Shadows in the Spotlight
Levin Willis, a former FBI agent scouted on Remington’s recommendation to serve as the Information Team Leader, was a highly capable individual. That was why he had handled all information-related matters for ID Group for nearly a decade, and now, with the Information Team expanded and reorganized into the Chairman’s direct Information Room, he served as its director. Once again, one of Levin’s signature reports had arrived.
- A special feature article on ID Group is scheduled to appear in a San Francisco-area newspaper.
- The piece analyzes the strengths that propelled ID Group to industry leadership, examining both its light and its darkness. The “darkness” section is highly likely to raise the issue of racial discrimination.
Levin’s report did not contain detailed information. That was inevitable; ID Group’s intelligence organization did not actively gather information. Operating strictly within legal boundaries imposed many restrictions. Even so, over nearly ten years, Director Levin had developed the know-how to collect information efficiently while remaining within the law. His method was personal connections. He had cultivated and managed hundreds, even thousands, of voluntary informants within ID Group. Thanks to this network, particularly in California, he had built a human monitoring system rivaling that of any professional intelligence agency. The report that had just arrived had been detected through this very system.
“Hmm. Racial discrimination, is it?”
At first, reading Levin’s report, Yoo Jae-won wondered what on earth he was talking about. Racial discrimination? If anything, Jae-won had been on the receiving end of it, knowingly or otherwise. He had never once practiced it himself. He immediately opened the attached report and began examining the basis for Levin’s judgment.
“Ah.”
The attached document was said to be a draft of an article soon to be published. It was less than two pages long. Yet before he had even finished the first page, Jae-won understood exactly why the word “racial discrimination” had appeared. In short, it was because of China. In the special feature illuminating both the light and darkness of ID Group, one of the issues raised in the darkness section concerned the racial composition of its employees. The article claimed that while white, Indian, and Korean employees made up a very high proportion of ID Group’s workforce, the percentages of Hispanic and Black employees were extremely low. This distribution deviated significantly from the American average, raising suspicions that Jae-won, himself a person of color, might be deliberately excluding other minorities. It particularly emphasized that not a single Chinese employee held a core position, suggesting clear intent. Black and Hispanic underrepresentation might be understandable, but the sudden mention of Chinese employees was jarring. Most damningly, the journalist who had written the article was Chinese-American.
“Hmm. His instincts are fairly sharp, though.”
Half of it was correct. ID Group did not discriminate based on skin color. Its personnel policy was based solely on ability. That was why the first round of testing was essentially a blind test. Even in the final practical interviews, the questions focused primarily on job-related matters. There was one slight variation: applicants of Chinese descent or Chinese international students were given considerably more difficult questions. Hiring decisions were also made with extreme caution. The reason was simple—technology leakage. History and Jae-won’s own experience had made this clear. China’s pursuit of technology was relentless. The easiest method China employed was leveraging the patriotism and sense of Chinese identity among overseas Chinese. Many held American citizenship yet still considered themselves Chinese. China systematically contacted these individuals and easily persuaded them. No matter how sophisticated a security system might be, it was useless if the people inside could be compromised. That was why, even if a Chinese applicant passed the difficult interview, Jae-won never canceled their acceptance outright. Instead, he simply never assigned them to positions handling critical data, thereby cutting off at the source any possibility of China using people to steal technology. Apparently frustrated by this, someone had arranged for an article like this to be written.
“Write all you want. Do you think I’ll change?”
Jae-won’s perception of China would never change, not even on his deathbed. Even if the employment ratio of people of color increased, he was determined that the policy of rigorous vetting and exclusion from core departments would remain absolutely unchanged.
Ding!
Just as he was about to issue instructions to Levin and the secretariat regarding countermeasures to be taken when the article appeared, ID Talk chimed again. This time, fortunately, it was the report from Team Leader Oh Jung-geun that he had been waiting for. Jae-won immediately opened the document.
- Producer Kojima Hideo is a man overflowing with loyalty to his company.
- He expressed gratitude for the Chairman’s offer but firmly stated that he has no intention of leaving Konami at this time.
- He is positive about releasing Metal Gear Solid on Xbox.
Reading Oh Jung-geun’s report, Jae-won felt a deep sense of regret.
“Ah, I can’t exactly tell him he’s going to get thrown away after he’s no longer useful.”
Producer Kojima was a talented game developer. His somewhat excessive self-love was a minor flaw, but it was more than offset by his exceptional creative instincts. Those instincts were fully displayed in Metal Gear Solid, a game that pioneered the stealth-action genre and, with its compelling world-building, created countless fans worldwide. The unfortunate part was the shabby treatment Konami had given Kojima despite how hard he worked. Each time a sequel was released, development costs rose exponentially, yet sales could no longer be guaranteed, leading to the classic “discard the horse after it has served its purpose.” That was why Jae-won had wanted to bring Kojima Hideo over early. But the timing had apparently been too soon. After all, Konami had not yet begun treating him poorly, so Kojima Hideo had felt no desire to change jobs. It was a pity.
“Nothing to be done about it.”
Someone like Kojima could not be moved by money. The best approach was to wait until he made up his own mind.
“Still, Team Leader Oh Jung-geun’s results are quite impressive.”
Although missing out on Producer Kojima was regrettable, Oh Jung-geun’s business trip to Japan had produced better results than expected. The biggest objective—securing cooperation with Sega—had been achieved. Sega’s game business had already been severely shaken by the disastrous failure of the Dreamcast, and the early masterpiece Shenmue had delivered the final blow. Shenmue, which Sega’s proud AM2 team had spent years developing, aimed to be an open-world action-adventure game. Its goal was to transplant reality directly into the game, with a production budget reaching 80 billion won, yet sales were dismal. Moreover, the promised open world was never properly realized, leaving only the gamers’ disappointment. Domestic sales in Japan reached only 300,000 copies, and worldwide sales barely exceeded one million. It was a crushing failure. For Sega, suffering from severe financial difficulties, Jae-won’s support funding had been like rain in a drought. Development support ranging from several hundred thousand dollars per game to over a million dollars for AAA titles like Virtua Fighter had been allocated. On top of that came the benefit of reduced royalties when releasing games on Xbox. When Sony had been riding high alone, developers had no choice but to pay exorbitant fees to distribute their games. Now, with the emergence of competition, developers were finally able to breathe again. Still, it was unfortunate that the break-even point for ID Group, which was pouring money into the Xbox project like water, kept receding further into the distance.
“Well, I never planned to make money with this generation’s Xbox anyway.”
Jae-won’s calculation was simple. Profits would begin with Xbox 2. The role of Xbox 1 was simply to deliver a fatal blow to Sony, which was trying to break away from the Android operating system.
“Games belong on Android!”
The ultimate gaming system was Android! The true purpose of the Xbox project was to prove this proposition. Of course, since the game industry was larger than the global film market, dominating the gaming world would naturally generate enormous revenue. That was why games had to run on the Android operating system.
Meow!
While Jae-won was passionately working at his computer, a thick, resonant cat’s cry echoed through the room. Turning his head, he saw Didi, who had joined the household only a few days earlier, standing at the study threshold, tilting her head and staring at him.
“What is it?”
Meow~!
Being a cat, Didi could not properly answer Jae-won’s question. Yet strangely, she seemed to understand the meaning of his words and responded with a sound. Unlike ordinary cats with their sleek builds, Didi had a plump figure, and apparently even her vocal cords carried extra weight, because her meow came out as a deep “ya-ong.” Because of this, Jae-won had wanted to call her Ya-ong instead of Didi, but Tiffany had insisted on the name Didi, so he had given up.
Didi was a cat Tiffany had brought home. There had been a cat living hidden in the garage of Tiffany’s house. It was clearly a Norwegian Forest cat that someone had raised and then abandoned. About a year earlier, it had given birth to several kittens. Tiffany had cared for them until they were old enough, but one day the mother and kittens suddenly disappeared—except for Didi. Didi had been born somewhat frail and had been unable to follow her mother like the others. After that, Tiffany became Didi’s devoted caretaker, and Didi received the most meticulous care. Although she had been weak, Tiffany had fed her well, and thanks to that, Didi had grown without any problems and reached this point. However, because she had been fed so well, she had become plumper than an average cat, and her meow had changed as well. Furthermore, while the father cat’s breed was unknown, Didi’s appearance differed from typical Norwegian Forest cats—her legs were somewhat short.
Jae-won did not mind having a cat around. The only problem was the occasional cat hair that clung to his clothes when he left for work, but he had no allergy to fur. On the contrary, when he worked from home, he sometimes felt lonely, but ever since Didi arrived, he had never felt that way again.
“Didi! Did you tell Jae-won it’s time to eat?”
Tiffany appeared shortly afterward and translated the meaning behind the meow. It was time for dinner. Jae-won had finished all his urgent work, so he immediately switched his computer to standby mode and stood up. It was a peaceful, harmonious moment. The winter night was so serene that the 1999 prophecy of a terrifying demon king descending to destroy the Earth felt utterly meaningless.
January 3, 2000. ID Group welcomed the new year with a New Year’s ceremony attended by the presidents of all its subsidiaries. The media and the internet had made such a fuss about the new millennium, yet when the day actually arrived, nothing particularly special happened. The only change Jae-won could feel was that the New Year’s event a few days earlier had been more lavish than ever before.
As Levin had warned several days earlier, the special feature article titled “Light and Darkness of ID Group” appeared in the San Francisco regional newspaper, California Watch. Just as Levin had reported, the piece appeared to celebrate ID Group’s success story while simultaneously delivering a strong critique of its skewed racial composition. Fortunately, it did not create much of a stir. In America’s long history of racial discrimination against people of color, the Asian share was simply too small. Had the article accused ID Group of discriminating against Black employees, the repercussions might have been enormous, but ID Group’s full-time employee racial distribution was far more balanced than the national average. Wage discrimination was also nonexistent; compensation was determined solely by performance. Even employees with modest results were not treated as invisible. The bonus party held after the 1999 fiscal settlement paid a base bonus to everyone, with performance bonuses added on top. If you wanted to earn more money, you simply had to deliver results; if you wanted work-life balance, that was also acceptable at ID Group’s subsidiaries. Crucially, choosing balance did not mean earning less. ID Group’s labor cost ratio was the highest among Silicon Valley companies. As a result, it was only natural that, among the countless IT firms in Silicon Valley, ID Group had become the most coveted employer for job seekers.
At the same time, the media focused on ID Group’s New Year’s address. Every year, Jae-won’s vision proclamation for the coming year did not affect only ID Group. It was a topic that resonated throughout the entire IT industry. Last year’s vision regarding SNS had also proven accurate. TokTok was the best, and similar services were springing up like mushrooms after rain, attempting to reshape the internet landscape. The media and IT industry figures alike were on edge, wondering what he would say this time.
“This year, I have no intention of launching any grand projects. However, we plan to make massive investments in system integration and artificial intelligence across the Group.”
Once again, Jae-won did not disappoint their expectations.