“Does anyone know why Unicorn failed?” asked Lee Hyun as he walked towards the centre of the stage. He was in Professor Weed mode as he spoke. He had just dealt with the press conference and headed straight to Unicorns 40th floor, where the company had a sizeable cinema also suitable for lectures. The audience consisted of roughly 200 employees from the marketing and game development team. There were more but only the heads and senior employees were requested to attend the new CEO’s speech.
A person answered. “We were too big, we just weren’t able to adapt to the changing market.”
“No.” said another member. “We just had a stroke of bad luck, the financial costs killed us.”
Yet another spoke, “The marketing department failed to advertise our product clearly to the masses.”
“No, the developers failed to anticipate the players needs and failed to develop a thrilling game.”
“How dare you!” scowled an employee. “We only developed games as based on the surveys you
provided us with!”
Soon another argument ensued between the employees over what went wrong with Unicorn.
“Quite!”boomed Lee Hyun’s voice. Clearly he had touched upon a controversial and sensitive topic.
“Its simpler than all those answers you gave.”
Everyone was confused. Jin Hyuna asked, “Something simpler than what everyone has thought of in the last twenty years since the decline began?”
“Yes. Players became too bored of Royal Road. There were more fun titles out there. So players moved on.”
The marketing and development teams started swearing at each other, some turned their attention to Lee Hyun and called him crazy, others said they don’t have time for this. Numerous studies and surveys were conducted but all of them indicated that the reason was not a problem with the game outlay. So what Lee Hyun said was totally against statistically proven fact based studies.
Lee Hyun spoke again, “Don’t misunderstand, the game is indeed fun to begin with, the game outlay was based on tried, and test proven game-play story ideas. Even the AI support compliments everything very well. But I think that is as far as the game can go. The current number one game title is ‘Athenos’. Why does it have more than 1 billion players? The game too is VRMMORPG, it also has many races and classes. So why has it maintained the number one position for the last 10 years?”
The employees fell silent. When comparing Royal Road to Athenos, there wasn’t a difference in terms of game play. Both were very similar styled. Athenos was about being ‘master of the universe’. It was a space conquest theme based game. But the overall concepts remained the same. Rabbits and foxes were replaced with aliens of similar calibers, enemies were high level aliens. In fact, Athenos was compared to a very old classic movie like Star Wars with elements of Battlestar Galactica. (Lee Hyun linked it to the TV cartoon show He-man). During surveys when players who played Royal Road and switched to Athenos were asked why did they switch, their top response was that more of their friends were on Athenos. Never did they say royal road was not fun. Nobody could see the point Lee Hyun was trying to make. The head of the marketing department sighted survey findings to everyone.
“10 years ago, Royal Road had more users than Athenos, yet Athenos was given the number one title.” Lee Hyun highlighted. “It was described as refreshing and something new.”
The audience listened quietly. Most of them were very new to the firm as older, ‘more experienced’ employees left for other game development firms, so some of this information was new to them as well.
“What defines the best title? Number of players? Game play and story? Or something else?”
Kang Jin Cheol opened his mouth to answer, but Lee Hyun cut him off. “It’s all of those. It’s also number of hours players are playing the game, also known as engagement ratio. 10 years ago, 85% of players who played Athenos, were playing 15-18 hrs everyday. This is what weighed in Athenos favour when it was crowned number one, ten years ago.”
Everybody knew engagement ratios and how game rankings were decided but the problem was that Royal Road and subsequent titles failed to capture number of players or engagement ratios. Lee Hyun smiled, he didn’t expect anyone to see the point he was driving towards.
Jin Hyuna broke the silence. “None of this explains why Athenos is number one.”
“Well of course it does. Today, only 5% of players of Athenos play 15-18 hrs a day and they have a large player base. Think of the Ranking as the product of Engagement Ratio and player / user base. Athenos has managed to ensure while one fell down the other went up. In Royal Roads case, we lost both numbers and the ratio at the same time.”
Some employees started feeling frustrated that Lee Hyun was only repeating what they already knew.
Sensing their frustration, Lee Hyun rushed ahead with the explanation. “Royal Road was doomed
once it fell into an inevitable cycle of collapse. Whatever the reasons maybe for its collapse; financial, regulations or plain boring. A bunch of new VR game titles stole our market share and when we were finally releasing new titles, three dominant VR titles had already settled in. So it didn’t matter how many VRMMORPG we released, the market demand for it has been saturated.”
The audience did a little soul searching. What Lee Hyun said made complete sense. Most surveys only studied a section of time, if one were to look at the entire period of Royal Road and Unicorn alongside global VR developments, the ambiguity disappeared. Similarly scientific studies, often cited a variety of complex reasons which never really helped in reaching a conclusion. Conversely, Lee Hyun had provided the most simple and elegant diagnosis of their problem which clearly explained to them the predicament they were faced with.
The surveys weren’t wrong, neither were the studies. They just lacked the clarity to explain what went wrong. The failure to adopt to change, the financial cost escalations were all leadership failures not gaming failures, Lee Hyun went on to explain. The only place where the game failed was to keep users engaged. No matter how big the user base, if engagement ratio fell too low, then a game was doomed to collapse. Engagement ratio captured the level of interest of players. If players interests could not be held then the end was assured. Though this wasn’t proven, everyone started accepting Lee Hyun’s words as absolute. Some of the audience members looked towards Lee Hyun in admiration, it had been a little over 3 hours since he became CEO and he could already objectively understand the intricate problems of Unicorn.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The truth was Lee Hyun had been watching Unicorn for the last 40 years. Even after he stopped playing Royal Road and pro–gaming. He always followed the news of Unicorn and VR developments. For him, the story of Unicorn’s fall practically unfolded in front of him, unlike many employees who were at most part of Unicorn for 10-15 years.Their lack of experience meant they didn’t have a deep insight into the firm’s problems.
Jin Hyuna asked, “Does this mean, releasing the new title is meaningless as well?”
Lee Hyun’s eyes shined at the question. “If we release another VRMMORPG based on conventional rules then maybe.”
The statement caught everyone off-guard. ‘Conventional Rules?’ All VRMMORPGs were the same in a sense; players chose a character, developed the character, solved quests, and tried to be the best in their class / race. Killing monsters, saving the world, solving quests were all part of the same genre – RPG. Some games tweaked the graphics, some added elements of classic puzzles, but the rules to programming a game remain unchanged. Storyline and gameplay were the only aspects which could be tweaked. Lee Hyun thought otherwise. “Let us delve a little deeper. Ever considered removing the central AI support?”
The game programmers looked at Lee Hyun with horror. The central AI support, generated A and
above level difficulty quests, ensured balance of powers, it linked all other supporting AI programmes to each other and did so much more. Once a game was developed with central AI support, even game developers knew little of what would happen next and what quests would be generated. The AI would use the provided storyline information to create quests for players accordingly to their level, class, race and relationship to the in-game world environment. To develop a game without it was unimaginable; after all it was the foundation of the game.
Lee Hyun let out an uncontrollable laughter after seeing everyone’s face stricken with horror. Was he toying with their minds and meant it as a joke? Or was he simply going crazy? Kang Jin Cheol was curious to know.
Lee Hyun began explaining his ideas for the new VR title. The entire explanation of the new game lasted 10 hours. Nobody moved from their seats as Lee Hyun had spoken. His idea was revolutionary and maybe bordering impossible to accomplish given the 11 month time scale. If they succeeded, they could very well dethrone Athenos and reclaim their number one position. From game play, to story line, to technical aspects. Lee Hyun had thought of it all.
At the end of the ‘new CEO speech’ Jin Hyuna (who had not slept for the last 36 hours) asked, “And have you thought what we will call this game?”
“Royal Road - Elementarem Vim.”
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
9 months and many rumors later.
“This is KMC Media, we have confirmed reports that the player who beats the game, will also win US$ 1 billion. Though our in-house experts have also confirmed this is most likely a marketing ploy.”
2 months later.
“Hi Everbody! This is your host CJ! From CTS Media. The countdown has begun to this year’s most anticipated game. After having removed all their titles last week, Unicorn is finally releasing Royal Road – Elementarem Vim!”
*Channel changed.*
“Hi this is Shin Ryu from VRCOM! 12 hours to go to the release of Unicorn’s latest title. Though kind of disappointing its name is Royal Road – Elementarem Vim. Is it some spin off of the original Royal Road?”
*Channel changed.*
“So this year’s most anticipated VR game is Royal Road – Elementarem Vim. We have questions for Unicorn. Why all the secrecy in development?”
*Channel changed.*
“What you heard are just rumors. There is no way for a game to run with two central AI supports or zero central AI supports. Its just impossible. I stake my PhD in VR gaming programming when I say this.”
*Channel changed.*
“Unlimited classes? Please, how will players compete. My friend works with Unicorn he said that they are offering only one race and 4 classes.”
*Channel changed.*
“My dad told me all quests are above S level difficulty. I don’t believe many players will play such a difficult game.
*Channel changed.*
“I am dying to play Professor Weeds game. I was personally taught by him, beating his game will be fun. We still have another 6 hours before the game goes live, just itching to log in and play.”
*TV off*
*Alarm: Royal Road - Elementarem Vim is now online.*
Connect to Royal Road – Elementarem VimYesNo
“Yes!”
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Authors Note:
1. Editing Credits: Knaivvs
2. I don't know why, but I really wanted to end this chapter like this. :-/ LMS influence is seriously strong.
3. I intentionally left the dialogoue box out and added the link to the next chapter within the yes. For Feedback click here