The Club's Demise and the Birth of SounDrive
Yong-pal let out a long, guttural groan. "Grrrrrrrrrgh..." Another zombie had appeared in the club room. After getting worked like that for half a year, it was only natural. They'd basically run on pure passion in full crunch mode for six straight months—if he hadn't turned into a zombie, that would've been weirder. Honestly, the strange one was me, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed despite sleeping even less and somehow finding time to contribute to Linux. Maybe my stamina was weirdly high in the wrong areas. My motor skills weren't anything special, after all.
"Everyone's dismissed except Senior Ji-young! See you next semester!"
"Why me?" Yoo Ji-young asked, sounding confused.
"We have to submit the review documents. If we want approval before the new semester starts, we're on a tight schedule."
Ji-young's complexion worsened dramatically. It would be more accurate to say it turned a sickly shade of blue.
"I somehow managed to get the supervising professor on board... and I don't think anything's missing from the paperwork? Should we submit it like this?"
"Okay!"
After one final review, we submitted the documents and waited. Then came news that hit like a bolt from the blue.
"Denied? We went all the way to the Expo and did so much work—why..."
"Does this even make sense? At least tell us the reason for rejection!"
The reason for rejection was, of all things, insufficient credibility in the submitted materials. So what were we supposed to do?
"Summon the foreign press!"
Help me, Berners-Lee and Raymond! This time Linux and Korea Telecom joined the fray as well. In the end, a stack of documents several times thicker than what we'd sent to Korea Telecom for the Expo preparations arrived. Surely this would be enough...?
"No. Way."
The central club association was firm! The new reason for rejection was insufficient activity.
"What the fuck?"
Even I couldn't hold back the curse this time. The club members who had voluntarily gathered after hearing about the initial rejection turned the temporary club room—where we'd been waiting for the results—into a den of righteous fury. The air grew thick with their anger. In the end, unable to take it anymore, Kim Jeong-jun, Yoo Ji-young, and I marched over to the central club office to demand an explanation.
The response we received was ridiculous.
"The only proper activity you have is the Expo, isn't it? This... team whatever and Linus? We have no way of knowing how significant those are."
...What the hell was this guy saying?
"No, collaborating with foreign entities is a huge deal in itself! We contacted overseas partners without any professor connections or personal networks and essentially co-developed with them. Right now, even among department clubs, there are plenty with worse results than ours!"
"The existence of department clubs is part of the problem. We currently have department clubs, so we see no reason for additional computer-related clubs to exist. Moreover, aside from two freshmen, all your members come from department clubs. Isn't this just poaching talent and ongoing research from them?"
Heat surged all the way to the top of my head. It felt like my brain was pulsing in sync with my heart, and my entire body radiated such intense heat that I almost imagined steam rising from me like I was in second gear.
"Above all, clubs are not places for childish activities like making games."
A professor who had suddenly appeared took over the conversation.
"He's the department club advisor," Kim Jeong-jun whispered to me.
Just looking at the guy's face gave off bad vibes.
"When I checked the computers during course registration for the second semester, I saw that you people had written up some pathetic proposal about making games or whatever. Just like we wouldn't approve a club that wanted to play in the sand, this is the same thing."
Oh, fuck. So this bastard was the root cause? What a damn fossil of an old fart. (I probably shouldn't say that out loud, huh?)
"...Let's go back, sunbae."
In the end, we couldn't secure approval. We returned dejectedly to the temporary club room. We'd only borrowed the space for a year anyway, so we'd have to vacate it too...
"What did they say? Why do you all look like that?"
"...I'm sorry."
Despair. It was similar to what I'd felt when making SimCity, but somehow different. With SimCity, the issue could be fixed if we just worked harder and improved. But this time... I had the absolute conviction that no matter what we did, improvement was impossible. That fossil of a professor would never allow us to have a club because he saw the word "game." That we'd stood out too much by producing better results than the department clubs. That kind of certainty.
The anger and passion everyone had felt the day before had completely vanished, replaced by pure despair.
"Since it's come to this, let's just go independent. I'm sick of tiptoeing around the school and the approval process just because we're a club."
It was obviously just something said in the heat of the moment. Even if we went independent, we'd lose that sense of belonging that came with being a club, and if someone like me didn't have a computer at home...
"You said you don't have a computer at home."
Ah, right. I'd told Ji-young about that. Everyone stared at me with shocked expressions. What? What's the big deal?
"I had a feeling something like this might happen, so I've been looking into a few things... I'll tell you once it's confirmed."
"What is it?"
"Setting up a club room outside the school. Well, I don't know if we can still call it a club room."
"Then let's disband here for now. If what Senior Jeong-jun said works out, we'll see each other then."
Promising a future we couldn't be sure would ever come, KIN—which had been using Engineering Building Room 404 as its temporary headquarters—entered a state of provisional dissolution.
After that, I didn't do anything particularly special. I went to Yongsan and dealt with the same old "Wanna get served, miss?" Yong-pal types, buying computer parts and assembling them myself. Since it was still the Magic Day season and my temper was especially short, I kept the feature phone that Korea Telecom had given me for testing purposes on standby with the voice recorder and 112 emergency number ready. Then I started negotiating with the Yong-pal.
"Ah, that one? How much have you looked into it?"
Why the hell are you asking me, you son of a bitch. This was the first step for Yong-pal bastards to figure out whether I was a sucker or a smart consumer. If I hesitated or quoted something too high, they'd immediately treat me like an easy mark and rip me off. I had to stay sharp.
"The cost price is around this much. Including distribution fees, let's make it a clean 400,000 won."
I'd actually quoted high. I'd padded it with over 50,000 won in distribution fees. At that point he should have just taken the money and run.
"Just a moment, I'll call and check if we have stock~"
Was this guy seriously taking me for a fool? He wasn't even pretending to make a call. He'd say "Oh, it looks like we're out of stock~" and then try to upsell me something else at an inflated price.
"Isn't the one over there in the back the exact model I mentioned?"
If you're going to pull that, at least hide it properly. How are you going to deny it when it's sitting right out in the open?
"Ah, that's a used one..."
What absolute bullshit. Calling a brand-new product that had been out for less than a month "used."
"Even better. I'll take that one. There'll be a discount since it's used, right?"
Finally, the Yong-pal's face turned tomato-red as veins bulged on his forehead. If you're going to rip people off in customer service, you need to be able to handle at least this much.
"Miss, you wanna get hit?"
Wow, he actually said it. I turned around and saw other shop owners and a security guard waiting outside the door. Shit, I was screwed.
At this point there was only one thing left to do. Call in the authorities. I dialed the pre-loaded 112 number and held the phone to my ear.
"There are Yong-pal guys waiting outside the door trying to force a sale and threaten me. Can you come quickly? I'm right in front of the central stairs on the second floor of Yongsan Electronics Market."
The shop owner still hadn't grasped the situation and stood there frozen. Since cell phones weren't widely known yet, he had no idea what I was doing. Oh, you don't know? This is called a [cell phone]. It's a basic portable device of the 21st century. You really don't know about this?
"You little shit! Stop him!"
In the end, even after the call ended, the owner paused for a moment before trying to resume negotiations.
"Who the hell did you call! Why would the police come!"
Then someone outside shouted, and the owner finally realized what was happening. But by then there was nothing he could do. In the end, even a Yong-pal had to back down in the face of public authority. I successfully completed my Yongsan dungeon debut by going around and getting a computer at an incredibly cheap price. Nice. Very nice.
I didn't spend that much on the computer. The one at home would soon be rendered obsolete by the performance inflation that would occur from the late '90s into the early 2000s, so I didn't want to sink a ton of money into a machine I'd end up throwing away in a few years. Besides, the games I was going to make had to run on low specs so they could still work on the future national PC. That's why I chose what I did.
Anyway, what I was doing right now wasn't actually making games. More and more games were becoming too difficult to produce alone... So why buy a computer then?
"Music."
It might sound random, but it really wasn't. This was also part of the game development process. The next game I was going to make was a rhythm game.
***
It was about time to move beyond simple chiptune beeps and boops and start creating music with real musicality. After all, Seo Taiji and Boys were going to debut this year just like in the original timeline, raising everyone's standards. The genres... trance and house would be perfect. They were genres I liked, and they appeared frequently in rhythm games so I was familiar with them. Trance especially had been so common in rhythm games that people called it the Trance Golden Age.
It might seem shameless, but I was going to plagiarize pretty much everything for the music. First, I created FL Studio, the familiar music production tool. It wasn't as good as the 2020s version, but I made it as close as possible and it turned out pretty decent. I adjusted the waveforms to create the supersaw and pluck sounds unique to trance.
Because I lacked sampling material, having to sculpt the waveforms myself like carving them out was incredibly difficult. As a die-hard fan of DJ MagO, there were a few tracks that immediately came to mind when I thought of trance. Among them, the ones I was making this time were the long-beloved boss tracks, Thor and Xeus.
The intro that starts with tension and gradually builds, the dreamy breakout centered around piano that gives a brief moment of rest, and then the climax where the beat suddenly surges and the intro and breakout melodies merge together with insane synth and piano runs that send you into a trance-like state just like the genre name. No matter how many times I listened to it, the music sent electricity through both my heart and my hands.
When I finished, what appeared on the screen was a bizarre-looking score. No wonder the difficulty was so insane. I wanted to brag about my lovely plagiarism tracks that still sounded satisfying no matter how many times I listened. The approval-seeking monster inside me was rampaging, screaming that I wanted to show off, yelling "Look at me! I'm the person who made this amazing MIDI music!" and craving attention and recognition.
"Let's just create an entire website for music. Like SoundCloudO."
And so, a few years later, the music service that would become the eternal holy land for musicians around the world was born—SounDrive.