The Work Totem Joins PlayForge
For several days I went back and forth on whether to bring the kitten Som-mungchi to the office.
There was something strange going on, so I ran a few experiments. The results left me stunned.
“Why does work efficiency shoot up the moment I bring you along?”
“Nyaat?”
“I wasn’t calling you. Here, have some Churu.”
When I brought Som-mungchi, the staff finished their tasks faster. I stroked her soft fur while pondering the mystery, and a memory surfaced.
Is this the animal therapy effect?
I’d heard that looking at cute animals releases hormones that bring physical and emotional calm, and that some places even use it in treatment.
Does it work during work hours too?
A tiny ball of fur bouncing around the office could actually boost productivity? It was fascinating.
“Maybe I should fill the whole office with animals.”
If it helped with work, why not?
Higher efficiency meant I could hand out more tasks. Games would get made faster, release dates would move up. Releasing ahead of schedule would let us prepare the next title even sooner, and the cycle would repeat.
Is there really an overpowered event like this?
I was amazed by the virtuous cycle one small cat had brought.
“Som-mungchi.”
“Nyat?”
“Want to become one of our employees?”
“Nya?”
“Your title will be Employee Emotional Stability Officer. Salary is one box of Churu per month. How’s that sound?”
Lick. Lick.
I watched Som-mungchi lap at the Churu with an expression that clearly said she had no idea what nonsense I was spouting, and let out a small laugh. I’d just been talking to myself because it was funny.
I picked up one of the many cat toys that had multiplied around the house and waved it gently.
“Nyang! Nyang!”
Seeing her leap and pounce after the toy made me smile without realizing it.
Seems like it works on me too.
I had never been very interested in pets before. In my previous life I could barely take care of myself, let alone take responsibility for another living thing.
But things were a little different now.
If I came home late and had no time to look after her, I could just bring her to the office. It was my company—who was going to complain? Besides, the staff seemed to like her even more than I did.
If that were all, I might have agonized longer over adoption. But she was doing an excellent job as the office totem and never interfered with anyone’s work.
Most important of all, over the past few days I had grown attached to Som-mungchi. Other cats supposedly didn’t care what their owners did, but this one followed me everywhere with tiny determined steps. I had tried not to get emotionally involved, yet I couldn’t help being drawn to the little creature.
Shelter or adoption.
The animal hospital had called yesterday to say a spot had opened up, so it was time to decide.
“Can you keep doing a good job from now on? If you sense the staff getting stressed, will you go over and act cute for them?”
“Nyang?”
“You’ll do your totem duty properly, right?”
“Nyang.”
“Good. Let’s do this together.”
I stroked the head of Som-mungchi, who was still licking Churu without understanding a word.
PlayForge’s work totem had officially joined the company.
*
“All right, go play.”
“Nyang!”
The moment I let her out of the bag she’d clearly found stuffy, Som-mungchi dashed away. I watched her with a warm smile, then checked the day’s tasks before the rest of the staff arrived.
“Hmm… Dot Hero’s growth is slowing down.”
With four million downloads just around the corner, Dot Hero was finally hitting its limit. It had reached nearly four million on word of mouth alone without any real marketing, so the slowdown didn’t worry me too much.
Maybe I should spend a little on ads…
The settlement account for Dot Hero had quite a lot of money piled up now. Unlike the two billion won in pure revenue it earned in the first month, the current balance sat at roughly thirty billion won.
It was two billion in the first month, but it took nearly two weeks for the word of mouth to really kick in.
An incredible profit.
Mathematically, two billion at five hundred thousand downloads meant it should be around sixteen billion at four million—an eightfold increase. Yet actual revenue had grown fifteen times.
More users meant more non-paying players, but the number of paying users had grown as well, and those who spent money rarely stopped at just one character.
I’ll have to look into advertising. For now, let’s move on… How should we handle the next update?
Even while preparing the next title, we couldn’t abandon Dot Hero.
Last time we released a new hero and milked the revenue. This time let’s add stages. Even after adding challenge mode, content is still lacking.
To increase sales, releasing new characters was the right move. However, putting out only characters without adding content would shorten the game’s lifespan. In a game like this, while adding characters was technically adding content, paid content and free content felt completely different to players.
We’ll decide on the concept for the new stages in this morning’s meeting…
With Dot Hero sorted for now, it was time to think about the next project.
The next title, tentatively called The Bureau, was planned as a game that encouraged multiplayer. Solo play was possible, but the difficulty would rise exponentially if you went alone. It wasn’t that we’d add scaling based on party size; it was simply impossible for one person to handle every role.
If we divided the roles players would take in The Bureau, there were three.
Investigators who entered the containment zone to find traces of the Anomalies.
Operators who searched the Bureau’s database from the temporary headquarters outside to identify the Anomalies.
And the strike team that would subdue and transport the Anomalies when they appeared.
An investigator would find traces inside and send them to an operator, who would identify the Anomaly and relay the information. Using that data, the strike team would subdue and retrieve it. That was the core loop.
Therefore four people had to move as a team. The game system wouldn’t assign roles, so users would have to divide them themselves.
That made communication between players essential.
In-game voice chat was necessary.
Couldn’t players just use an external voice program if they needed to?
That’s in the future.
Discord, which would come to dominate over ninety percent of the gamer voice-chat market, hadn’t even been born yet.
There were existing voice programs, but none performed well.
The current global leader, Skype, consumed too many resources to be suitable for gaming voice chat.
TeamSpeak, favored by hardcore gamers, used fewer resources than Skype and had faster response times so sync never lagged, but its low recognition and the need to set up private servers created a high barrier to entry.
And TalkUp in Korea has terrible audio quality.
That was why we had to develop in-game voice chat ourselves.
We were already busy making a game, and now we had to build a voice system on top of it. It would clearly take a lot of work. The staff might ask why we were going this far.
If they did, I—as the director leading development—would answer like this.
“Because I want to make it.”
Any other director would have scrapped the plan the moment they realized voice chat was needed during the planning stage, or at least shelved it for later.
It wasn’t cowardice; it was wisdom.
If this were my pre-regression self, I would have done the same.
But the me of now didn’t want to.
It wasn’t technically impossible. Was I really going to give up on the game I wanted to make just because it would take a little… no, a lot of extra effort?
If I were going to do that, I wouldn’t have regressed at all.
Of course I hadn’t chosen to regress, but a regressor still had his pride. I had vowed to live this life by taking on challenges. I wasn’t about to give up just because it looked a bit difficult.
Besides, there was another reason beyond the game’s needs.
“Can’t I just take Discord’s spot for myself?”
“Nya?”
“I wasn’t calling you.”
Som-mungchi, who had been lying at my feet, lifted her head at the sound of my voice. I gently pressed her back down, stroked her fur a few times.
Discord…
In the future, Discord would dominate the voice-chat market, but it also functioned as a community. Countless people with shared interests gathered on servers to talk. That community role was what I coveted.
Playing the game I made with the voice-chat program I made… How could I pass that up?
It was romantic.
It didn’t matter to me that future Discord would struggle with monetization while trying to turn a profit despite its market share. Or that it was still bleeding money in 2026 when I had left.
So what if we lose a little money.
I was a regressor.
I would make money from games, but I didn’t have to obsess over revenue that came only from games.
Come to think of it, I just remembered one good way to earn money. Wasn’t Black Monday this year?
It probably was. My father had overextended the business, then struggled after Black Monday and eventually went under.
I know it’s summer, but without the exact date I’ll have to approach this carefully.
Even if it wasn’t perfect, knowing for certain that Black Monday would happen was enough. While running the company on Dot Hero revenue until summer, I’d surely sense when the time had come.
“Money problems are solved for a while. Right?”
“Nyaaah~”
Som-mungchi, who had grown bored at my feet, climbed up my leg and settled on my thigh. I scratched under her chin. Her contented purr made the corners of my mouth rise.
Business… business, huh.
There would be many more moments like this.
Things that would clearly help the entire game industry but might lack business viability.
Still, I would accept it.
Not viable? So what.
A professional speaks with money, so within the games themselves I would craft meticulous monetization to draw out every won from users. Yet even that monetization would be in service of my honor.
My goal in this life was for people to hear the name Jo Yihan and immediately think “the god of games.”
Revenue from non-game businesses that wouldn’t be counted among my achievements was something I could afford to give up.
“It’ll be fun, won’t it?”
I asked Som-mungchi as if talking to myself, but she had already fallen asleep, eyes closed and purring softly. I stretched carefully so the kitten on my lap wouldn’t wake.
Creak.
While stretching, the office door opened and my eyes met Seok-ho, who had come in first.
“Good morning!”
“Welcome, Seok-ho. First again today, I see.”
“Haha! That’s my specialty, isn’t it!”
Then he would have to work hard again today.
For the future.
*
Time flies so fast that a year can pass in the blink of an eye, and before you know it you’re in your thirties. The older you get, the faster time seems to flow.
If I thought about why, it probably came down to density. When you’re so busy you can’t even feel time passing, it feels like it’s racing by.
“Min-ji! Is the No. 189 modeling finished?”
“Yes, I sent it.”
“Good. Ju-hee, did you finish the first draft of the flying spaghetti monster for No. 311 that I approved yesterday?”
“Director… I have so many other things to do… Please spare me…”
“I’m not rushing you. I was just asking how far you’ve gotten.”
I was insanely busy too.
I had adopted Som-mungchi in early January, yet when I came to my senses it was already late February. So much time had vanished it felt like someone had stolen it.
“Ah, Jae-min. Can you hear me?”
“D-Director. I c-can hear you, but the s-sync seems off…”
“Why is there delay again? Network issue?”
“I think there’s a p-problem in the ADC conversion. The encoding m-might not be smooth…”
“Okay. Let’s check it again.”
Development of the next title was proceeding smoothly.
We had built a prototype of the voice-chat system, and we had created quite a few of the core Anomalies. We had also prepared the Dot Hero update in between, but even taking that into account the pace wasn’t bad.
We’re probably around fifteen percent done.
Satisfied with the progress, I encouraged the staff who were fighting off post-lunch drowsiness.
Clap. Clap.
“All right, let’s keep pushing through the afternoon!”
“Yeees…”
The staff had fully adapted by now and no longer even dreamed of leaving on time; they had become veteran corporate warriors.
“I can’t live like this anymore…! I’m quitting!”
“Ju-hee, quitting? That’s a scary thing to say. You’re joking, right?”
“No! I really can’t live like this! I live with my parents but I can’t even remember the last time I saw their faces! Overtime every day, night shifts, weekend work! I can’t take it anymore. I’m quitting!”
“Ju-hee, calm down…”
It was about time for the deposit to hit.
The moment that injected motivation into every salaried worker.
Ding.
Right on cue, the notification sound rang through the office. Every employee checked their phones at once. Ju-hee did too.
“Ju-hee. Are you really going to quit?”
“No! I will work hard today as well! Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty!”
As expected, nothing motivated people like money.
Base salary, overtime pay, performance bonuses. I took care of them so well, yet they still staged these little protests right before payday. It was almost disappointing.
“Then I’ll take it that there are no complaints. Back to work—”
Ding.
My own phone suddenly rang.
That’s strange. I don’t receive a salary…
I didn’t have a separate salary. After public utilities, rent, staff wages, and the Dot Hero revenue share for Daniel, everything else was mine. There was no reason for me to get a paycheck.
Must be someone contacting me. Who could it be?
My narrow circle of relationships consisted only of family and company people, so there was no reason for my phone to ring at this hour. Curious, I checked the screen.
The tone was extremely friendly.
In my limited circle, there was only one person who spoke to me like that.
“Seung-wook?”
The only one was Kim Seung-wook, my sworn brother who had drunk with me the night I regressed.