Our Office Is Open for Business (1)
Our Office Is Open for Business (1)
There was once a game that made Korea, no, the entire world buzz with excitement.
Eden Breach.
With Joo Jin-seok, a main producer recognized both domestically and globally, leading a team of top-tier developers, and the addition of the Japanese light novel master 'Aoneko' as a scenario writer, the news of the game's production alone garnered massive attention.
Naturally, they poured effort into marketing, quickly preparing a demo version, distributing ads to internet streamers, and showcasing it at various prestigious game shows, causing people's expectations for Eden Breach to skyrocket.
That went on for 6 years.
A significant amount of time had passed for a development period.
Since they had been repeating "We're launching this year!" for four years, it would have been reasonable for people to drop out, but whenever that happened, character illustrations imbued with the artist's soul would appear to reel people back in, and eventually, the release date arrived.
Thanks to people from all over the world gathering with high hopes, the result of repeatedly expanding the servers over and over again from the very first day of the launch was!
The game failed.
And it didn't just fail.
It failed spectacularly.
Why, you ask?
A game doesn't fail for just one reason.
The chaotic main game system that makes you wonder if the producer even has a brain, the convoluted character progression methods, the currency farming rates smaller than an ant's pee, the generic characters with pretty skins but slapped-on settings that look like they were stolen from elsewhere, the unreadable walls of text reminiscent of non-fiction passages from the CSAT, and the obscure proper nouns that pop out without warning....
If it had stopped there, I might have tried to push through the story to soothe my waiting heart, but there was even a pay-to-win prompt that appeared every time you cleared a stage.
So, the high hopes of the expectant users went bang! The game's review pages went bang! The well-being of the developers' parents went bang!
Everything from the servers to everything else exploded.
The users gathered by the launch hype plummeted vertically, drawing a graph reminiscent of a cliff, and the producer resigned, taking full responsibility.
In other words, he ran away.
The scenario writer, who got cursed at for the obscure proper nouns, just left a statement saying they only provided the settings and didn't intervene in the story plot or the sentences inserted into the game, then disappeared to write their own light novel.
In the end, all that remained were junior developers lacking experience and skill, and users who had stepped in with expectations and were left only with lingering attachments, hoping there might be some good points.
Since it was a game that wasn't generating revenue, they only scrambled to fix critical bugs, so I couldn't expect any significant updates.
I, too, became one of those users who logged into Eden Breach out of inertia, holding onto nothing but lingering attachment.
Still, it's a game with some merits. The story is obscure, but it has its own flavor. Plus, even if the settings are a bit generic, aren't the character skins pretty?
"Phew... I'm exhausted."
Returning to my small studio apartment after finishing work, I quickly turned on the game.
The daily chores added to my hamster-wheel life were nothing special to me anymore, but they still served as a sort of sanctuary in my life.
At the same time, I accessed the Eden Breach community.
"Let's see how Jin-seok's mom is doing today."
This was also one of my routines.
Checking where Joo Jin-seok's mother, who started flying through the sky the day he ruined the game, was currently located.
I think I saw a story a while ago that she passed Voyager 1, which is wandering through Ophiuchus....
[F***ing Joo's mom is entering the solar system soon....]
[Upvote if you're a true Eden-bro who believed lolol]
[As they say, losing 'faith' is blah blah]
[But what do we do now?]
Every time I refreshed, new posts were updating on the page, not one or two, but four at a time, which was quite a feat.
In cases like this, it's one of two things.
Either this godforsaken game is finally shutting down, or news of Joo Jin-seok's obituary came out.
But it was neither.
The things these posts were saying were different, but the root cause was that the game company had announced a major update.
"Are they crazy?"
My first thought was doubt.
Since most of the things that came up as updates were bug fixes, and even those were just barely fixing bugs related to payments that made money.
There's no main producer to lead a major update, and it's questionable if there's even a scenario writer to continue the story, so I couldn't understand what kind of update could be called 'major'.
Maybe it was the death throes.
A desperate move by a game company that didn't want to waste what they'd invested so far, trying to suck out money one last time before closing.
It's highly likely to be a monetization scheme just to suck money dry, making the word 'major' meaningless.
Like saying they'll never re-release a character, stuffing a ton of text into one character, and making them so powerful that you're a sucker if you don't pull for them, or having a character in the story blatantly appeal to the player, saying "I'm the main wife."
Or maybe systems where they cut off the limbs of the game, calling it a new progression system, only to make it usable if you pour money into it.
"In the end, you're going that way too."
How many games have I sent off?
I didn't even wish for it to survive long enough to have figures, an anime, or concerts with the OSTs inserted into the game.
It wasn't that kind of game anyway, and the game company wasn't big enough to handle that.
I just wanted it to stay alive, even without major updates, that was the extent of my feelings.
Did I ask for too much?
I even paid regularly, thinking of it as server fees, but I guess that wasn't enough for the game.
"When and what time is the showcase?"
Putting aside the nonsense posts on the community, I checked the game screen I had turned on late.
After passing the familiar start screen, a huge notice greeted me.
'Eden Breach : Season 2'
Passing the long-winded text left by the operations team below that, information about the showcase was written.
"The 27th at 6 PM? That's tomorrow.... Well, there won't even be time for rumors to spread."
It's a time when most office workers are on the subway after work.
It's also the time I'd be riding the bus back home. Considering that the developers work overtime more often than they eat, it didn't seem like such a strange time.
And considering it's for the remaining users who have affection for this game, and potential users who might poke around at the news of an update for a dead game, it's not that strange of a time.
Why, doesn't that guy in the gray long johns also announce his game's updates around this time? Or were they not long johns? Anyway.
I memorized the showcase time and had a quick meal.
Maybe because I was excited about the major update, I held onto Eden Breach longer than usual.
All there was to do was the usual stage grinding and PVP grinding, but the anticipation rising inside me made me play more.
Even if I call it a dead game on the outside, what can I do when the game I like shows it's struggling to survive?
I rubbed my dry eyes, barely moved my exhausted body, and flopped onto the bed.
Through my heavy, fluttering eyelids, I thought.
......I hope they let me leave work early tomorrow.
So I can watch the showcase comfortably at home.
However, that never happened, not even in my dreams.
†
An arrogant, ominous purple eye looking down at all things in the world from a torn sky.
Desolate mud that envies vibrant life and sucks away its vitality.
——Plop.
.......
A sea of rage that seems to sleep quietly but always tears apart everything that climbs on top of it.
A lazy living corpse rolling on a wide bed.
Stuck to a golden throne——.
Tap, tap.
..........
While familiar yet strange sentences floated in the pitch-black darkness covered by my eyelids, I felt someone touching my body.
But those sentences are too distracting to react to external stimuli.
They are merely sentences modifying something. The connected things make my head ache just by thinking of their names.
Where have I seen them? It's on the tip of my tongue, like a sneeze that's clearly right in front of my nose but only tickles and doesn't actually get resolved.
Instead, the sentences sink deep into my subconscious, and my consciousness rises to the surface like a baton pass.
Damn it, I thought I was going to remember.
For a moment.
"...nim."
A lovely voice calling someone.
"......jang-nim...!!"
The voice becomes clearer while my eyes are closed.
This is also quite familiar.
"Director-nim...!!"
Along with the calling, a timid touch poking me.
Thanks to that, my hazy mind slowly opened my eyes.
"Ugh... who are you——ot?"
What is this?
A protagonist waking up from sleep is a commonly seen cliché.
Of course, I wouldn't be the protagonist of such things... or at least I shouldn't be.
Ah.
My voice sounds unfamiliar.