2―1. Zombie Game
“Minha-ya… you can leave me behind….”
“What are you talking about. I can never abandon you. Get on my back right now.”
Jeong Minha carried Seo Sihan on his back with his gunshot-wounded leg. Seo Sihan’s feet, who was taller, dragged along the ground, but that wasn’t what was important right now. They had to escape from this place immediately.
Just a little more and we’ll reach the safe zone, Jeong Minha gritted his teeth, took deep breaths to calm his trembling heart, and moved forward with all his strength. Seo Sihan, who couldn’t move, felt sorry hearing Jeong Minha’s increasingly rough breathing.
“…At least you should live, Minha-ya.”
“I’m a coward, so if hyung isn’t with me, I’ll die too.”
Two people walking between buildings in a ruined city, dripping blood.
The moon was already hanging high.
[4 hours of play time have elapsed. Rest is recommended.]
“Ah, already?”
“Should we head out soon?”
“Yeah….”
Jeong Minha took off his helmet. The scenery visible to his eyes changed from the ruined city to a cutting-edge VR equipment center. It was amazing no matter how many times he saw it.
* * *
R Corporation, the company Seo Sihan works for, is a place famous for electronics. The most famous top seller was automobiles, but there were various other departments including household electronic devices.
Among them, the VR development department had developed an automatic car driving system and then came to an agreement with a game company, saying they wanted to proceed with a project among themselves. As a result, they succeeded in creating a large-scale experiential game over several years. Using the latest equipment technology, they developed a zombie game where users could move and experience it directly.
After completing all safety tests, only the final step of recruiting general public testers for final inspection remained. However, as it was an offline game rather than an online game that required moving around for several hours, and there was a situation where slight electric shocks were applied to the body when injured in the game to create realism, there were few company employees who volunteered.
We developed it, but with my stamina, if I run for 1 hour it’s game over. Even the project developers all subtly slipped away. There were difficulty levels of easy, normal, and hard, and hard mode could take 5 hours if done well, or even longer if not. However, since they needed to test up to this stage, it was necessary to recruit healthy general public members.
August, after the Olympics had just ended. It was a hot summer with intense sunlight beating down. Before posting the recruitment notice, Seo Sihan, who heard the story from the VR department, first informed Jeong Minha.
Jeong Minha stopped eating dinner and said, me, it has to be me, can’t I do it? his eyes sparkling brightly. Thanks to Seo Sihan, he had already tried almost all the latest games. Various game consoles were scattered around Jeong Minha’s room and the living room. But a zombie game where you actually move around and play? Just imagining it already seemed fun. It also seemed like it would be good exercise.
“Really? Okay. I’ll apply for you tomorrow.”
Honestly, he was a bit worried, but he had seen the safety inspection report that had been going on for nearly a year. Therefore, Seo Sihan readily agreed.
However, Jeong Minha’s statement that followed required a little time to think.
“Hyung will do it together too, right?”
“…Me?”
“Yeah. Won’t you do it? Should I do it alone? I heard it’s a 2-player game.”
Seo Sihan was just planning to watch Jeong Minha play the game. He hadn’t even thought about running around himself.
“Uh… I have work…. They’re going to recruit other general public people too, so couldn’t you do it together with those people?”
“Will hyung be tired if we do it on the weekend? If you’re busy, it can’t be helped but…. From what I heard, it seems like you really fight and support each other like in a real movie, so what if we don’t match and fight? Most of all, I wanted to do it because it seemed like it would be fun to do it together with hyung…. If hyung can’t do it, I’ll reconsider too….”
“Hmm….”
Apocalypse, was it? As it was that kind of genre, they said it was made so you could cooperate even with strangers, but it was definitely a game mainly played between friends or family.
Seo Sihan thought about various situations after hearing Jeong Minha’s words. What if the other person hurts Minha, whether by mistake or not? They said they implemented a VR map as similar as possible to real terrain, but in an emergency situation, they could definitely bump into each other or fall. They wear protective equipment, but couldn’t they still get hurt? That was even written in the precautions.
If they just cooperate properly, that would rarely happen, but if people fight with each other, it was more dangerous. He didn’t think this wonderful athlete would lose in that situation (contrary to Seo Sihan’s evaluation, Jeong Minha couldn’t fight.), but if he got hurt and felt discomfort during training, that would be a different story.
Also, it was a game that fostered cooperation, friendship, love (the PR team actively recommended it for couples, but the development team said if couples did it, they would likely break up instead.), camaraderie, etc., and while it would be good to see Jeong Minha solve things splendidly with someone else, it seemed better if that person was himself.
Seo Sihan pondered and asked.
“I’m not very good at games and such…. What if I end up interfering with Minha’s game for no reason?”
Jeong Minha heard Seo Sihan’s words and chuckled.
“I’ll do everything for you, so hyung just follow me.”
Seo Sihan was deeply moved and immediately gave an OK sign.
* * *
Monday morning after the weekend passed.
Because the Director personally put his own name on the experience group recruitment documents, the VR development department was in chaos from the morning.
It’s an application signature, not a document approval signature? Didn’t he write it wrong? What age rating is this? He has to play for several hours, so if the Director gets hurt, will we all get fired? The stability test was all confirmed as normal, right? Should we just postpone the test and take more development time?
The staff members were in chaos, but the development team wanted to quickly test their masterpiece. Of course, they had also tried testing it themselves, but they all got game overs from stamina depletion in easy mode. Did we make it too difficult? However, when the marketing team tested it, they cleared up to normal mode without difficulty. Ah, our stamina is garbage. The development team gave up.
Anyway, it was a game they worked so hard to make, pulling all-nighters for years and trading their health, and they couldn’t repeat the hellish development process by working overtime again. They just had the mindset of wanting to hear what the high-up’s evaluation was like, whether the Director fired them or not, and then get fired.
Soon the staff member was seen rushing breathlessly to the development department after a meeting with the Director.
“Gasp, huff. This, please, gasp.”
“Calm down and talk, Team Leader-nim.”
Did he apply incorrectly after all? But the Team Leader who came with some documents after the meeting adjusted his glasses and shouted.
“He really did apply!”
“Ah….”
The development team collectively became solemn. We’re all going to get fired soon…..
Regardless, the Team Leader urgently went around the development department announcing. As expected, our Team Leader-nim was the representative of the “육성 공지합니다 (announcing in person)” meme.
“Everyone quickly recheck the aim range error. We need to go with hard mode.”
“What the… I mean, what are you talking about? Are you saying we’re getting revenge on the Director before getting fired anyway? Won’t that get us sued too?”
Certainly, what lacked testing right now was hard mode. The development team had tested easy mode to the point of being sick of it, and other departments had done normal mode instead. Only hard mode had almost no applicants, so data was lacking.
Once, a few brave company employees tried challenging it, but they all shot the gun so terribly that it made you doubt if they had properly served in the military. Isn’t this a judgment error? No. Deputy Manager-nim just has terrible aim. Hey man, what’s your military service number? I didn’t hear that properly.
Since it was a zombie game, the better your shooting skills, the easier it was to escape. Hard mode required even higher aim skills because the zombies moved faster and ammunition was scarce. Even if you gave up and chose the strategy of just running away, escaping from hundreds of zombies that spread rapidly was nearly impossible. In the end, hard mode ended with everyone screaming “Ahhh!” and getting game overs.
―Make the game properly! What kind of game is this!
―Ah, if we only release it with easy and normal levels, it’ll definitely be boring and lose popularity quickly! Obviously more experts will come! There are so many people who are good at games!
―That’s only for online games, this has to be done in person, so what, will soldiers come?!
The client team demanded to lower the difficulty, but the server team was firm. Originally, games need to have the highest difficulty mode to be popular.
Still, it didn’t make sense that they couldn’t release it due to lack of test data for hard mode, which they worked so hard to make. They really wanted to bring in soldiers. That’s why posting a general public notice was also meaningless. We need hard mode data right now. Are they ultimately dumping it on the Director like this? When employees were being sarcastic, the Team Leader fluttered the documents and pointed at the signature line below with his finger.
“The name of the person who applied together with the Director is Jeong Minha-ssi, does anyone know them?”
“……What?!”
