The Calm After the Storm

A few days after the internship. Having just wrapped up IDDC—the most important event of the year—Yoo Jae-won finally returned to his long-missed daily routine.

This year’s IDDC had centered on the launch of Xbox 2, so the response had been on another level. It made sense; gaming was, after all, a truly universal hobby. Heading to his study first thing in the morning, settling in, and leisurely browsing world news on his computer—that was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yoo Jae-won’s peaceful daily ritual, and the one he enjoyed most. Thanks to that, even his work felt far more pleasant than usual.

For the past six months, he had endured a grueling schedule: South Korea’s general election, the final completion of The Pacific, and the patient wait to support Xbox 2. Because so many matters required his personal oversight, he had rarely found time to savor the quiet luxury of his study. Fortunately, every project had wrapped up successfully. Xbox 2 and its launch titles, including The Pacific, were flying off shelves in every first-release country without any inventory concerns. After a full year of dedicated effort, the internet was flooded with glowing praise wherever he looked.

Browsing through online communities and reading the favorable posts felt like receiving a reward. Of course, not every voice was positive. A few days after launch, complaints began to surface. The biggest grievance was the price. The console cost two hundred dollars more than its predecessor. As a result, some gamers had already declared they were skipping Xbox 2 entirely and would wait for the PlayStation 3 coming out three months later during Thanksgiving.

But could Sony actually meet those expectations? In Yoo Jae-won’s view, it was impossible. To compete with Xbox 2, Sony would need hardware specs at least on par, yet the manufacturing cost alone hovered near the high eight-hundred-dollar range. Even if they tried to compete on price like they had with the PlayStation 2, they would have to swallow a loss of at least three hundred dollars per unit. Whether they cut specs or raised the price, Sony’s options were severely limited—and none of them posed a real threat to Xbox 2.

The other major complaint concerned The Pacific itself. The game’s controversy was so intense that even the official sequel to Halo—Halo 2—had been momentarily pushed into the background. Not only did gaming-specific outlets cover it; mainstream media had begun running stories as well. This spawned a wide range of discussions. Most were positive. Many people expressed sudden realizations such as, “So the Rising Sun Flag really was a war crime flag.”

“Well, Germany and Japan are the exceptions,” he muttered.

Yet in some countries, complaints far outweighed praise. Still, equating Germany and Japan would be unfair. The same game had been banned in both nations for entirely different reasons. Germany’s ban was perfectly reasonable. Japan’s, on the other hand, was a masterclass in reality denial and mental victory.

Germany’s prohibition stemmed from its laws against Nazi symbolism. German gamers were simply upset that they couldn’t enjoy a great game like everyone else. A few minor edits—removing the swastikas and the handful of Nazi officers—would have been enough. But ID Group had drawn a firm line: there would be no content alterations whatsoever.

Of course, that didn’t mean German gamers had zero ways to play. By using a VPN to change their connection region to anywhere outside Germany, the grayed-out The Pacific icon would light up and become playable. After all, the game came pre-installed on every Xbox 2.

Japan’s backlash, however, was the complete opposite.

Since the 1970s, when Japan’s economy began to regain momentum, the country had poured enormous resources into positively promoting its culture worldwide. Anime led the charge, allowing elements like samurai and ninja to slip naturally into American subculture. This created generations of weeaboos who grew up obsessed with Japanese media and harbored favorable views of the country. When those people entered society, Japan reaped countless tangible and intangible benefits.

Now, a single game called The Pacific threatened to collapse decades of carefully crafted image. It was an emergency.

Knock knock.

“Yes, come in.”

Right on cue, Kim Dae-seok entered. He began his report, covering the day’s schedule, group updates, and various other intelligence. At the end, he brought up Japan.

“The Japanese prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the lawsuit filed by the Japan Conference against you, Chairman, and ID Software. Additionally, the preliminary injunction banning Xbox 2 sales in Japan has been approved.”

Yoo Jae-won already knew this. Japan had banned The Pacific outright ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and had now extended the prohibition to the Xbox 2 console itself. Kim Dae-seok explained that the complaint centered on the fact that The Pacific was pre-installed on every unit straight from the factory. Although the game was banned in Japan, players could still access it using the same VPN workaround as in Germany. Japanese gamers who didn’t particularly care about history simply set their connection region to Korea, Taiwan, or even North Korea and played freely. After all, The Pacific wasn’t just a single-player campaign; it also featured a meticulously crafted large-scale multiplayer mode.

“What the Japan Conference is especially fixated on is the phrase that appears at the ending: ‘Based on historical facts.’”

The Pacific began dramatically from the very first second. The moment you launched it, you were thrown into combat; only after completing the prologue mission did the title screen appear. Once that was done, subsequent launches offered choices like New Game or Load Game. Because the game started so differently from others, its ending was also unique.

Brief glimpses of the real historical figures who inspired the player characters appeared, but not everyone received a happy resolution. The central theme of The Pacific was the horror of war and its staunch anti-war message. In the Japanese version, it even showed war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine as heroes. After the epilogue played, the final text that appeared read: “Based ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on historical facts.”

Thorough historical accuracy.

Every FPS ID Software had released until now had been larger than life. Wolfenstein featured Nazis resurrecting with occult technology. Doom opened hell portals on a terraformed Mars. Both were far removed from reality. The Pacific, however, maintained rigorous accuracy from beginning to end. A few dramatic events had been added for gameplay purposes, but every piece of equipment, vehicle, and weapon was identical to its real-world counterpart. Moreover, events ranging from the Pearl Harbor attack to the Battle of Midway and Japan’s southern expansion were all based on thoroughly verified historical documents.

Players were shocked all over again to learn that the horrific events depicted weren’t mere game exaggeration—they were facts. Naturally, Japan’s right-wingers foamed at the mouth the moment they saw the word “history.”

“Here are today’s relevant articles from Japan’s major daily newspapers.”

With that, Chief of Staff Kim Dae-seok handed over a scrapbook. It wasn’t an American publication of Japanese newspapers; it was a compilation of the morning editions that flooded Japanese newsstands every day. Yoo Jae-won found it hard to imagine how such a thing was possible here in the United States.

“Japanese newspapers? You can get these here?”

“Not exactly. We received some assistance from a Japanese airline.”

As expected, the method was extraordinary. In Korea, they could have simply received PDF files and printed them. Japan, however, was one of the slower countries when it came to the IT revolution. Newspapers there didn’t distribute PDFs, so the team had obtained physical copies flown in by plane. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Airlines usually provided newspapers to passengers; today’s San Francisco-bound flight from Japan would have carried them. For ID Group, acquiring copies from that specific flight had been no difficult task.

The resulting scrapbook was larger than usual. That was inevitable given Japan’s distinctive layout style—bold, colorful, oversized headlines screaming across the page.

Yoo Jae-won could read Japanese and Chinese characters without difficulty, but the ever-thorough Kim Dae-seok had also attached clean Korean translations.

“Exactly as expected,” he said.

The moment he started reading, irritation surged through him and he couldn’t continue. He couldn’t imagine what kind of drugs someone would need to take to write articles like these. The so-called “Korean academia” mentioned in one piece clearly referred to the New Right—a group that could hardly be called a legitimate research body.

In any case, he had already anticipated that Japan would accuse The Pacific of historical distortion. After all, games required review and rating before release. For a global launch, approvals had to be secured from every major market in advance. The Pacific had been completed about two months before IDDC, and review processes had begun immediately. Both Germany and Japan had issued sales bans.

Germany’s ban could be lifted with minor edits to Nazi-related content. Japan’s situation was different. As soon as the review revealed problematic material, far-right groups sprang into action. They applied pressure and attempted persuasion through every channel imaginable. Naturally, none of it worked.

If ID Group had been a small game company, things might have been different. But it was hardly a weak enterprise that would fold under Japanese pressure. After all, the company was already standing firm against pressure from China.

China had introduced an internet censorship system several years earlier and began blocking any content that didn’t suit the Communist Party’s tastes. The Tiananmen Square incident, for example, had been erased from existence within China. Yet it remained fully searchable on NextCom and Google. China had warned that failure to block such material would prevent market entry. Yoo Jae-won had never intended to enter China in the first place.

While every other global corporation raced toward the Chinese market, ID Group remained completely still. Although it maintained indirect cooperation with Tencent, direct investment had never once appeared on the agenda of executive meetings. Wall Street and economic research institutes treated ID Group as an oddity. Simply moving production bases to China would slash costs by thirty to fifty percent overnight due to the massive labor cost difference. Chinese authorities had even approached them offering every possible preferential treatment if they would only enter the market.

Yet Yoo Jae-won didn’t budge. Having personally witnessed China’s behavior in his previous life, every carrot the current regime offered looked like nothing more than bait.

When ID Group refused to move, China eventually turned to pressure. It began with Tencent. First they delayed the official release date of World of Warcraft. Then imports of Android smartphones and Xbox consoles became extremely difficult. Even so, ID Group’s sales remained rock solid. Android phones were treated like luxury goods in China, so gray-market traders worked overtime to cover the reduced quotas. Moreover, the devices were selling like hotcakes in the United States, Korea, Europe, and even Southeast Asia. There was no real damage.

The real problem was hacking. Industrial spies made ID Group their top target. Headhunting was routine; hacking attempts were an everyday occurrence. On major launch days like The Pacific, they even faced DDoS attacks. Of course, none of it had ever succeeded. ID Group upgraded its security technology far faster than hackers could refine their methods. A perfect example was last year’s launch of AI Eyes. Hacker groups had gone wild trying to crack the facial recognition lock on Android phones, yet not a single successful breach had been recorded.

Since Yoo Jae-won had perfectly defended against even China’s attacks, Japan’s moves had been entirely predictable.

But did he intend to stop at mere prediction?

“Once things simmer a little longer, we’ll begin distribution,” he said.

If you could predict something, it was only natural to prepare a perfect countermeasure. This was Yoo Jae-won’s modest preparation for the Japanese far-right forces currently frothing at the mouth about historical distortion and personal grudges, as well as the Japanese government that was eagerly jumping on their bandwagon.

It was a making-of documentary for The Pacific.

From the development studio at ID Software’s headquarters in Dallas, Texas, to real-world measurements of World War II equipment conducted in the Texas desert, sound recording sessions, and massive motion-capture shoots at a Hollywood studio—the entire process of how The Pacific was created had been turned into a premium documentary. It didn’t only show the game’s development; it also captured the team meticulously organizing historical materials from the Second World War. Among those materials were documents proving the very war crimes Japan had spent decades denying.

The time had almost come to reveal the confidential records collected over more than ten years by a special team that had worked in silence with Yoo Jae-won’s steadfast support.