The Game Show
Development of Project Zombie, a temporary internal codename, had been one hardship after another. The game we were aiming for—a 3D open-world sandbox—was on a completely different level of difficulty from anything we'd made before, Dot Hero and ACD included.
Large studios build games like this with nearly a thousand employees or by farming work out to contractors. For a mid-sized company like ours to even attempt it defied common sense, and everyone in the industry knew it.
I knew it too.
I understood perfectly well that this project wasn't a matter of "doing our best with what we have" like our previous games, but of "challenging the impossible."
That was exactly why I cut every corner I could while developing Project Zombie (working title).
We copied Busan practically at the level of copy-paste, slashing the time needed for map planning. The art team simply had to recreate the city as it appeared in the thousands—tens of thousands—of photos our contractors had taken, which saved us an enormous amount of time.
Granted, we'd still have to fill in the interiors and the furniture inside every building.
But when I considered that we'd spent essentially zero time conceiving the map's theme, terrain, and environment, that much was a price worth paying.
The next trick involved the zombies—the very core of any zombie game.
"Every zombie needs to look different."
"I'm sorry—there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands, of zombies players run into over the course of the game, and you're saying they all have to be unique?"
At the news that she'd have to sculpt each zombie model by hand, Cha Juhui—who was already pale—went even whiter, and she shook her head.
"We'll prepare body types and face models separately, then use an algorithm that combines them when a zombie spawns to determine its appearance. No one has to sculpt individual zombies—we just need a set of references to work from."
"Oh...! Then we can do it! Body types and faces... how many should we prepare?"
"Let's start with a hundred body types and a hundred faces. All ages, men and women alike."
"I'm sorry—a, a hundred each?"
I asked, watching her look on in sheer shock.
"In that case, would you rather sculpt several thousand zombie models yourself?"
"No! Thank you, thank you!"
That said, we did have to design the algorithm carefully so it wouldn't spit out unbalanced combinations—like an old man's face on a young man's hulking, muscular frame. Compared to hand-sculpting thousands of zombies, though, this was laughably easy.
I pulled off plenty of other tricks to lower the overall difficulty of development, but the fundamental problem remained.
No matter how exponentially our developers' skills were growing, we were chronically, absolutely short-staffed.
What do I do?
I knew we needed to hire more people, but I had no idea how many we could take on. If our office building were as huge as a major corporation's, I wouldn't be agonizing over this—but the physical size of the building put a hard limit on headcount.
Even if we used the ground floor and the basement we're currently using for storage, that's maybe twenty people per floor. We can't take on more than that...
If we crammed the desks together like you would in a factory sim, we could probably hire 2.5 times our current staff with no trouble. But unlike in a game, employees are people. I figured that seating them like chickens in a battery cage would breed resentment and tank productivity.
"Th-that doesn't matter. Please just st-start hiring more people...!"
"I'm sorry, you're sure? It'll be uncomfortable."
"Th-the whole team will back me up. Ra-rather than being w-worked to death, I'd rather put up with a little discomfort..."
My dilemma was solved by Jaemin, our programming team lead. Make the work environment a little less comfortable and bring in more people. That would let us house forty staff per floor.
"What do you think, Juhui?"
"In favor! I'm in favor! We can't be the only ones suffering! The new hires need to suffer right along with—"
Since everyone was on board, we held multiple rounds of open recruitment on an even larger scale than our second round.
"I'll work hard, I promise!"
"That's a promise, then."
"Excuse me?"
"I hope this feeling lasts a long time. Thank you for coming in today."
Our development staff had grown enormously. We'd had about fifty people before; now we had roughly two hundred on the development side alone.
With all the new hires came the need for mid-level managers to oversee them, so I promoted Seokho, a senior on the programming team, to lead Programming Team 2, and appointed Seongbae—a senior in the art department who'd never been assigned a specific part—as head of the 3D modeling division.
We also evaluated our existing team leads based on performance reviews and promoted deserving staff from Junior to Middle rank, thinning out the number of people reporting directly to each lead.
And it wasn't just development staff we were adding.
"Son of a—! How the hell am I supposed to handle a company with over two hundred employees by myself!"
"Whoa. Whoa. Calm down."
"If you don't staff up the admin, clerical, and finance departments, I'm quitting. I mean it."
"Hold on—take a look at this."
I'd anticipated Kim Seungwook's complaints. He'd been stretched thin even at fifty employees, so I figured doing everything alone at four times that size was simply beyond him.
When I showed him the hiring notice I'd already prepared, the demon mask of fury on his face melted away.
"Two people per department should do it, right?"
"No, boss. You could've given me a heads-up. I got the wrong idea here. Haha! You've been working so hard on the next game, and here I am getting in your way. Oof. Look at these knots in your shoulders. You keep this up, you'll blow a disc. Want me to give them a rub?"
I offered my shoulders to Kim Seungwook, who was beaming with what looked like genuine happiness.
"Go ahead."
"Sir! Hahahaha!"
The PlayForge office was packed and humming, with no room to breathe.
The second-round hires seemed mildly annoyed that their once-spacious work areas had gotten cramped, but once the new employees settled in and started contributing, they could feel the workload easing even slightly—and the grumbling vanished.
Ah. For the record, the workload of the mid-level managers—you could call them the founding staff—did not decrease one bit.
"Di-Director, what's going on here? My workload has actually gone up, not down...? If we have more employees, the work is supposed to shrink...?"
"Juhui, that's just how it works. You're a team lead. Sure, your people below you have less on their plates—but you have more people to manage now. Did you really think your work would go down? It's common sense."
"Th-that can't be! Lies! Jaemin! You said our work would lighten too! Were you lying to me?!"
"I ha-have no idea what you mean."
I don't know what nefarious schemes passed between the two of them, but it seemed Jaemin had pulled one over on Cha Juhui.
Tsk. You've got to know when to sacrifice the cow for the sake of future generations, like our Jaemin here.
Out of sheer selflessness, Jaemin had accepted his own growing workload for the sake of his teammates' wellbeing, whereas Juhui seemed to have assumed that more employees meant proportionally less work for everyone, teammates or not.
When exactly is the Cha Juhui I used to know going to wake up? The one who loved the company, loved the work, and lived in the office?
I found myself missing the woman who, before my regression, had thrown herself into her job without a word of complaint.
Even so, that part of her hadn't changed—she grumbled out loud, but she handled every task assigned to her steadily and thoroughly.
And so May turned to September.
"Great work, everyone."
The vertical slice—the demo build—we would present at the Tokyo Game Show was finished.
The Tokyo Game Show.
A festival so enormous it ranks among the world's three great gaming expos—a trade show generally considered a tier above Gamestar in Busan, which PlayForge had attended before.
We were joining this massive gathering, where countless game companies compete for investment and user attention.
"Yihan, I've finished working things out with the local screen rental company. We rented the portable LED billboards like you asked. The rental fee's on the pricey side, but you told me to go top-tier, so there was nothing I could do."
"It's fine. You don't skimp on money for something like this. Good work."
"Now I need to book tickets for the travel team soon—economy or business?"
It wasn't as if we were flying somewhere far; the trip to Japan takes under three hours. Did we really need to spring for expensive business seats?
Between buying a company to prepare for expanding the game ecosystem in advance, and hiring a large wave of staff (modest compared to a big corporation) because we were short-handed, a lot of money had drained out of the company.
"Let's go business."
Still, we weren't so broke we couldn't afford plane tickets for an overseas business trip. The company wasn't on the ropes yet. Dot Hero's global revenue had shrunk considerably, but Tencin in China was wiring us billions of won every quarter, and ACD—nearly a year old now—had brought in close to thirty billion won.
Not that any of it doesn't fly right back out as payroll.
With the expanded headcount, nearly two billion won left our accounts every month. Over a year, that's about twenty-four billion. No wonder Seungwook keeps fretting that we'll go under within five years. Compared to other studios our size, we're three to four times apart.
Even so, I'm not worried.
I've been quietly accumulating shares in promising companies that will make their names in the future—and above all, bitcoin is going to moon next year.
All I have to do is hold out a year or two.
After that, I shouldn't have to worry much about money again. My first liberation came from joining forces with Kim Seungwook and shedding the busywork; I figure next year's coin boom will be my liberation from capital worries.
"Confirmed. Oh—and nobody from the dev side is coming, right?"
"Right. They need to stay focused on development. The Tokyo team is you, me, and the second-floor staff."
"Okay."
It was an overseas trip, and overseas is overseas—quite a few people wanted to go—but I turned them down.
Go? Go where?
We've got games to make.
Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd dump everything on Kim Seungwook and stay in Korea developing. It's just that his experience isn't at that level yet, so I have to go myself—a shame, really.
With our preparations for the game show complete, the morning of departure arrived.
"This is the cat food, and this is the toy. You've watched her before, you remember, right?"
"Don't worry. Som-mungchi likes me too."
"Nyaaa!"
She'd clearly figured out I was leaving her behind again—she'd turned her head away and refused to even look at me. I tried to console her.
"I'll be back soon, so don't sulk."
"...".
"It's not like I can take a cat overseas with me. Even if you came along, you'd have to stay cooped up in the hotel the whole time. It wouldn't be that different from staying here."
"...".
She was properly sulking—not a single reaction out of her. I felt bad, but there was nothing to be done. I gave her head one last scratch and left.
Dragging my suitcase, I arrived at Incheon Airport and met up with the staff.
"Seungwook, is everyone here?"
"Yep. You're the last one."
"I don't see Sunyoung?"
"She's over there checking in her luggage."
"Just to be safe—anyone who forgot their passport?"
"You think we're kindergartners? Who travels overseas without a passport?"
I only asked because they were all so green.
We cleared the formalities and boarded the plane.
Two hours and forty-three minutes to Tokyo.
I organized my materials on my laptop and closed my eyes.
The preparation is nearly perfect.
Sonia and Nanosoft wouldn't have a choice. They'd bite, or they'd regret it.
In the future, a silver tongue is a prerequisite for any director.
The time had come to deploy the glib, silver-tongued art I'd spent so long honing.
Sato Daisuke, department head of third-party publisher management at Sonia Interactive Entertainment, headed for the venue as the Tokyo Game Show opened its doors.
"A packed house again this year."
General admission hadn't opened yet, so everyone visible on the floor was a suit. They prowled the halls with fire in their eyes, hunting for games worth investing in and companies worth partnering with—but unlike them, Sato Daisuke wandered with an easy stride.
That game is subpar.
This one lacks originality.
He casually browsed the games on display, sizing them up at a glance. Isn't he looking at them far too carelessly? It's fine. He can afford to.
Coming here alone in the morning was a kind of ritual. His official schedule with the vice president and the rest of the staff was set for the afternoon; right now he was merely dropping by to get a light lay of the land.
Tsk. Nothing worth biting on.
He hadn't covered even a third of the floor yet, and not a single game had made his mouth water. Slightly deflated, he decided he'd speed through the rest of the hall, head back to his hotel for a rest, and then grind through his official schedule.
"Hm?"
That was when a certain booth caught his eye.
It was swarming with people.
What's going on over there?
General visitors weren't allowed in today, so everyone gathered there was an industry insider. A crowd like that was a rare sight.
Curiosity carried his feet forward, and as Sato drew near the booth, he squinted.
What on earth...?
He found he couldn't take his eyes off the gameplay footage streaming across the huge screen.
The graphics weren't exactly groundbreaking, but they were solid.
Rich, varied interactions with objects.
Meticulously detailed map design.
Technically alone, it looked like no small feat—but more than that—
I want to play it...!
It looked fun.
It was as if someone had fused the horde-driving thrill of Le4De, Storm's beloved classic zombie shooter, with the open-world ambition of GTM5, the most anticipated game in development—and as a man of this industry, how was he supposed to resist that?
A long, winding line for the demo.
The old him would have circled the rest of the show floor, promising himself he'd come back later when the crowds thinned. But he couldn't wait.
He was going to play this game, even if it meant standing in that line for a while.