Tokyo Video Game Tycoon

Chapter 137 The Composers on Strike

"what happened?"

Just as Zhu Yuxing walked out of the office, he saw several employees of the game development team arguing fiercely.

"President, I'm sorry we didn't mean to disturb you." An employee said nervously.

"Let's talk about what's going on first, why are you arguing?"

"This... we might be in a bit of trouble."

"Tell me about it specifically."

"The composer we hired some time ago... ran away."

Zhu Youxing was stunned for a moment: "Run?"

The employee nodded: "Well, literally ran away..."

"what happened?"

"Because he felt insulted by his work, but we didn't disrespect him at all, we just hoped that he could learn some assembly language so that he could score in the game, but after he studied for a while, he Thought it was humiliating him and resigned."

Matsuhashi, who was in charge of personnel management next to these employees, was there, and after the others finished speaking, she said, "President, it's not just one composer who wants to leave, but three or four that we just invited. composers want to go.”

Zhu Yuxing pondered for a moment, and immediately realized something. He said, "It's also because of programming and composition?"

"Yeah, they've never written music in consoles in the past, and at first they thought they just had to figure out a way to create music and our consoles would play it, but then they realized they had to learn something before writing music. programming languages, so they all backed off.”

Zhu Youxing shook his head: "It was my negligence, I didn't consider this kind of thing, how many composers want to leave now?"

Matsuhashi replied: "We now employ a total of five composers, one for each game development team, but now all but the one from the fifth game development team want to leave."

The one from the fifth game development team... by the way, it happened to be the one recommended by Matsuhashi Mitsuhashi, the somewhat down-to-earth composer.

I'm afraid this guy won't be able to leave even if he really wants to. At least this place can give him a chance to make money by composing music. In other places, he can only do odd jobs to support his living.

The other composers themselves are not people who are short of money, but because they have given a lot, and because they are curious about the new industry, they came to test the water.

Now it seems normal for these people to choose to leave after encountering difficulties.

In the early game production of red and white machines, games were made using a programming language called assembly language, which is a fairly early programming language.

And if you want to create music on the red and white machine, that is, the iconic 8BIT music is not simply adding a score.

You have to write code like a programmer thinks as a musical score, so that the machine can recognize these things.

Red and white machines simply don't recognize the kind of musical scores in human society.

In the SFC game console, the performance has been qualitatively improved, and the sound effects have also skyrocketed, which is much more pleasing to the ear than 8BIT's music.

But in a 16-bit chip, you still need to use assembly language to make music.

Using assembly language to make music in a 16-bit host is also a little more complicated than a red and white machine. After all, the music effect has improved a lot.

These are some inherent defects of this kind of chip. It is not impossible to improve it, but it is very difficult. It requires huge investment in research and development, and specially develops a machine that can assist in the production of music.

In the previous SFC era, Nintendo did develop a device that could quickly make game music.

But it's not clear how much the research cost of that thing, Zhu Yuxing only knows that the thing is very expensive.

Only big game companies like Card Watch, Konami, and EA can afford it.

Smaller game companies and studios are not worth buying this.

So Zhuyouxing didn't think about it at first, thinking that 16-bit game consoles would also be a transition. You have to spend too much money on this.

But now there is trouble.

Those composers didn't want to learn assembly language at all.

In their eyes, programming languages ​​are like books from heaven. They are composers, not mathematicians. They have the time to learn assembly language. They don't know how much music they can create. Why waste time here?
Composer is important, and in 16-bit game consoles, the improvement in picture and sound quality is the most significant.

It's okay for him to help write the main music for some games, such as Crystal Overture, but he can't even write some of the background music in the game himself, right?Then how can you be too busy.

After the birth of 16-bit game consoles, the game industry has begun to have a clear division of labor.

If you make music, you will do music, if you make animation, you will do animation, and if you write programs, you will write programs.

It seems that he is moving too fast, and he has accelerated the development of video games, so that the world does not have too many stable development periods. This may be some kind of hidden danger, and I have to be vigilant.

"Is there only one person who wants to leave now? Or do the other three want to leave now?" Zhu Yuxing asked.

"The other three have this idea. Before, no one started, and now there are people who want to leave. I am afraid it will be difficult for the other three to stay, but President, I can assure you that my friend's brother will never take it easy. leave."

Zhu Youxing nodded: "I see, where are those three people now? You call them together, and I will talk to them in person. By the way, the one who is about to leave will try to call as much as possible, if you really don't want to come, forget it. "

Zhu Yuxing intends to try it himself to see if he can keep it.

All four composers are now the most suitable candidates after several screenings.

Their respective genres are suitable for video games. If they have to leave, it is really a loss. Zhu Yuxing still intends to save it as much as possible.

"Then I'll call them here."

After everyone left, Zhu Youxing delicately walked to the room where the temporary meeting was usually held.

Speaking of which, the building seems to be a little smaller now.

With the expansion of the company, the number of employees under his command has also reached nearly [-].

More than half of them are developers, and the rest are marketing, PR, legal, finance, etc.

The customer service staff were outsourced and did not occupy the company's space, otherwise this three-story office building would definitely not be enough.

It seems that after a period of time, I can think about finding a new office location.

While Zhu Yuxing was thinking, several people walked in one after another.

(End of this chapter)