Chapter 65: YoungGun Soft
Chapter 65: YoungGun Soft
[There are an enormous number of small distributors over there. Maybe it’s because warlord-like factions still remain and there are many areas beyond proper control. If you include illegal distributors that press and sell games without permission, there’s no way to even know the total number.]
“Ah… I see.”
The more he listened, the more it sounded like some kind of demonic pit. It even made him question again whether entering China was truly the right choice.
[Still, there’s a sort of order within that chaos, so there are a few distributors that are reasonably trustworthy. As far as I know, six distributors hold the greatest influence.]
“Like a Big Six?”
[Yes. Something similar. But rather than competing directly with each other, they tend to rely heavily on the power of the people backing them and the regions they’re rooted in. So they feel quite different from major distributors in other countries.]
Among the distributors Cheon Wooil mentioned, the only name Seongcheol recognized was Springlight Software.
[They’re based in the Three Northeastern Provinces, basically the Manchuria region, but I wouldn’t really recommend them.]
Apparently their reliability was poor, and more importantly, that region did not have very strong purchasing power.
Chinese distributors did not fiercely compete with each other, but to distribute in another region, they had to share profits with the distributor based there. Naturally, the settlement money reaching Parallel Soft would become smaller as well.
If possible, it would be better to contract with a region that had stronger purchasing power. Furthermore, Springlight Software supposedly lacked strong negotiating power, so they would likely lose a lot of money to others as well.
[Please don’t mention that I told you this.]
“Ah, yes! Of course.”
[If I were you, I’d sign with YoungGun Soft.]
This company was based in the Guangdong region, which supposedly possessed the strongest economy in Free China. Since it had long been active in commerce, it was at least a region where minimal trust still functioned.
[Still, you shouldn’t trust them completely, but among the distributors over there, they’re probably the best.]
“Ah! Thank you very much.”
“It’s nothing.”
Of course, Seongcheol did not immediately proceed based solely on Manager Cheon Wooil’s words. Only after gathering information through various channels and analyzing it did he finally reach a conclusion.
In the end, he judged that the company Manager Cheon Wooil recommended was indeed the better option, but that did not make the verification process meaningless at all.
Especially since it’s information about China.
Seongcheol contacted YoungGun Soft to sound out a contract proposal.
[Parallel Soft?]
“Yes. We released a game called The Land Of Fantasy, and more recently we released Medieval Fantasy Nobility.”
[Ah! We know The Land Of Fantasy very well!]
As expected of a fairly large company heavily influenced by America, they had employees fluent in English. And perhaps naturally, they were also very familiar with The Land Of Fantasy, so the beginning of the conversation was quite smooth.
[A contract? Please wait a moment.]
Over the receiver came the sound of Chinese—or rather, since this was Guangzhou, it was probably Cantonese. In any case, he heard an incomprehensible exchange in another language before the other party picked up the receiver again.
[Yes. Our side welcomes it.]
“Then when would you be able to visit us?”
[Ah, yes.]
Again, voices speaking in Cantonese could be heard from the other side, and then the answer came.
[Then we shall visit you soon. We’ll contact you before we come.]
Inviting them over was not some sort of psychological power play.
Since America, and especially LA, was the center of the global game market, most game-related infrastructure and reasonably large game companies maintained branch offices there, so contract-related matters like this were usually handled in LA.
This was also one of the reasons computer, game, and software companies continued establishing themselves in LA despite the city’s brutal taxes.
The negotiator who arrived a few days later was a Chinese man in his thirties who spoke polished English. Seongcheol briefly wondered if he was American, but he had actually been dispatched from the Chinese headquarters.
His name was Lu Weicheng, or Roy Lu.
“Please call me Roy.”
After speaking with Seongcheol for a while, he cautiously brought up the matter.
“What kind of terms are you considering?”
If Seongcheol had not researched the Chinese market beforehand, he probably would have demanded something around forty percent.
But after investigating various things, he had come to understand that China was a very unusual environment.
“How about twenty percent?”
Roy showed slight relief at that.
One of the most difficult parts of negotiating with foreign companies was making them understand the unique nature of the Chinese market.
Even when the other side understood the explanation, the image of Free China was already so poor that many people still refused to trust them, which made things extremely difficult.
But for a developer like Parallel Soft to begin by proposing twenty percent meant they had already researched the Chinese market to some extent, so he felt the negotiation would require less effort.
Of course, that did not mean he intended to immediately accept twenty percent.
“Of course, our company also fully understands the value of TLF. However, in order to ensure the smoothest possible distribution, we also have to pay considerable costs, so I believe some adjustment is necessary.”
Roy then took advantage of the fact that the other side already understood the Chinese market and openly spoke about things that might seem shameless.
“And as you may know, popular games like TLF are already being distributed through piracy and imitation games. Even aside from that, if package prices are set too high, gamers are naturally drawn toward those alternatives…”
In the end, through negotiations, the royalty rate was set at eighteen percent.
That was fortunate.
If it dropped any lower, they would have no choice but to search elsewhere. But according to everything they had learned, no other distributor would offer more than this anyway, and trouble of one kind or another would still be unavoidable.
“Then we look forward to working with you.”
“Yes! We will also do our very best.”
There was no way to know what would happen in the future, but at least the other side’s attitude had been fairly sincere, so they seemed somewhat worth trusting.
In reality, rising morale did not suddenly make people stronger.
Rather, it was closer to allowing them to maintain their maximum combat capability for longer periods of time.
From that perspective, the performance bonuses Insu gave definitely had an effect.
Development speed did not suddenly skyrocket, but despite the environmental changes of living in a foreign country and the difficult adjustment to new foreign coworkers, the team maintained its development capabilities without major disruption.
Thanks to that, the prototype was completed around March, not far from the original target date.
“Everyone worked hard.”
This was only the beginning, but the team members who achieved the first goal listed on the schedule wore deeply emotional expressions.
Even the experienced Korean team members did not look much different.
Then again, even though they were experienced, they had only developed a single game.
For ordinary development teams, it was rare for development to proceed directly from a prototype stage, so anyone who completed even one game usually experienced multiple prototypes. But because they joined Insu’s development team, they never had that experience.
Most people on this development team were beginners, so they did not fully understand how remarkable this was. However, Park Yoonsu, who at least had experience making homemade games, vaguely understood it.
After all, even if one successfully implemented what they envisioned in their head, the probability of it immediately becoming fun was not actually that high. And that was even more true for games created collaboratively by multiple people instead of alone.
Simply put, it was similar to telling jokes.
Many people probably had the experience of thinking of a funny joke in their heads, only for the reaction to be poor when they actually said it out loud.
That was because there was a gap between ideas and reality, and bridging that gap required meticulous calculation or an innate sense often called instinct.
And such ability was what people referred to as talent.
Of course, in Insu’s case, knowledge and experience from the future made things easier for him.
But for people who did not know that, there was no choice but to see him as a genius.
Even so, it would be difficult to say all of this existed solely because he came from the future.
At Insu’s glance, Daniel Choi, who looked old enough to be his uncle, stepped forward with a slightly nervous expression.
“This prototype is a verification stage intended to determine how the planned systems are actually implemented, whether they function according to their intended purpose, and whether the game itself is genuinely fun. As you all know since we created it ourselves, we cannot yet guarantee its level of polish, so please keep that in mind while testing.”
He seemed slightly shaky, but he delivered the speech without major issues, so Insu gave a small nod of approval.
Naturally, it was all spoken in English.
Seeing that Insu appeared satisfied, Daniel quietly exhaled and distributed papers to the team members.
[Main Function Inspection Checklist]
[Crash Log List]
[Player Input Pattern Scenarios]
[Expected Gameplay Error Condition Table]
[Lastly, a blank section for “something we might be overlooking.”]
“You must record anything you discover or any ideas that come to mind. Since all of this is for the success of the game we’re developing, please stay focused.”
Since Daniel Choi had been hired to manage QA operations, they were gradually handing work over to him one piece at a time. Since this prototype test was the first QA phase, they planned to proceed alongside him to some extent while observing how he handled the work.
For now, the initial atmosphere did not seem bad.
Daniel carried his own papers back to his seat.
During the interview, he had spoken of his ambition to create his own game someday, and when they told him he should also develop QA management skills for that, he became interested and joined as a QA manager.
But after experiencing it once, he was beginning to question whether he had made the right choice.
Maybe I should’ve just said I wanted to focus on development.
The work itself was neither incomprehensible nor especially complicated, but standing in front of people, speaking, and managing others felt more burdensome than he expected.
Still, there was nothing he could do about spilled water now.
He did not want to give up over something like this after finally getting into this place.
This was the company that developed The Land Of Fantasy, after all. And on top of that, the company’s representative and overall development lead was another Korean like himself.
Of course, Daniel himself was American by nationality and could not speak Korean well, but even so, this place felt more comfortable than a company filled entirely with white people.
It seemed people could not help being heavily influenced by appearances.
As he launched the prototype and saw the Parallel Soft logo appear, Daniel suddenly felt a sense of pride.
It truly felt real that he was creating a game using this logo.
As he quietly watched, the title screen appeared next.
This was still an era before Pentiums existed, and even 386 computers were more common than 486s.
That was true even in America, while places like Korea still had many 286 systems in use. Furthermore, CDs were not yet widespread, so games still had to be made on floppy disks, meaning they could not allocate many resources to things like title screens.
This feels pretty good.
Even so, the title screen came out with quite a strong atmosphere.
The title, rendered in gold with dark shading, was simple yet striking. The center was designed like a hole leading out from the end of a cave, making the blank uncolored space feel like the dark interior of a cavern.
Beyond it, the land and sky rendered in green and blue, along with the clouds, conveyed the feeling of travel, fantasy, and adventure in a compressed but powerful way.
Without realizing it, Daniel glanced toward Eunha.