Chapter 147
Chapter 147
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 147
Chapter Title: Remake
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That’s the thing about the past.
Objectively speaking, life is better now, yet everyone reminisces about the old days, even though they were filled with all sorts of inconveniences and absurdities.
That’s because it’s wrapped in the packaging of “memory,” making it seem only beautiful.
Since humans can’t manipulate time to peel back that wrapping, isn’t it only natural that the phrase “those were the days” has persisted from primitive times to the present?
I’m no different.
Even though I live with the strange fate of being a regressor, when I look back on my school days, I still think, “I want to go back.”
That’s despite having no time for games because of things like mandatory evening study sessions, and not having any particularly memorable friends or a first love.
Perhaps it’s the fresh, young, and immature version of myself from that time that I miss.
The marketing that targets this sentiment is “retro.”
It’s not about the inconveniences of the past, but about recreating that feeling in the modern era.
It makes people project themselves onto the product itself.
Come to think of it, retro marketing was a safe bet.
Because even as decades pass and the world changes, the past is always accumulating anew.
…Anyway, why am I suddenly talking about this?
The answer to that question was as follows.
“A-yun, you’ll get sick if you keep that up.”
“Mmph?”
Jo A-yun gulped down the bread she was munching on.
The bread wrapper had a mascot monster from Maple Saga drawn on it.
Yes, that’s it.
A joint marketing ploy by a massive corporation, selling bread with character seal stickers included.
The bread, which was sold around the time I was preparing to be discharged from the military, was being resold after a decade.
“W-Would you like one…?”
Jo A-yun took a loaf of bread from her bag and offered it to me.
It was a chocolate roll cake.
When I nodded, Jo A-yun tore open the package, stealthily took out only the seal sticker, and handed the bread to me.
Her eyes were quite serious as she looked at the sticker packaging.
“Ah… another mushroom.”
Was it a sticker she already had?
Frowning, Jo A-yun mumbled in a voice thick with disappointment.
This was what Jo A-yun had been like lately.
I don’t know how she managed to get so much of this bread that others were dying to find, but she always carried a bag full of it, farming for stickers.
But there’s a limit to how much bread one person can eat, isn’t there?
The conflict between the stomach’s limits and the desire for seal stickers created a dilemma: “I must create food waste.”
The solution Jo A-yun came up with for this was none other than…
“Stop…!”
“J-Just eat one more…!”
…pawning it off on others.
Studio Rewind.
Beyond Development Teams 1 and 2, to the Business Department and even the Identity Mod Team, the entire company was being ravaged by Jo A-yun’s food-assault.
Jo A-yun would sneak out the stickers from the bread to collect them in a sticker book, while the development team was in the middle of wailing, “Someone please complete that sticker book for her!!!”
Of course, it didn’t have much to do with me.
Jo A-yun never subjected me to her food-assault, and aren’t people generally indifferent to the problems of others?
As the kids say these days, “Not my problem.”
“A-yun, if it’s a duplicate sticker, can I have it?”
“Okay…”
A sticker with a green mushroom character on it landed in my hand.
Jo A-yun smiled shyly and whispered.
“I-I’m only giving this to you, President. It’s a secret from everyone else…!”
“Thanks.”
Jo A-yun scurried away.
The employees Jo A-yun approached shuddered, yelping, “Eek!” and “Gah!”
My gaze returned to the sticker.
Retro.
The experience of unwrapping the packaging of the past, something humans can’t otherwise remove.
A marketing strategy that generates revenue through a proven method.
Various thoughts flashed through my mind, and in the end, I sensed the time had come.
A murmur escaped my lips.
“It’s about that time.”
It was about time for a retro boom like this to hit the gaming industry.
* * *
The monthly Rewind company-wide meeting, where the head of each department was present.
“We’re going to do a remake.”
At my words, Myeong-gyu tilted his head.
“A remake? So suddenly?”
I suppose it was quite sudden.
But if not now, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the market trend.
‘In the next one to two years.’
Around that time, the game market would be swept up in a massive remake craze for popular past IPs.
It wasn’t a sudden trend.
You could say it was a phenomenon born from a complex web of issues, where the interests of corporations and customers intertwined.
One of the biggest reasons was this.
‘It’s because technology has advanced so much. Games from that era can become entirely new just by changing the engine.’
The game development industry has been constantly evolving.
Both in market size and in technological prowess.
Of course, the market size was starting to stagnate with the creation of mobile, PC, and countless other non-gaming content, but that wasn’t important right now.
The focus needed to be on technology.
And it had been rising at a very steep rate from the moment I regressed until now.
What did that mean?
At a time when the devices users play games on have been standardized at a much higher level compared to back then, it meant we could attempt to revive the most impactful IP that made Studio Rewind what it is today.
“We’re going to remake Hellic 2.”
Reactions erupted from all over at my words.
I continued.
“Back then, Hellic 2’s development cost was less than 10 billion won. Myeong-gyu, you remember, right? There were quite a few concepts the six of us had to give up on to make it as cost-effective as possible.”
“…Yeah, things like material interaction and side quests… and most of all, there were a lot of patterns we couldn’t implement due to technical limitations.”
“The graphics are a bit shabby too. The art team managed to cover for it somehow, but compared to today’s AAA titles, it’s no different from a lump of clay.”
Han Seo-rim added.
That was right.
Hellic 2 was a game barely made by six people with a production budget of a few billion won and released to the world.
The story of Alice was a game that suffered from a lack of content in many ways, relying on indie-like tricks.
Naturally, there were regrets, and there was room for improvement.
We were going to attempt that now, in the form of a “remake,” with more capital and manpower.
At that moment, Yang Gil-sang asked a question.
“But will that work? Users already know Hellic 2. It seems uncertain whether they’d buy a game they already know…”
It was a valid question.
At least for now, before the remake craze had truly begun.
“It’ll sell.”
There was something Yang Gil-sang had overlooked.
“It’s been ten years. That’s how much time has passed for Hellic 2 to make a comeback.”
“That’s…”
“I’m saying the user base has changed.”
Yang Gil-sang’s eyes widened.
It wasn’t a difficult concept.
The market size may not change, but the users do.
Half the people who enjoyed the game back then have left, and the other half consider Hellic 2 a classic.
To the new, younger users who have come of age to enjoy games in the meantime, Hellic 2 is ‘a new game that has already been confirmed as a masterpiece.’
Those who reminisce about the classic are a guaranteed customer base.
The legacy of the past and the new, younger users are the lifeline that will extend the IP’s lifespan.
The commercial value it holds was the very significance of a remake.
For the next few years, the market desperately wanted it.
‘Because no outstanding games were coming out.’
A slump, you could call it.
I didn’t particularly want to get into it, but the console game market of the time had several problems.
First, the problem of game prices remaining frozen despite rising inflation.
The profit margins for AAA console games were so low that they needed to achieve astronomical results just to break even.
Conversely, the mobile market grew so explosively that it yielded high returns for low costs, leading developers to focus there, which in turn reduced the number of console game releases.
Second was a social issue.
The market was groaning under issues like political correctness, showing a trend of trying to cast aside commercial logic.
However, that was not something that could appeal to the general user base, which makes up the absolute majority of gamers.
What users have wanted, from the days when games were just card games until now, is one thing: “fun.” So what happens to the final product the moment expressing an ideology takes precedence over that?
This trend, a kind of madness, soon led to a decline in sales and tarnished the reputation of several legendary game companies.
Of course, it was a temporary trend.
The first problem was resolved naturally.
Mobile games, like any other market, gradually settled down after their explosive growth, and due to the overly formulaic games, consoles re-emerged as a counter.
A market that had finished its quantitative growth once again desired qualitative growth.
The second problem was partially resolved.
For one, after the correlation between commercial logic and sales became clear, the trend was alleviated to some extent.
Anyway,
“A remake is a choice that sells. After all, you’re entering the market with an already secured customer base.”
To put it snobbishly, it was a choice that made money.
To put it more nicely,
“We’re reprocessing memories.”
A retro-style emotional marketing.
Now that the decision had been made, there was just one problem.
Han Seo-rim pointed it out.
“So who’s going to do it?”
“Good question.”
Once you’ve decided “what to do,” isn’t the next most important thing “who will do it”?
A sense of tension filled the conference room.
Everyone swallowed dryly, anticipating a company-wide game of hot potato.
“First off, Team 1 can’t do it.”
We had focused all our manpower on the development of Hellic 4.
Splitting our forces now would be like chasing two rabbits and catching neither.
“Team 2 is a bit of a stretch too.”
Those humans, who might have been directors or fighters for all I knew, had been discharged from the hospital.
The development of Demon’s Relic 2 was now on track, and they were hard at work on the prototype.
Dividing manpower at this stage?
That would be nothing more and nothing less than ruining the entire project.
“And we can’t just assign it to the Business Department.”
What was the reason Yang Gil-sang joined the Business Department? Because he couldn’t make games.
No matter how much Studio Rewind was called a sweatshop by the public, we didn’t tell someone like that to make a game.
“Then it’s a process of elimination.”
The gazes of those present turned to one side.
In the far corner, Yuri Jackson, who was in charge of creating official mods for our game Identity, blinked.
“Yuri.”
“Yes?”
“I’m counting on you.”
Yuri’s team came here in the first place by winning first place in a competition with the “Identity Hellic Mod.”
Since then, the Hellic Mod had added all sorts of bizarre mechanics, raising its status to what was essentially Identity’s second game.
It wasn’t that she lacked ability.
Above all, she possessed both development knowledge of Hellic and Studio Rewind games in general, as well as practical skills.
“Yuri Jackson,” known as “Ms. Kim Yu-ri” within the company, blinked her blue eyes and asked back.
“For what?”
“Hellic 2.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Yuri.”
So they have Gen Z overseas too, huh.
I gave her a firm answer.
“There’s no one else who can do it, is there?”
Yuri said in a trembling voice.
“I… I don’t have the development data for Hellic 2…”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“?”
“I’ve kept it all. Even the concepts and mechanics that were scrapped due to budget issues.”
“Why do you have that?”
“I kept it for a time like this.”
I may not look it, but I’m a regressor. It’s only natural I’d prepare for the remake meta, isn’t it?
It cost quite a bit of money, but all the data sources related to Hellic 2 were safely stored in the company’s data room.
“Now you can do it, right?”
Yuri Jackson’s head lowered.
It seemed to be an affirmation.