Chapter 88: Inference? Leak?
Chapter 88: Inference? Leak?
Insu read the team members’ test reports and unconsciously scratched the back of his head.
There were not many extremely negative reactions saying the project would never work. There were also quite a few positive responses saying they were looking forward to it. However, there were also many responses like Yunsu’s, saying they could not feel certain yet, and that slightly stirred Insu’s anxiety.
In truth, Insu was not pursuing this project with absolute certainty either.
Just because MMORPGs had succeeded in his previous life did not mean they would definitely succeed here. And while Insu had referenced many successful titles, including Ultima Online, he had also included a fair amount of his own original ideas and interpretations.
Of course, these were systems that had been proven to some extent through TLF1 and TLF2, and he had carefully laid the groundwork by securing more than enough recognition before taking on the challenge. Even so, he still could not feel certain.
But I always felt this way when developing other games too.
Doubt and caution were good, but becoming trapped by anxiety and losing sight of what stood before him would be foolish. Insu forced himself to shake off his unease and focused on the reports.
When he read them carefully again, he realized the others merely had similar anxieties to his own. There were no comments pointing out any particular flaw in the design itself.
Well, this is something we can only confirm by actually making it anyway.
Since nobody in the development room had found a special loophole, thinking about it any longer would be a waste of time. And thinking further, this was an online game.
Even after release, revisions and patches would be possible. Rather than suffering from trying to make everything perfect from the beginning, it seemed more realistic to do their best, observe the response, and fix problems afterward.
Insu felt his heart grow a little lighter.
Afterward, his team began fixing the issues and bugs discovered through testing.
“...Ah, that was rough.”
After returning to his room after work, Insu muttered without realizing it and collapsed face-down onto his bed. Debugging was always the hardest part.
With other tasks, they could at least predict the schedule somewhat, but with debugging, it was impossible to know when it would end. Yet a schedule still had to be set, so they often had to force the work to fit the planned date.
Of course, if the workload turned out smaller than expected, they could work with more leeway, but Insu had never once experienced relaxed debugging work so far.
When the schedule was fixed and the workload showed no sign of decreasing, the only option left was overtime.
Moreover, it was not as if they worked leisurely during the day either. He had to keep driving everyone until quitting time. Naturally, he could only end up exhausted.
The only saving grace was that they had not received outside investment, so there was no external pressure, and because Insu himself was still a minor, they could not push all the way and usually ended around eight. No, honestly, if his parents had not been upstairs from the development room, quitting time probably would have been pushed even later.
No. No. I’m off work now, so forget it. Forget it.
Rest was absolutely necessary for efficient development. Since this was his own business, he tended to become overly passionate, but passion was not an infinite resource either.
He needed to cut off thoughts about work and replenish his dopamine to some extent so burnout would not arrive.
Insu turned on the computer and tore open a bag of snacks.
But he was not going to play games.
Part of it was that there were still no games capable of satisfying someone with memories from 2025, but perhaps because he spent all day developing games, he simply had no desire to play them.
[Beep—beep—beep—beep]
In this era, the best content for extracting dopamine from a computer was naturally PC communications.
Insu immediately entered the game category. Playing games felt tiring, so he did not want to do that, but browsing things like this carried no burden and let him obtain all sorts of information instantly, so it was fun.
And the first thing he searched for in the game category was naturally talk related to Parallel Soft.
Since he was a content producer and the company was drawing considerable public attention, he could not resist ego-searching.
I’m probably not the only one who does this.
Sometimes he felt a sudden wave of embarrassment, but he could not help himself.
As expected, there’s the most talk about TLF2.
It was the newest release, and since it combined the characteristics of the two previous titles, it felt like it had absorbed players from both sides.
[Summoner is really fun.]
[If you raise one well, it feels like they can do the work of three people alone.]
[Why is only Summoner this strong?]
Insu looked up posts related to Summoner. Summoning was a system added with Pokémon in mind, so he had high expectations for it, but it had not received much attention at first. He had been slightly disappointed, but as time passed and more strategies for the game appeared, players who studied Summoners eventually began to emerge.
Since he had waited quite a while for it, this reaction tasted extremely satisfying.
Every time he searched, the evaluation of Summoner had risen. Information on how to obtain summons, the characteristics of summons, and combinations increased steadily, and before long, Summoner began positioning itself as an essential party member for pushing the highest limits.
He had even heard that these days, when playing multiplayer, it was hard to find a party without a Summoner.
If that’s the case, updating related content later would be good.
He was thinking about TLF Online.
For now, TLF Online also included a Summoner system, but because the response during TLF2’s early release period had seemed lukewarm, he had not put much effort into it and had only added it at about the same level as the previous game. But if interest was rising like this, adding more Summoner-related content did not seem bad.
Something like a Summoner tournament?
It would be content that borrowed somewhat from Pokémon’s major setup, placing Summon Academies in various regions, allowing players to advance in rank, and holding tournaments periodically.
The game already had a system called Honor, so if players could obtain Honor through these tournaments, it could draw them in.
In TLF Online, Strategy Mode offered far more advantages and playable elements compared to TLF2. Therefore, tournaments that granted Honor Points for advancing as a noble would likely be given considerable value.
After browsing TLF2 discussion for a while, Insu changed the topic to Parallel Soft. He was curious about how much attention the company itself was receiving, not just the games.
Of course, he had checked it repeatedly before, so he roughly knew the general atmosphere, but he was curious about what people were saying recently.
[TLF2’s been out for a while now. Anyone know what Parallel Soft is doing these days?]
Insu unconsciously curled up the corners of his mouth. This was a type of post that had begun appearing often lately. Until now, Parallel Soft had not exactly poured out games nonstop, but it had built the image of a company that continued developing games.
Moreover, with TLF2, they had shared part of the development process through PC communications, so people knew that even after releasing a game, they did not simply rest. They kept making something, and people also had a rough idea of how long that took.
Because of that, people naturally began to think that since seven months had already passed since Parallel Soft released TLF2, the company was probably doing something.
However, while this project was not exactly top secret, he did not want to reveal it before the right time unless necessary.
There was the possibility that a competitor inspired by Insu’s project might appear, and since it was an ambitious project, they could not be sure how long development would take. He also did not want to announce it too early and make gamers grow tired of waiting.
I don’t think our game would lose to something rushed out in response, but there’s still the chance someone could steal the title of being first.
In any case, the fact that they were doing something others did not know about felt quite pleasant.
[Can’t Parallel Soft be called a powerhouse in RPGs now?]
[They made a strategy game in the middle too.]
[But who’s Parallel Soft’s main developer?]
There were various evaluations of Parallel Soft, and there were also posts wondering about Insu.
He read through them with a faint grin until one post abruptly caught his eye.
[I heard Parallel Soft is preparing something huge these days.]
Insu let out another soft laugh.
There are people who make things up everywhere.
Of course, he had seen many people exaggerating or lying on PC communications before, but seeing something about his own company felt different.
Insu was about to ignore it, but then he suddenly became curious about what kind of lie the person had written, so he clicked the post.
[First, I think the next game is an RPG too.]
Oh. They got the RPG part right. But we’ve already released two RPGs, and considering how successful TLF2 was, most people would probably assume the next one is another RPG too.
It was only a high-probability inference. Insu continued reading.
[And it seems like they’re making a full-scale network game. Not like TLF2, more like a MUD.]
...Huh?
That was fairly close to the core.
But thinking about it again, since TLF2 had showcased multiplayer mode, a prediction like this was not impossible.
A suspicion briefly crossed Insu’s mind that perhaps one of the team members had leaked information.
And that suspicion deepened when he read the following lines.
[Apparently they’re improving the trade system from TLF2 to suit an environment with many users, and they’re also adding something new called a corruption system.]
“Huh?!”
He could overlook the rest, but the corruption system was not an answer someone could reach through inference. Of course, Insu was not the only person who could come up with such an idea, and the concept had been introduced into games before.
However, there were countless systems in games, and the chance of someone specifically predicting this one was far too low. More than anything, the problem was that the name attached to the system was exactly the same as the one Insu had used.
Is it really one of the team members? Maybe Daniel?
Daniel came to mind because, as QA manager, he had a history of communicating frequently with gamers through PC communications.
However, when Insu remembered how Daniel worked on PC communications, he always stayed strictly within guidelines and never went beyond them. Honestly, communication work like that easily led to mistakes the moment someone lost focus, so Insu had highly valued Daniel’s self-control.
Because of that, he did not think Daniel would suddenly become loose-lipped and do something like this.
But when he tried to think of someone else, nobody particular came to mind.
And he had already explained why this had to be kept secret. The team members were also pouring all their effort into game development, so he did not think they would do something that could ruin their own work.
Of course, people aren’t always rational.
Insu violently tousled his hair with both hands, then looked at the handle that posted the message. A handle was basically the nickname used on PC communications at the time. He sent a one-on-one message to the handle “ByteRider.”
[Who are you? This is all company confidential. I’m a developer at Parallel Soft.]
After briefly hesitating, Insu decided to reveal only the fact that he belonged to Parallel Soft. If he did not reveal that much, the other person might ignore the message, and the warning probably would not work.
However, he did not immediately tell them to take the post down.
There was no evidence attached anyway, and boastful posts like this were common. If it was suddenly deleted, it might draw more attention instead, so he judged that it would be better to let it be buried naturally.
Fortunately, the other person seemed to be online, because a reply arrived only a few minutes later.
[Huh?! For real?!]
“...What?”
The reaction was somewhat unexpected.
For now, Insu requested a one-on-one chat.
*** Private Chat Session Established ***
You are now connected with [ByteRider]
Chat Room ID: #LA-NEXUS-917