Chapter 71: The Shadow of a Competitor
Chapter 71: The Shadow of a Competitor
Still, although this growth system felt fairly fresh, he could not say he viewed it positively. It felt slightly excessive in its attempt to stand out.
It seemed intended to add realism and unpredictability, but there also appeared to be a high chance players would feel stress from the lack of predictability and control.
Even so, it seemed likely to appeal well enough to people whose tastes matched it.
Insu, who had briefly worried that perhaps a game with a similar system had appeared before TLF2’s release, soon relaxed and turned the page.
There were also several JRPGs gaining considerable popularity, but since their direction differed from TLF’s, he did not pay them much attention.
This feels similar to The Legend of Heroes?
It only caught his interest for a moment because of memories of enjoying it in the past. Still, it truly seemed this era was one of explosive advancement.
The magazine also gave a very brief introduction to Adventure Land 1, the predecessor of this game called Adventure Land 2. The newly released sequel was not exactly groundbreaking graphically, but its clean pixel art and relatively bright, colorful palette made it pleasant enough to look at.
However, the original released just three years earlier in 1989 barely managed to feel like a color game at all, showing stuffy and unnatural color tones.
When enjoying retro games, even if the gameplay itself was similar, that gap between those two entries felt like the exact dividing line determining whether modern gamers could tolerate them or not. No matter how much someone loved retro aesthetics, it still needed to reach a minimum level people could sympathize with and accept.
That was why, even though Insu released TLF in the same year of 1989, he pushed the specifications fairly aggressively for the era and developed it at unusually high specs for the time.
But back then, creating something in 16 colors like Adventure Land 1 would probably have been considered the sensible choice. If you developed for high-end hardware, there was a strong chance the game would not sell enough and simply fail.
It was a decision Insu could only make because he knew the future. And honestly, even from Insu’s perspective, it had been a gamble. While this world was almost identical to his previous life, it was not completely the same, so he could not be certain computer technology and the gaming market would progress along the exact same path.
Perhaps at the time, having only recently awakened memories of his previous life, he had been overly excited. And since he had developed almost entirely alone without a proper development team, maybe he simply had not felt much burden.
After briefly falling into nostalgia, Insu began turning the magazine pages again.
Not long afterward, he discovered another game that caught his interest.
[Eden 7]
It was the seventh entry in the RPG series he had found on his father’s computer shortly after awakening memories of his previous life.
In truth, he had already heard before that Eden 7 had been released, but he had been extremely busy at the time and merely brushed past the news. This was the first time he properly saw a detailed article about it.
The graphics are definitely good.
Since Insu had once seen Eden 1, he had considered it an outdated old game. But in reality, the Eden series was famous for making hardware-demanding games that practically tormented gamers.
As expected, Eden 7 featured not only dazzling 256-color graphics, but also a resolution that felt remarkably high by current standards. Most games of this era, even color ones, often had jagged edges visible in the linework, but this game looked clean without that sort of roughness.
Furthermore, although its art direction differed from TLF and leaned toward Western aesthetics, the quality itself felt extremely high.
Its innovative mouse-based interface even made it feel unlike a game from this era. TLF also used a mouse, but relied heavily on the keyboard as well, making it impossible to play purely with mouse controls like this.
In truth, once accustomed to it, using the keyboard as the main input with the mouse as support, like TLF did, was faster and more convenient. However, in terms of intuitiveness, this mouse interface truly was superior. Even someone starting the game for the first time could adapt immediately with almost no learning process.
In addition, there were many revolutionary systems: NPCs did not remain in fixed locations but moved around according to time as though living daily lives, and field objects such as walls, furniture, and torches were not merely decorative images but interactive objects.
Moreover, these systems did not simply remain experimental gimmicks. They blended successfully into the game itself, making it feel astonishingly advanced.
Feels about five years ahead of its time.
Even through the eyes of Insu, someone who knew the actual future of gaming, it looked that way.
It felt like an RPG from the mid-to-late 1990s, especially resembling the 2D graphical MMORPGs popular during that period.
And that was precisely why Insu paid close attention to this game.
Because it was deeply connected to MMORPGs.
More specifically, in his previous life, the game most similar to this one—Ultima VII—had been.
(Translator’s Note: Ultima — A classic American role-playing game series created by Richard Garriott and developed by Origin Systems, influential in the evolution of computer RPGs.)
As mentioned before, there were obvious system similarities, but those similarities did not exist merely because the game itself was innovative. They existed because Ultima Online, one of the earliest MMORPGs ever made, had been built upon its foundation.
(Translator’s Note: Ultima Online — Landmark MMORPG released in 1997 by Origin Systems, widely regarded as one of the foundational online RPGs.)
In other words, this game was already one of TLF’s competitors in the present, but in the MMORPG market Insu aimed to dominate, it had the potential to emerge as an even more formidable rival.
As long as they fumble around with sequels for a while like in my previous life and only attempt MMORPGs later, it won’t matter much.
The reason a system became the standard within an industry was partly because the system itself was excellent, but even more so because many people chose it and it seized a dominant market position first.
Of course, being excellent made market domination easier. But that did not mean the best system always became the dominant one.
A commonly cited example was the competition between Betamax and VHS in the home video market. Even though Sony’s Betamax had superior image quality and better hardware design, it ultimately lost because of several market details and Sony’s failure to cooperate properly with other companies. It was an extremely famous case.
(Translator’s Notes: Sony — Major Japanese electronics and gaming company; platform holder for PlayStation consoles.)
(Translator’s Note: Betamax — A home videocassette tape format developed by Sony in 1975. It competed against VHS during the videotape format war of the late 1970s and 1980s before eventually losing market dominance.)
But since that example was so old it might not feel relatable, another comparison would be Apple’s early operating system and Microsoft Windows.
(Translator’s Note: Apple — American technology company founded in 1976 in California, United States. It became known for personal computers, graphical user interfaces, consumer electronics, and operating system design.)
It was difficult to definitively say which was superior, but Apple’s operating system—which later became the foundation for the iPhone’s iOS—had many strengths and appeared earlier than Windows.
Because of that, there were even old rumors claiming Windows copied Apple.
Yet in the end, Windows won, and while Apple did not disappear entirely, it remained suppressed for a very long time until the arrival of the mobile era.
Thus, if Eden Online ever appeared, it would inevitably compete against his own TLF Online, and whichever side won would likely become the standard of the MMORPG market for many years.
So naturally, he could not help but feel a sense of solemn determination.
First, I need to make TLF2 a success.
No matter what happened afterward, if TLF2 failed, the momentum of any future online game they developed would certainly collapse. But if TLF2 became a massive success, they might dominate the market and effectively declare victory before Eden Online even appeared.
Using this realization as motivation, Insu steeled his resolve and focused even more intensely on TLF2’s development.
It would be difficult to call Parallel Soft fast-growing, but after releasing its first title, the company had steadily recruited developers. Compared to when TLF1 was developed, TLF2 was now being made by a team five times larger.
But somehow it feels even slower now.
The planning was already complete. He could perfectly imagine how everything would be made and how it would play once completed, yet despite devoting himself to development every single day, the end still felt nowhere in sight.
For developers, it was a very common experience.
In truth, Insu knew it too. Development speed had not actually slowed down. Certainly, development efficiency did not increase in perfect proportion to manpower, and some inefficiencies naturally appeared as team size grew. Even so, progress now was incomparable to the days when he developed alone.
Yet it still felt slower because the game’s scale had grown immensely, and its systems had become far more complex and sophisticated.
Simply put, as development capability increased, the workload increased alongside it.
And this would likely continue repeating forever.
As computer technology advanced rapidly, more and more technologies and services would become expected—graphics, AI, networking, high freedom, multiplatform support, live services—and accordingly, development demands would continue growing.
Eventually, games will have hundreds of people working on them.
Thinking that way, things still seemed manageable for now.
With a sigh, Insu resumed typing on the keyboard.
After the alpha test, another three months passed with Insu and the development team endlessly piling up suffering, and Parallel Soft finally entered beta version production.
“Then Daniel, please begin preparing for tester recruitment.”
“Ah. Yes!”
They were not recruiting testers immediately. Producing the beta version alone would take over a month.
For now, they simply intended to share the current situation with the communities they had been monitoring and filtering in advance: the TLF board, RPG forums, and Parallel Soft fan boards.
[We’ve finally begun development on the beta version. It will probably take around a month, though that is not guaranteed. Tester recruitment will begin about one to two weeks before development is complete.]
During this time, they had continuously explained what a beta version was, that testing would involve ordinary gamers, the purpose of testing, and that leaking the test version could create legal issues and potentially lead to legal action.
Ordinary users were not developers, so there were many things developers considered obvious that regular players simply did not know. To ensure smooth testing, they needed to provide information in advance.
[Oh! Beta testing finally?!]
[You said you’re mailing it out by parcel, right?]
[Then that means the official release isn’t far off either?]
[I heard a beta version means the game’s basically finished.]
[I’m really curious about the multiplayer.]
Not long after Daniel posted the announcement, reactions exploded.
Since they had been steadily building anticipation all this time, there was no need for any warm-up period.
“Once development is complete, testing will be conducted externally, so I ask everyone to stay focused and work carefully.”
Even Insu himself was tense as he said it.
Internal testing was simple. No matter what problems appeared, they could just fix them.
External testing was completely different.
Since the testers would be ordinary gamers rather than professional QA personnel, even though they had clearly explained it was an unfinished test build, the game still needed to reach a level where it could at least be genuinely enjoyed as a game.
Only then would people willingly play and properly participate in testing.
“You should work while thinking of this as practically half an official release already.”
Showing it externally was practically the same as exposing the game’s first impression.
Of course, they would make testers promise not to leak anything and keep information about the test version confidential, but there was no way such promises would be obeyed one hundred percent.
From the start, conducting external testing meant accepting a certain amount of leakage.
And if stories spread through those testers claiming the game was terrible, anticipation for the game could collapse.
Moreover, this was not yet an era where the concept of beta testing was widely understood. People might not realize the game was unfinished and subject to change, and instead permanently form a bad impression.
Despite all that pressure, they still proceeded with external testing because the advantages gained from it were simply too significant.