Making the Game Feel Like a Game (1)
Even though Galicia Online had shut down its service, the Galicia Continent remained perfectly intact, as expected. “It’s overflowing with life… It really does feel like actual reality…”
Here, one woman had appeared. Concurrent users: one. The sole outsider on the entire Galicia Continent.
Yoo Seol stared up at the World Tree with a sour expression.
“You’re telling me that’s the World Tree?”
“Yes.”
“Not a Christmas tree?”
“……”
The World Tree she had poured her heart and soul into designing had been instantly demoted to a living-room Christmas tree. A truly horrific turn of events.
Se-rin fought hard to swallow her grief. Yoo Seol felt exactly the same urge to cry. The woman was a little—okay, quite—insane, but that was nothing new. After all, true art is born from madness.
People don’t suddenly slice off their own ear while painting beautifully, shout “Fuck yeah!” while composing under the influence, or burn the world to the ground just because they failed a college entrance exam.
Therefore, this mad, natural-born artist had no choice but to broadcast her unhappiness at the current design sensibility of the Galicia Continent.
“I refuse to watch a game with my own name on it launch in this state.”
“It’s only two letters, actually.”
“Whatever! That thing over there is an asset, right? No matter how I look at it, it’s clearly ripped from Project A, but it doesn’t mesh with the surrounding environment at all. What the hell is that color palette supposed to be?”
Yoo Seol began ruthlessly dissecting every design achievement Se-rin had built up, her sharp tongue tearing them apart one by one before crumpling them into mental trash bins. Yet every single criticism was valid. They were the exact same thoughts that had made Se-rin herself think, Ha, shit… this isn’t it while staring at the same scenes.
So she simply nodded along.
The saving grace was that Yoo Seol was a true professional. The difference between pros and amateurs becomes glaringly obvious the moment feedback begins. An amateur with half-baked knowledge might start throwing around heavy-handed criticism like “Let’s take a look, shall we?” but rarely offers concrete directions for improvement. A pro, however, is different.
“That section needs a natural regional tone shift, almost like applying a gradient, and then…”
They could pinpoint specific, actionable directions that would lead to genuine improvement through revision.
And Yoo Seol was no ordinary pro.
“Ugh, seriously. How do I even edit this? Can you give me permissions too?”
Why else would Kim Ji-hyun have treasured a high-school dropout like Yoo Seol enough to entrust her with the massive responsibility of Art Director? She was the kind of talent who could declare, “It’s so frustrating I’ll just do it myself.” Original 2D illustrations? Possible. 3D modeling? Possible. UI design? Possible. Animation? Possible.
Despite her prickly personality and young age of twenty-three, that versatility was what had let her dominate the entire development company Blue Edge. Of course, her poor subordinates had been dying inside for multiple reasons.
“Ah, whatever. I’ll just draw it.”
She had already adapted to virtual reality so well that she simply flopped onto the ground, pulled a sketchbook out of thin air, and began scribbling away like a woman possessed. Watching her, Se-rin allowed herself a small, fond smile. She really was an outstanding employee.
Unfortunately, for Yoo Seol to gain the authority to edit things directly and immediately, she would have to sell her soul just like Kim Ji-hyun had. Instead, Se-rin gifted her an editing tool.
“Whoa, what a cute little kid.”
“This is the Total PD of Team Galicia.”
“Ahem! Nice to meet you!”
“Did I get scammed into this job?”
At Yoo Seol’s perfectly reasonable suspicion, Se-rin could only offer a bitter smile.
“Still, she’s a virtual reality specialist. Give her rough instructions and she’ll handle everything on her own.”
Appearance aside, Elysia was still a goddess. Since she was otherwise useless, Se-rin had decided it would be best to keep her glued to Yoo Seol’s side whenever the artist logged in and put her to work on design tasks. It was an extremely rational allocation of personnel, exactly what one would expect from a former CEO.
“Ehh? But it’s such a hassle!”
“Do it when I tell you to.”
“Kyaa!”
If only the attitude of completely ignoring the other party’s opinion could be fixed.
A game is fundamentally something for players to enjoy. Therefore, if forced to pick the single most important element among many, Se-rin would always emphasize one thing above all others: early-game flow design. Or, to use more technical terminology, level design.
The elements must be arranged with care so that even first-time players can instantly and intuitively understand what kind of game they are playing.
Consider a game starring a rather sinister-looking plumber. What do you see the moment it begins? A playable character positioned on the left side of the screen.
On the right, a fairly wide path is presented. Along that path, an evil mushroom comes hopping forward, and above it sits one sparkling brick marked with a question mark.
Intuitively, the player understands they must move right. If they then press the assigned button to jump? They can stomp the evil mushroom to death. They can strike the sparkling brick to obtain an item. And when they eat the item that appears?
Wow! The protagonist grew bigger!
Simply by restricting movement and strategically placing objects, the design teaches direction of travel, the necessity of jumping, the danger of enemies, and the effect of items—all intuitively. That is kind design.
Then there is the rather unkind method that hammers the lesson straight into the player’s body. In the opening section of a certain Souls-like RPG, a giant knight clad in golden armor suddenly blocks the protagonist’s path. Overwhelming power. Patterns that feel downright unfair.
By placing an enemy that seems utterly insurmountable at the beginner stage, the developers send a clear message: this game is not necessarily about defeating every enemy in front of you, you do not have to progress linearly, and it is perfectly fine to grow stronger and return later.
…Of course, even in such a brutal environment, there are always perverts who will spend hours trying to beat that one foe, but that is another story.
Returning to the Galicia Continent.
The genre Se-rin wanted to create was an MMORPG—Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. A genre in which many people could participate simultaneously, enjoy similar experiences, or find satisfaction through playstyles that matched their individual preferences.
Of course, even before virtual reality appeared, it had been labeled a somewhat outdated and declining genre… but MMOs contain encounters. RPGs contain romance. The inevitable romance born from chance meetings. Wasn’t that the best?
That was why the very first thing Se-rin focused on was making the Galicia Continent unmistakably feel like a game. A game must help players unfold their own romance, even if it means sacrificing some realism to do so.
For example, using the butchering skill would cleanly peel the hide from a deer without any excessive gore, while still allowing byproducts to be obtained in a reasonably realistic manner.
It was an innovation on an entirely different level from the old Galicia Online, where every single hide had been skinned stitch by stitch.
“……Sigh.”
Naturally, an enormous amount of backend work lay behind that simple effect. The butchered deer had to be temporarily isolated from the dimension, a visual effect indicating the butchering process had to be placed at the spot, items had to be generated and positioned…
The one bright spot was that the laws governing the world were surprisingly similar to planning and programming. Once the core rules were properly established, the world would run with minimal maintenance.
The trap, of course, was that any number of irregularities could still occur, but Se-rin—with her prior experience running an MMO service—could predict most of them without much difficulty.
What she pursued was the extreme freedom that had defined the previous game, paired with a system capable of controlling that freedom so it would not devolve into mere chaos. And most important of all:
“Immersion.”
It was obvious, but virtual reality games inherently offered far higher immersion than PC or console titles. After all, players could experience the five senses as if they had truly become part of that world. Yet the immersion of an RPG was slightly different.
It had to create the feeling that one had genuinely become a resident of the game world, that one had become the protagonist, before people could truly begin enjoying their roles.
Hence, Role-Playing.
To make them believe it…
“We need a world setting.”
In the beginning there were celestials and demons. Imperial Year 158, blah blah blah… Even if it was the kind of boring, pedantic text that would make readers immediately click back the moment it appeared on page one of a genre novel, it still had to exist.
Of course, an actual setting like that would only make people hammer the skip button instead of increasing immersion.
Se-rin was a former developer, after all. She had already constructed a reasonably attractive world setting in her head. But she could not use it as-is.
“I need to create a story that fits Galicia.”
Rather than shouting “Let there be light” and building everything from zero, the Galicia Continent already had native inhabitants living there.
She would add vitality to their stories, starting from the places her hand could reach, one piece at a time. And whenever dopamine ran low, an invisible hand would provide it. Then…
“No choice, I suppose…”
Even if the saviors of Galicia had to be players from Earth, the focal point of Galicia itself… had to be her and Elysia.
“Ugh.”
While changing into the goddess outfit (designed by Yoo Seol) whose exposure level she still could not get used to, Se-rin gave a small shiver.