"What's going on?"
As soon as Takayuki stepped out of the office, he saw several employees from the game development teams engaged in heated arguments.
"President, sorry for disturbing you," one employee said nervously.
"First, tell me what's going on and why you're arguing."
"Well... we might have run into some trouble."
"Be more specific."
"A while ago, the composer we hired... left."
Takayuki was taken aback. "Left?"
The employee nodded. "Yes, literally... left..."
"What happened?"
"Because he felt insulted in his work, but we didn't disrespect him at all. We just wanted him to learn some assembly language so he could compose music for the game. But after learning for a while, he felt it was humiliating and resigned."
Next to these employees, Matsuki, who was in charge of personnel management, also spoke up after the others finished, "President, it's not just one composer who wants to leave, it's three or four of the composers we recently hired."
After a brief moment of thought, Takayuki immediately realized what was happening. He said, "Is it because of the programming aspect of composing?"
"Yes, they've never written music for game consoles before. At first, they thought they just needed to create music, and our game consoles would play it. But later they realized that before composing, they needed to learn a programming language, so they backed off."
Takayuki shook his head. "It's my negligence. I didn't consider this. How many composers want to leave now?"
Matsuki replied, "We've hired a total of five composers, one for each game development team. But now, except for the one in the fifth game development team, the others want to leave."
The composer in the fifth game development team... That's right, it's the one Matsuki recommended, the somewhat down-and-out composer. He probably can't leave even if he wants to. At least here, he has the opportunity to make money composing music, whereas elsewhere he would only be able to do odd jobs to make ends meet.
The other composers themselves are not exactly short of money, but because of the considerable sum we offered and out of curiosity about the new industry, they came to try their hand.
It seems quite normal for them to choose to leave when they encounter difficulties.
In the early days of Famicom game production, games were made using a programming language called assembly language, which was a fairly early programming language.
And creating music on the Famicom, the iconic 8-bit music, is not as simple as just adding sheet music.
You have to write code like a programmer, treating the code as sheet music, so that the machine can recognize these things.
The musical notation in human society is simply unrecognized by the Famicom.
And in the SFC game console, performance has made a qualitative leap, and sound effects have skyrocketed, making it much more pleasing to listen to than 8-bit music.
However, even with 16-bit chips, you still need to use assembly language to create music.
And using assembly language to create music on a 16-bit console is a bit more complicated than on the Famicom, as the quality of the music has greatly improved.
This is due to some inherent flaws in these chips. Improvements are possible, but difficult and require huge investment in research and development to develop a machine specifically for assisting in music production.
In the past SFC era, Nintendo did develop a device for quickly creating game music.
But the research cost of that thing is unknown, Takayuki only knows that it's very expensive.
Only large companies like Capcom, Konami, and EA can afford it.
It's not cost-effective for smaller game companies and studios to buy it.
So, Takayuki didn't consider this at first, thinking that 16-bit game consoles were just a transition. It's estimated that in three to four years, or at the earliest in one to two years, a better-performing game console will be released, so there's no need to invest too much money in it.
But now, he's run into trouble.
Those composers simply don't want to learn assembly language.
In their eyes, a programming language is like a cryptic script. They are composers, not mathematicians. If they have the time to learn assembly language, who knows how much music they could create? Why waste time here?
Composers are very important. In the 16-bit game console, the improvement in image and sound quality is the most significant.
He can help write the main music for some games, like the Crystal Overture, but he can't handle all the background music in the game himself, right? How can he be busy with that?
After the birth of the 16-bit game console, the game industry began to have clear divisions of labor.
Those who make music specialize in music, those who make animations specialize in animations, and those who write programs specialize in writing programs.
It seems that I've been moving too fast, accelerating the development of electronic games, and there may be some hidden dangers. I need to be alert.
"Is it only one person who wants to leave now? Or do the other three also want to go?" Takayuki asked.
"The other three also have this idea. No one took the lead before, but now that someone wants to leave, it's probably difficult to keep the others. But, President, I can assure you that my friend's brother will definitely not leave easily."
Takayuki nodded. "I understand. Where are those four people now? Call them all together, I'll talk to them personally. And try to call the one who's preparing to leave as well, if he really doesn't want to come, then forget it."
Takayuki intends to try to persuade them himself.
These four composers are the most suitable candidates determined after several screenings.
Each of their styles is suitable for electronic games. If they all want to leave, it would really be a loss. Takayuki plans to try to save them as much as possible.
"I'll call them over now."
As everyone left, Takayuki walked gracefully towards the room where he usually held impromptu meetings.
Speaking of which, this building seems a bit small now.
With the company's expansion, there are nearly two hundred employees under his command.
More than half of them are developers, and the rest are divided into marketing, public relations, legal, finance, etc.
The customer service staff are outsourced and do not occupy the company's space, otherwise this three-story office building would definitely not be enough.
It seems that after a while, I should seriously consider finding a new office location.
While Takayuki was contemplating, several people walked in one after another.