Video Game Tycoon in Tokyo-Chapter 740: Acquaintances

During this lecture series, Takayuki initially felt nothing special when he first saw Tanaka.

But the second time they met, Takayuki began to feel a vague sense of familiarity.

At first, it was Tanaka's appearance that felt familiar. However, given how busy Takayuki usually was, it wasn't surprising that he wouldn't recall someone he'd only met once years ago.

Eventually, he remembered. It seemed Tanaka had been there the very first time he met Aiko and the other two girls. He was the one who asked for an autograph.

"Yes, Takayuki-sensei! My name is Tanaka! My father used to be a newspaper editor, but he's now an independent columnist covering the video game industry. He said he's met you several times!"

"Hm?"

Takayuki was a little surprised. He hadn't expected that.

That explained the vague familiarity—not just from Tanaka himself, but also perhaps from having seen his father multiple times.

At that moment, Takayuki recalled a middle-aged man.

Back when Gamestar Entertainment was just starting out, the gaming environment wasn't particularly favorable.

The television industry was relentlessly suppressing the rise of video games, hoping to preserve its own dominance.

Most major newspapers, affiliated with these TV networks, followed suit and tried to stomp gaming down.

But there was one exception—Nihon Keizai Shimbun (The Nikkei) and its affiliate, TV Tokyo.

TV Tokyo was part of the Nikkei Group, and as fate would have it, one of the Nikkei's senior executives was Takayuki's angel investor—his father's old acquaintance and the only shareholder with independent equity.

This high-ranking figure was open-minded about the gaming industry due to his vested interests. Under him, a newspaper editor named Tanaka was one of the few journalists openly praising video games at the time.

Takayuki remembered meeting him several times and thinking he had a sharp eye.

Who would've thought this young Tanaka was his son?

Takayuki smiled and said, "What a coincidence."

Tanaka nodded. "Takayuki-sensei, I've always dreamed of becoming a top game developer like you. Do you think I have what it takes?"

"Well... that's up to you," Takayuki replied. "I can't look at someone and say they're destined for greatness. You have to prove it with your own efforts."

Takayuki wasn't about to sugarcoat things. Some people, no matter how hard they work, never quite become the best. It's just how the world works—part luck, part talent.

Still, he made a mental note of Tanaka. If the opportunity arose, he might keep an eye on him.

But he hadn't come here to catch up with old acquaintances. Turning to both of them, he said, "Tanaka just raised a concern that adding too much content to a game might create problems that multiply exponentially. That's a valid concern, and now's a good chance to show you all the real power of the Unreal Engine."

He grabbed a nearby laptop and started operating it.

"Up to now, you've probably only thought of Unreal Engine as a simple editor or a time-saving tool for development. But I see it as the industrial-grade core of a video game factory—a master machine capable of producing many things."

"Meyer, you mentioned wanting to add fishing and horse racing features to Assassin's Creed, right?"

"Yes! Is that even possible?"

"Of course it is. While it might not directly tie into the main gameplay, I said from the beginning that we're creating a world that's rich and detailed. Even if some features go completely unused by players, the richness comes from those very details."

At that moment, Takayuki thought back to a game he knew intimately from his previous life: Red Dead Redemption.

That was a prime example of an open-world game done right.

It allowed you to do almost anything you could imagine.

And its development team had managed to balance industrialized production with deep, meaningful gameplay.

This was the direction Takayuki hoped the industry could move toward.

"Actually, both the fishing and horse racing systems are already built into the engine. You can just call them up."

Under Takayuki's deft hands, the Unreal Engine seemed to come alive with magic. One by one, functions were activated and embedded into the evolving game framework.

At the same time, other teams received the updated framework and saw that new fishing and horse racing systems had been added.

Tanaka watched in awe, as if a new world had opened up before him.

He used to overthink every detail in game development—worrying about limitations and obstacles. But now he realized, maybe you don't need to worry so much. Add what seems fun first, and refine or remove it later if needed.

Meyer, on the other hand, was overjoyed. His creativity had been validated in a big way. He was bursting with ideas and couldn't wait to get back to work on them.

Takayuki gave Tanaka a pat on the shoulder and said, "Stop worrying about game size or system limitations. That's not your job. Your only job is to make the game fun. Unlike the past, we don't have to be stingy with memory or storage anymore. That's one of the biggest perks of this era."

Then, he walked off, leaving Tanaka deep in thought.

Elsewhere, many other developers were now seeing the true power of Unreal Engine.

Previously, they hadn't been using it to its full potential. They'd been trying to implement simple features in overly complicated ways, not realizing Unreal could handle them with ease.

Could it be that all of Gamestar Entertainment's hit games were built this efficiently? Just by mastering Unreal's full capabilities?

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No wonder they could develop games so quickly—the true power of the engine was beyond anything they'd imagined.

Awed but inspired, the developers began diving deeper into learning the engine.

They realized how they'd underestimated it before—just like someone who spends eight hours doing something in Excel that a master could finish in one.

There was no comparison.