Chapter 68: The Interview

  In the following days, Jester pulled out a programmer, an artist and himself from the remaining staff of Clever's Games to work on what he still called "Battle City".

  After Gest paid a hefty price, the headhunting firm also recommended the person he needed to him.

  Jester held the fax from the headhunting company and picked out the candidates he was satisfied with.

  Most of them are deputy editors-in-chief, editors-in-chief, department heads and other personnel who have a lot of experience in magazine management and are all good candidates.

  However, what Jiest wants to create is a game magazine. The requirements for this type of magazine are quite different from others. Putting aside the professional skills required to run a magazine, first and foremost, the editor-in-chief of a game magazine must be an avid gamer.

  A person who does not love video games cannot run a game magazine well.

  Actually, Jest's most ideal candidate is the future editor-in-chief of EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), Dan Hsu, who will make it the world's most famous gaming magazine. However, he is now just a teenager and even I don't know where to find him, so I can only give up.

  Jester went through the stack of resumes sent over by the headhunting firm one by one. He had no interest in those who were thirty-five years old and above. These old fogies would not be able to accept this new-fangled thing called electronic games, even if they agreed to his demands, it was just that they were attracted to the salary he offered.

  Such people cannot bear the weight of their own responsibilities.

  He mainly looks at those in their 20s to 30s, young, passionate, talented, and most importantly, having an extremely enthusiastic heart for electronic games.

  Jester shook his head and threw one resume after another into the trash can on the edge of the table, none of which satisfied him. Either their age exceeded his limit or he couldn't see any interest in games from their resumes.

  "Huh?"

  Jester's pupils suddenly contracted as he looked at a resume, and then a smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

  After looking for so long, he finally saw one that was fairly satisfactory.

  The person on this resume is a 25-year-old young man who previously worked at Software Magazine, responsible for editing and reviewing computer game content. He also wrote several RPG game codes based on DND rules in Software, and wrote many strategy guides for Atari, Vectrex, and ColecoVision games. Most importantly, he is a loyal player of Mars Entertainment Games, and just recently attended the Mars Entertainment trial play event in Chicago.

  Moreover, according to the materials provided by the headhunting company, this young editor went absent from work directly after his request for leave was rejected, and as a result, he lost his job at Software Magazine.

  The young editor's name was Adrian Loken and Jester was very satisfied with his resume.

  He then called an administrative assistant at his own company and had him find some copies of Software, wanting to see what this young editor named Adrian Loken was capable of.

  While waiting, Jester continued to flip through the remaining stack of resumes. However, the ones in the back didn't quite meet his requirements. After finishing looking at all of them, Jester stretched his waist and unexpectedly found that out of the dozens of resumes provided by the headhunting company, he had only found one suitable candidate, not even enough to make a comparison.

  Fortunately, this eligible candidate is still quite good.

  After waiting for a while, the administrative staff of his own company still hadn't delivered the "Software" magazine he needed, which also made Jester have an idea, should he find a secretary?

  About an hour later, the administrative staff finally brought over the magazines they needed, a thick stack of more than thirty.

  Jester took it over and directly flipped through the directory, found Adrian Loken's name in the author list, then turned to the page number indicated above, and carefully read his article.

  Jester rubbed his somewhat itchy eyes after flipping through over a dozen books, and put down the magazine he was holding, which had an article by Adrian Loken reviewing Richard Garriott's "Ultima", in which Adrian gave very high praise to Richard's game. The article clearly explained the strengths of the game and proposed some improvements, making it one of the rare well-written reviews from a game editor at that time.

  As for the game "Genesis", it doesn't need further explanation, as everyone knows that RPG games are generally divided into two types: Japanese-style RPGs and Western-style RPGs. The three representative games of Japanese-style RPGs, also known as the "Three Big Japanese RPGs", are Dragon Quest (DQ), Final Fantasy (FF) and The Legend of Zelda, which have a relatively high reputation, and many people are familiar with them, but may know little about the Three Big Western RPGs.

  "Ultima" is one of the three major Western RPGs, the other two being "Wizardry" and "Might and Magic", which have not yet been released. These three games laid the foundation for Western RPGs and had a huge impact on later RPG-style games, just like Japanese RPGs.

  Jester saw that now, he didn't need to continue looking anymore. He was very satisfied with this editor named Adrian Loken. So he picked up the phone and directly dialed the headhunting company he had contacted before.

  "Get Adrian Loken to Los Angeles for an interview, and I'll cover the round-trip travel expenses regardless of the outcome," he said into the receiver. Then Jester hung up the phone, waiting for a response.

  Jester leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, thinking about a piece of news he had received recently.

  Mark Cerny's clout once again made Jest look at him with new eyes, since he and his two main programmers wrote a new engine according to the algorithm provided by Jest after verifying that this method is indeed feasible and much better than their previous methods. Mark Cerny thought of what Jest said in that speech in the conference room when Mars Entertainment was just established, and without hesitation, he abandoned the two completed levels and announced that "Avenger" would be remade with an engine based on Jest's scroll algorithm.

  Many people in the company were perplexed by this, they couldn't understand why Mark Cerny wanted to do this, as the version they had previously completed was already excellent. Everyone who played it in the company was shocked by what could be called a milestone game, but Mark Cerny simply said one sentence and made these young designers dispel all their dissatisfaction and rekindle their passion for resetting the game.

  "We're going to make the best game." Mark Cerny said this with conviction.

  To be honest, if it were Jester, he would absolutely not do what Mark Sennett did, because in his eyes, the previously completed "Avenger" was already excellent and didn't need to be reset at all. Although he knew that using a new engine could make it even better, add more content, and make the game smoother, the problem is that this would take too much time.

  And even if it could be done better, it wouldn't sell more than the previous version because the market capacity for arcade games is limited.

  Compared to himself, Mark Cerny is more like a true perfectionist game designer who doesn't allow his games to have even the slightest flaw within his capabilities, while he himself has become more and more like a businessman.

  At first, I thought it was a matter of course for a game company to remake or abandon a game that didn't meet expectations, but after really starting my own game company, I deeply felt how difficult it is to do so.

  So he supported Mark Sennett's decision.

  Reboot The Avengers.

  The next day, Jester received a response from the headhunter, Adrian Loken was already en route to Los Angeles and would arrive around noon; if needed, an interview could be arranged for the afternoon.

  Juster had no comment on this.

  After hanging up the phone, Jester changed into a more formal outfit and then drove to Los Angeles in the Ferrari 365 GT4/BB that his little sister had given him. He had fallen in love with this sports car since he drove Qin Shuyi back from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

  He likes this kind of thrilling and exciting feeling.

  He had already rented an office location in Los Angeles, and this place was originally the office area of a trading company. After renting it out, only after some cleaning and simple decoration, he could directly hang up the sign and start business.

  Of course, the name used was a company called Global Entertainment that Jester had just set up, which he operated himself without going through a third party, and the funds went through several international bearer accounts, so it would be virtually impossible to link him to it.

  At 2:30 in the afternoon, Jester met Adrian Loken at the newly cleaned and renovated headquarters of Future Magazine.

  He looked very young, and if Jester hadn't seen his specific age written on the resume, he would have thought he was only twenty.

  Adrian Loken's eyes widened in surprise as he saw his interviewer, never having imagined that the person wanting to hire him was none other than his idol, Jester Lee, creator of Mars Entertainment and designer of his all-time favorite games: "American Blocks", "Gemstone Maze" and "Snowman Brothers".

  "Hello."

  When he saw Adrian Loken coming over, Jester stood up proactively, walked forward, with a smile on his face, and stretched out his own palm.

  "Hello."

  Adrian Loken, still in shock, snapped back to reality at the sound of Jest's voice, excited and a bit disoriented, stretched out his hand and clasped it with Jest's palm.