assisting with hardware control and supporting gaming-related hardware.
(Translator’s Note: Windows 95 — Real-world Microsoft operating system released in 1995. It significantly improved multitasking, graphical user interfaces, and consumer PC usability, becoming one of the most influential operating systems in personal computing history.)
As such, the direct impact Astra-G’s release had on Insu was mainly that the stock price of its developer, Celestial Systems, had risen and increased the value of his assets.
For now, the increase was not especially large. However, in Insu’s previous life, Microsoft’s stock had risen a hundredfold in less than ten years after releasing Windows 3.0.
Not only that, but since it had become one of the cornerstones that rapidly accelerated the growth of the entire IT industry, one could say it had quietly ignited the engine of the IT bubble that would soon begin racing forward like mad.
Anyway, that was enough about Astra-G. There was another program that had caught Insu’s attention besides that.
This time, it was a game.
A magazine called Hollywood Game had a section introducing overseas games. Most gaming magazines probably had a concept like this.
It was not Insu who discovered it first. He learned about it because there was talk on PC communication networks about a new turn-based strategy simulation game rapidly gaining popularity. Apparently, it had not yet been officially released domestically—in other words, in America—making it difficult to obtain, but the magazine had featured it, which was why he bought the issue.
A game from Free China, huh?
The phrase “Free China” felt rather unusual.
After all, Free China had an open market, a massive population, and was geographically close to Korea, yet there was a reason why Insu had never seriously tried to enter that market.
That reason was simple: it was a place where copyright laws might as well have been thrown to the dogs.
The problem was not merely widespread piracy. Even developers and companies themselves freely copied foreign games and sold them openly, to the point that the entire nation had only a weak concept of copyright.
In the case of The Land Of Fantasy, Insu had already confirmed that low-quality knockoff versions were circulating there.
Naturally, it infuriated him, but Free China was simply that kind of place. Complaining changed nothing, and lawsuits were meaningless. It was not because they looked down on Korea, but because such forms of control simply did not function well there.
So all he could do was feel relieved that the knockoffs were such poor quality that they had little impact on his actual market.
Perhaps this was also one of the reasons why countries like Korea and Japan had become stricter about copyrights compared to Insu’s previous life.
In any case, Free China had relatively low per-capita income, but thanks to its sheer scale, it still possessed considerable economic power. Its large population also meant it had many talented people, so its development capabilities were not bad at all. Even so, it strongly carried the image of being a place that only made copycat games.
Yet now, a game from there had become famous enough to be introduced in America. There was no way Insu could avoid being curious.
Then, as he flipped open the magazine with a fwip, the title printed at the top of the page immediately caught his eye.
[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]
It was Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
In Insu’s previous life, it had been a famous series released in Japan, but in this world, it had been developed and released in Free China, the nation occupying over half of the continent.
Just in case, Insu checked whether it had copied a version already released in Japan, but the only Three Kingdoms-themed game Japan had produced was an action arcade title.
And that game had not even been particularly successful.
Well, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms IP originally belonged to China anyway.
In his previous life, mainland China naturally lacked the environment to create something like that, while Taiwan had been somewhat better off. Even there, however, the focus had been more on semiconductors and hardware industries than software, so original software was rare while pirated games were everywhere.
Present-day Free China was still overflowing with copycats, but perhaps because the country itself was so massive, it was not completely incapable of producing original games. Somehow, Romance of the Three Kingdoms had been developed.
It feels similar to 2?
That was the conclusion Insu reached after carefully examining the information presented in the magazine.
After all, it was already the 1990s, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms I that Insu remembered had been released in the mid-1980s. No matter how poor Free China’s computer environment might have been, a newly released game could hardly be running on hardware specifications from several generations earlier.
As a result, the generals’ illustrations looked fairly impressive, and the interface also felt clean and refined by the standards of the era.
Unlike the combat system Insu remembered from Romance of the Three Kingdoms I, battlefields were now visually represented, and armies moved directly across them while fighting, making it look more than capable of drawing players in.
However, just like Koei’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the actual gameplay itself did not appear especially strong.
Koei’s series had originally done a respectable job adapting the novel into a game, but because of its foolish AI, simplistic systems, and repetitive gameplay, it had been criticized since the early entries as little more than a Romance of the Three Kingdoms fanfiction game.
Even so, Insu felt a strong sense of crisis.
That was because the IP power of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was simply enormous throughout East Asia, and in reality, Koei’s series had continued succeeding all the way through its fourteenth installment despite constant criticism.
[It is currently enjoying enormous popularity not only in mainland China but also throughout Asia, including Korea and Japan.]
When Insu read that line at the end of the article, he could not help thinking of his own Medieval Fantasy Nobility.
In America, despite the release of Civilization, the two games had somehow formed a rival dynamic that instead drew even more attention to his title. However, magazine analyses and PC communication discussions agreed that this had only been possible because the American game market was so enormous, and Insu himself agreed with that assessment.
Of course, Japan’s market was not exactly small either, but it was still smaller than America’s. At the same time, such a wide variety of games were released there that gamers did not have especially large spending capacity.
Insu felt uneasy, but there was nothing he could really do.
MFN had already been released, and from the distributor’s perspective, it would be difficult to market it again due to costs. Even if they did attempt another marketing push, Medieval Fantasy Nobility was not exactly lacking recognition anymore, so the effect would probably be minimal.
No matter how powerful marketing was, it could not magically make a game more fun or forcibly redirect gamers’ interests.
All Insu could do was hope that the enjoyment his game offered and the company recognition they had built so far would allow it to endure.
He had been somewhat discouraged by the release of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but not long afterward, some good news arrived as well.
“Insu. We got contacted by Ludovox Interactive.”
“Really?”
Ludovox was a French game distributor, one of the so-called European master distributors that covered the entire continent.
After achieving success in both Japan and America, Insu’s family had naturally begun considering expansion into Europe, one of the largest game markets in the world.
However, the European market was by no means easy to approach.
The very fact that people lumped it together as “Europe” instead of speaking country by country made the situation obvious. Each nation’s market was relatively small, and only when combined did they reach meaningful scale.
Western Europe included many advanced countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, so one might assume the gaming market there would also be massive. In reality, however, even the entire European market combined was only comparable to—or even smaller than—Japan’s, let alone America’s.
At the same time, every country differed not only in language but also in culture and distribution networks, making ordinary distributors insufficient. They needed companies capable of covering all those differences.
Fortunately, information was relatively accessible in America, and Velocity had introduced them to several European distributors, allowing them to at least establish contact.
However, despite their ongoing success in both America and Japan at the time, the reactions from those distributors had been rather lukewarm.
[Well… I’m not sure Korean games will succeed over here.]
“No. We may be a Korean developer, but we’re already receiving quite a response in both America and Japan.”
[Even so, hasn’t it been less than a year since release?]
“…Excuse me?”
Seongcheol unconsciously questioned him in disbelief.
In other words, they were saying it might simply have been temporary success born of luck, and that they should wait longer before drawing conclusions.
[And we’re different from America and Japan. Just because it succeeded there doesn’t mean it’ll succeed here.]
The way they spoke was rather irritating, but they were not entirely wrong.
Europe itself belonged to a different cultural sphere from America, and even within Europe, differences between countries were significant. A game might succeed in the United Kingdom yet fail miserably in Germany.
That was why European distributors had no choice but to judge things conservatively.
Of course, they had not contacted only one company. They had approached all the major distributors, including Teutonic Softline GmbH and Bit & Brew Ltd., but the responses had all been similar.
Their attempts to enter Europe had stalled right before they left for America. Afterward, they became busy with preparations for moving overseas, and even after arriving in LA, things remained chaotic for quite some time, so although they had not forgotten about Europe entirely, they had postponed it for the moment.
Then, just as they were beginning to think about trying again, the other side contacted them first.
[Congratulations on your tremendous success in the American and Japanese markets.]
It was a different person from the one they had spoken to previously, but hearing someone who had once spoken so condescendingly now offer sincere-sounding congratulations so casually made Seongcheol let out a hollow laugh without realizing it.
I guess you really do need to be like this to survive as a European master distributor.
And after speaking with them further, he understood why they had contacted him now.
First, TLF’s success had become undeniable. On top of that, some of the American release packages had reached Europe through various channels and gained popularity there as well, proving the game’s commercial viability.
Furthermore, the sequel was already receiving positive evaluations and attention, so they had finally judged the franchise sufficiently verified.
It felt frustrating how cautiously they handled business, as though tapping every stepping stone before crossing a bridge, but considering the unique nature of the European market, it was not impossible to understand.
With so many different languages and cultures, localization and distribution costs would naturally be enormous. And as already mentioned, a game could sell in one region yet fail entirely in another.
[Then we shall visit you soon.]
Their previous interactions had been somewhat uncomfortable, but selling into the European market was far more important than personal feelings. Seongcheol responded calmly, and the meeting was arranged.
Most European master distributors maintained branch offices in America as well, and in Ludovox’s case, they even had a branch in LA, meaning there was no need to fly all the way to Europe.
“That will be difficult. Forty percent, you say?”
The negotiator from Ludovox who visited Parallel Soft was a refined white man in his forties who spoke fluent English despite his heavy French accent.
His name was Jean Michel Renaud.