1988 Retro Game Tycoon - Chapter 56



Only Noblemtl

Episode 56 – Fearless Kids

– “I wanted to create a game that mimics the feeling of going up and down the emergency stairs in New York City that you see in movies.”

– 1 billion sales in 3 months with one game idea

– ‘Starbeat’, a game company that lays the foundation for Korean video games

– Fearless children with an average age of 22.3 years old and full of youthful sensibility

In the electronics industry, which is developing rapidly, a company has emerged that has achieved sales of 1 billion won in just 3 months with just one idea. Starbit, led by CEO Seo Nam-joon, currently has 15 employees with an average age of only 22.3 years. Among the employees, there are college students and even high school students.

Starbeat caused a stir in the Korean game market at the end of December last year when it released the game for Gemix, developed solely by CEO Seo Nam-joon. People lined up at Seun Shopping Mall to buy the game, and the temporary store Saetbyeol Store in Myeongdong became very popular as it not only sold the game but also allowed people to experience it firsthand.

achieved sales of 100,000 copies in just three months after its release. Seo said, “This is a first in Korean game history, and a meaningful record in the Korean game market, which is not even properly counted.” He also said that while leading the Korean game market, he aims to enter the U.S. and Japanese markets within the year.

(Photo) Starbeat CEO Seo Nam-joon introduces and in his office.

The Starbeat office scene is different from the typical corporate scene. You don’t see tired office workers rushing to work during rush hour, wearing ties in glass-covered high-rise buildings, crying and laughing over bonuses, having a drink with colleagues, and staggering back home through the sleepless streets.

No one wears a suit here. Team leaders are called captains and joke around without hesitation. The CEO does not have a separate room and works with employees. He also has an arcade in the company and enjoys playing games during work hours. He rejects formalities and emphasizes freedom in the company.

However, if you think that they are not working and just playing around, you are mistaken. They set tasks for themselves and are fiercely focused until they are done. When they were making the new baseball game , all employees tested the game and fixed errors through the night. As much as they are free, they must have a sense of responsibility to finish the work they are given.

CEO Seo, who says that the true charm of games is “not just watching, but playing as the main character,” laughed and said that he has yet to find anything as fun as game development. When Hyunmyeong Electronics released the world-class game console Comboy, Starbeat joined hands with Jewoo Electronics to respond with the ‘Republic of Korea Game National Representative Package.’

It is anticipated that this 21-year-old young man, who has both business acumen and game development skills, will bring about new waves in the video game industry as well as the Korean electronics industry.

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“Hey, sir, the photo came out really well.”

My interview article was published in the ‘Notable Young Companies’ section of the general economic daily, The Korea Economic Daily.

Manager Park bought dozens of newspapers and handed them out to people.

“ has already sold 100,000 copies. I really couldn’t have imagined it.”

“This time, we sold 30,000 copies at once to Jewoo Electronics, so we saved a lot of time. If not for that, we probably would have had to wait until summer.”

“I’m speechless when I see the CEO. Games are games, but the way they’re sold is so different. The company I worked for made things because they were needed, and once they were made, they thought they’d somehow sell them to people with computers. But there were more people in the marketing department than programmers. At the time, I thought everyone was like that, but when I came here and saw it, it was a really strange company.”

Deputy Go Dae-ryong said as he folded the newspaper.

“Come to think of it, what did people say when you left the company? It’s not common to change companies, right?”

“It wasn’t good. Most people treated me like a traitor. At least they spared my life because it wasn’t a competitor. When I told them I was going to a gaming company, they asked if I could get a proper salary there. I thought they would really hit me if I told them I was going to get a raise, so I just quietly left.”

“You must have had a hard time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Since I said I was leaving, people didn’t even want to eat with me. But the development team manager told me that I had to stay because he would be doing more work. I hope you’re doing well, manager.”

I knew that once you join a company, it was expected that you would stay there for the rest of your life until retirement unless something special happened.

But I’m being treated like a traitor for moving companies.

When the IMF comes, job changes will become more active, and it will become natural. At times like this, the difference in times really feels big.

However, it is not only Korea that views changing jobs negatively. Japanese game companies also have a strong concept of lifetime employment, so even famous game developers during this period rarely changed companies.

Since the studio also knows that good developers are the lifeblood of making a good game, they intentionally omitted the developers’ names from the game’s credits to prevent a brain drain.

No matter what, it is a source of pride and proof of career for developers, but they are removing their names from the credits. There are many things that are out of the ordinary that happen in Japanese companies.

“Those people will probably feel sick when they see this article.”

“Well, they’re not the type of people who read newspapers. But they did call me once after seeing my picture in .”

“Really? What did you say?”

“Just. He said that it looked more like a company than he thought. But when he read the article, he got confused because it didn’t seem like a company. And he was really curious about the coding test. He said it was the first time he’d seen a company like that. He was a little proud at that time.”

The ancient dragon deputy smiled awkwardly.

received such a great response to my last interview article that they decided to continue publishing feature articles about game development with me.

The first feature article, of course, was about the new development team that joined our company.

I think people felt very new about the coding test in the form of a computer competition. I included a large photo taken on the day I moved into the office and a photo of the B team members who are developing , and I included a detailed story about how they are developing it.

“But this time, there wasn’t much about me in the article, and they said that I was closing down the coding test and going to work as a pickled radish at the company.”

“This time, the article was centered around . Now that the arcade game is out, there will be a lot of talk about Team A.”

“Yes, now everyone is familiar with 68k assembler. Everyone is just waiting for the A1 system board to come out.”

Although our company’s A1 system board was not yet complete, the A team was developing for the Motorola 68k CPU, bit by bit, using 68k assembler.

Team B’s Hyunwoo Seok was attached to Team A and was helping create the visual graphic assets for the arcade version of .

The background image tile method of is still valid for arcade games, but since arcade games can use a much larger resolution and a variety of colors, each tile must be created from scratch.

“Since the board specs haven’t been decided yet, instead of making the tree tiles first, draw the whole picture of the forest first. Then, once the tile specs are decided, split them up and find the most efficient size and method.”

While Team A started developing the arcade game, Team B, which had completed the game, reviewed the entire development process and reviewed the completed code to document feedback on the development process, including what was good and what was not.

“If you don’t organize your memories, they will disappear after a short period of time, just like the data in DRAM. It’s important to archive them so that people in the company can always look up related information and find out why something was done that way. The same goes for data files.”

When I joined a game company and was busy with my daily life, one day I suddenly missed old games and looked back at them, and that was the part that I regretted the most. Our games and the culture related to them were not properly preserved.

The gaming culture, which was dismissed as mere children’s play and not recognized as part of popular culture, has lost much of its information over time due to people’s indifference.

To prevent that, I have a large cabinet in my company filled with company-related materials, computer magazines, and games that I buy as I see them. Right now, we have five unopened, unused, storage-use smart combos in our company.

In about 10 years, we should open a retro game museum where our company and various retro game materials are collected.

To do that, we need to be much more successful than we are now.

I visited the Iron Age to check the status of the A1 board work. When I rang the doorbell but there was no response, I opened the door and went in.

I have a strong feeling…?

“Ah! Jung Dae-ho! Another home run! What on earth is that kid doing, hitting home runs like he’s eating rice every day?”

As expected.

When I sent him one after came out, Lee Ki-cheol was engrossed in the game.

“Huh? A gamer came? Hey, baseball was this fun? I didn’t know it until now.”

Lee Ki-cheol smiled happily and waved his hand when he saw me. He was so cheerful.

I waved from the living room without entering the room.

Even though I wanted to go in, I couldn’t.

Not only the desk, but the floor was also strewn with various circuit boards, unknown measuring devices, drivers, tools, wires, and cords, leaving no room to step.

“How can you tell where anything is like this?”

“Of course. Everything is in the optimal position so that I can get what I want right away if I just extend my hand. Just be careful not to mess things up when you come in.”

I was dumbfounded when I was told to be careful not to get lost in this mess.

“Hey, wait a minute. This is a really important moment. It’s the bottom of the ninth, and we just gave up a home run and are down by one point. Okay, Lee Ki-chul has one out left, and the score is 9-8. There’s a runner on second. We just need to get one more batter to raise the long-awaited Golden Sun Flag. What do you think, commentator?”

“Eh~, pitcher Lee Ki-cheol looks really good today.”

Lee Ki-cheol immersed himself in the game while changing his voice and playing two roles. Anyway, he is a crazy person no matter what he does.

“Yes! The game is over. As always, our reliable Lee Ki-chul leads the game to victory!”

Lee Ki-cheol, who finished the game with a victory, briefly enjoyed the joy of victory by dancing a square shoulder dance. It’s a dance that makes me angry for no reason even though I didn’t lose.

“Did you come to see how old the board is? It’s currently in the test production phase. But I’m still debating whether to use two or three auxiliary processors, or just use two main CPUs.”

“Two mains instead of multiple assistants?”

“Yeah, I took apart the Mega Drive too. When I looked, the main and sub were connected to the same system bus. They weren’t separated into main and sub. That reminds me of something. In that case, wouldn’t it be better to just use two mains that are much faster?”

“That makes sense. It would actually make programming easier.”

If the main CPU and auxiliary processor are different, different languages ​​must be used when programming to control each. However, if two identical CPUs are used, only one 68k assembler can be used, making development that much easier.

The reason GPUs have become important in the era of 3D games is because the number of polygons, lighting effects, special effects, and other elements that need to be calculated simultaneously has increased significantly.

So, unlike CPUs that have only a few cores, GPUs have hundreds or thousands of cores, which enhances their parallel processing capabilities to perform multiple calculations simultaneously.

The reason I wanted to use multiple auxiliary processors is because we can’t make custom graphics chips like Nintendo does yet, so there are a lot of elements that need to be processed in software.

Rather than simply increasing the number of auxiliary processors, it could have been a method to use two 16-bit main processors.

“The problem is price and efficiency. We need to compare which is faster when using two CPUs and one CPU with two, three, or four auxiliary processors, and how much of a difference in price there is.”

“Yes. But it’s difficult to measure exactly how much difference there is in processing speed.”

“Oh, I’ll make a benchmark program to check the computational speed. You set up each prototype board and run tests with them. Then, let’s compare the price-efficiency of the one with the highest score.”

“Oh~, that’s a great idea! Then we’ll know right away what’s faster and better. As expected from our gamer! Alright, now that we’ve roughly decided what to do next, let’s have a game of two.”

“If I want to create a benchmark, I have to start now…”

“Just one game! Just one game! I don’t have any friends… Namjoon hyung.”

Lee Ki-cheol gave me a pitiful look with a sad look on his face.

Oh man, this guy really makes people weak-hearted.

“Okay, I won’t let you off. Don’t cry even if you lose 17 to 0.”

“Never! Hold on tight to your worries!”

And I defeated Lee Ki-cheol 13 to 0 so he would never ask me to join him again.

“Ah···, you really are a heartless, stupid gambler.”

Lee Ki-cheol turned off the Jemix V with tears in his eyes and started soldering the PCB board. Perhaps it was his way of calming himself down and relieving stress.

For now, I’ll forget about and focus on board development. The production of the A1 system board is starting to gain momentum as it explores a new direction.

While I was developing a framework for benchmark software development, I also prepared a new marketing strategy to give more momentum to the sales of .

When things are going well, you have to make them go even better.

“Yes, Mr. Park. I’m here. You must be worried because we don’t advertise much in the media. You also work a lot because of us.”

“No, sir. What are you talking about? We work hard and wholeheartedly on any client’s business, regardless of sales.”

“But this time, I was planning to run a newspaper ad, but I couldn’t because Jewoo Electronics did it for me. So I’m thinking about something else.”

“Yes, what do you think···?”

Manager Park asked in a tense voice.

“The stage for our game this time is Dongdaemun Baseball Stadium.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Let’s go to Dongdaemun Stadium sometime. They have a big event game.”

The game’s subtitle is “The Shouts of Dongdaemun Baseball Stadium.”

I need to hear the loud cheers at Dongdaemun Stadium in person.