Advertisements for "Blanket Man" were everywhere. They were all over the streets; wherever it was permitted to post advertisements, you could likely see posters for this work.
Especially on the doors of major game retailers, there were basically large, colorful posters.
Because of the unique art style and color palette of "Blanket Man," one could see a blaze of colors from a distance, which actually made it more eye-catching.
If you didn't walk close enough to see the content, you might even think there was a watercolor painting hanging at the entrance of the shop.
What does this indicate?
It indicates that Pokeni is freaking rich now.
Ever since Pokémon became a huge hit, Pokeni has essentially had a hen that lays golden eggs. So far, the combined revenue from all of Pokeni's games has brought the company more than 30 billion yen.
After deducting expenses and paying off bank debts, there was still more than 20 billion yen on the books.
Perhaps there is still a gap between them and the top ten game companies, but Pokeni can now be considered to have a small amount of capital.
***
"No matter what, we definitely have to give 'Blanket Man' a try. If it doesn't do well, we'll just treat it as a memorial to Furuhara Tsubaki."
After all, Aoyagi was a person from the future of 2023, and he worked in the game industry, so he was very familiar with the set of promotional activities. The reason he hadn't been able to fully utilize them before was mainly...
***
After all, Aoki Haruhi was a man from the future—specifically, 2023—and he had worked in the gaming industry, so he was well-versed in the ins and outs of marketing. The reason he hadn't been able to fully utilize these strategies before was primarily due to limited funds. Now that he had money, wouldn't he naturally want to pull out a few tricks from the future?
The "trinity" of game marketing:
In the future, this meant: online and offline pre-hype, celebrity endorsements, manufactured buzz, cross-industry collaborations, and viral marketing.
Right now, apart from the lack of the internet, he could almost do it all; it was just a question of whether it was necessary.
If it were 20 years later, Aoki Haruhi would have gone the whole nine yards without a doubt.
The primary promotional methods for Blanket Man still relied on media, television, and posters.
Even without celebrity endorsements or cross-industry collaborations, it was already quite good. Thanks to Pokeni's tireless promotional efforts, the game's popularity quickly began to rise.
***
"Tsk tsk, going to such lengths—it'll be a disaster if they don't earn back the marketing costs," said Hiroshi Aoyama, a level designer (planner) for the Diablo project team.
"Mmm... it's possible. I heard they spent over 30 million just on TV commercials. With all the other expenses, it's definitely heading toward the hundreds of millions. Honestly, I didn't think the president would be willing to invest so much capital into Blanket Man."
"Indeed. I thought the president was just using Blanket Man as an experiment to train the newcomers."
This time, contrary to the reaction from the outside world—
Internally, Pokeni wasn't actually that optimistic about the game.
Of course, this was mainly concentrated among the Diablo II development team, who didn't know much about the game itself, and the Pokémon project team.
"Hey, I'm telling you guys, why are you so narrow-minded? Do you really hate seeing your own products succeed?"
"Ah, that's not it," Hiroshi Aoyama quickly apologized. "It's not that I don't want our own products to do well; it's mainly because the members of Blanket Man are really too inexperienced. Even Ishino, while she has project experience, has never served as a producer before."
Although he said that, deep down, Hiroshi Aoyama did not truly respect Mika Ishino's abilities.
He was one of the company's earliest employees, joining at the same time as Mika Ishino, and both had served as planners for Onmyoji.
It was just that he was mainly responsible for the game's level design, while Mika Ishino was in charge of the script.
After the game became a smash hit, everyone heaped praise on the plot, but paid little attention to the levels or combat.
Yet, within the gaming industry, a level designer's ability is generally considered superior to that of a scriptwriter.
Now that Mika Ishino was able to serve as a producer for a new game, Hiroshi Aoyama felt a twinge of jealousy.
However, his words weren't entirely without merit, as many people shared the same view—
"Blanket Man" was, first and foremost, a lightweight galgame, with little capital invested and a very small team.
Furthermore, almost everyone involved was a newcomer.
Whether it was Ishino Mika taking on the role of producer for the first time, Jun Maeda writing the script for the first time, or the character designer Shota Yokoyama handling creative design for the first time...
It all gave people a sense of unease.
No matter how you looked at it, it seemed like an experimental project, so naturally, not many people really cared about it.
Perhaps when Aoki Haruhi first started it, he did so with a "let's see what happens" attitude—if it hatched, great; if not, it didn't cost much anyway.
That was what everyone speculated.
But no one expected that when it finally went on sale, Aoki Haruhi would be so willing to spend money on it.
I thought you were just casually hatching an egg, but you were serious.
In fact, in the 90s in Japan, gender ideologies hadn't shifted yet; they weren't as progressive as they would be 20 years later, and the society was still stuck in an era of strong men and weak women.
So, even though Ishino Mika had been working on games with Aoki Haruhi for so many years, people still had reservations about her in their hearts.
***
"These people are too much. Do they really have so little faith in us?"
Having heard some of the gossip, Shota Yokoyama, an artist on the Blanket Man project team, felt particularly annoyed.
He spun his chair around and looked back at Ishino Mika, who was writing documentation nearby.
"Ishino-senpai, don't you have anything to say?"
Sen... pai...
Mika Ishino's mouth twitched, and she felt a sudden urge to smash the cactus on the desk into his face.
Yokoyama was a big, hulking man with a rough-looking face that gave off an invisible air of oppression.
Yet this mature-looking man called her "senpai" simply because he had joined the company after her.
How could I possibly deserve that?!
"Yokoyama-kun, are you 40 already?" Mika Ishino asked.
"Ah~ Senpai, how could you think that?"
Yokoyama felt deeply hurt. Like a pitiful, large bear, he frowned and covered his receding hairline with both hands, looking utterly dejected.
"Ishino-senpai, I'm only 26 this year."
"Eh? Sorry, I really had no idea..."
He's actually only 26?!
I couldn't tell at all.
Isn't this guy Yokoyama a bit too mature-looking?
But thinking about it, that makes sense. After all, Art Director Sakata Taiji isn't even 40 yet, so there's no way young Yokoyama could be that old.
Besides, the average age at Pokeni is only 24.
Although Ishino Mika was apologizing, she was inwardly thrilled.
Who told you to go around calling people "senpai"? I don't want to be made to feel that old by you.
Ishino Mika cleared her throat and said patiently and gently, "Yokoyama-kun, could you please stop calling me 'senpai' from now on? Just call me Ishino, or if that feels uncomfortable, Ishino-san will do."
"Understood, senpai. Ah, I mean, Ishino-san." Yokoyama nodded obediently.
After a two-second pause, he continued, "But does it not bother you at all? The fact that members of other project teams don't really think much of Blanket Man."
Ishino Mika frowned. Although she was a bit dissatisfied with these rumors, she wasn't so bothered that she felt the need to argue with others about them.
Perhaps—
"It's not that it doesn't bother me, it's just that being bothered is meaningless," Ishino Mika said. "Rather than wasting time arguing with others, it's better to just do my own work well. Results are the best proof."
The reason she took on the role of producer back then was, in a way, because she wanted to challenge herself and prove what she could do.
President Aoki had given her this opportunity.
Ishino Mika had to seize it.
Looking at it this way, the President was truly different from typical men.
Ishino Mika had never felt a shred of discrimination against girls from Aoki Haruhi...
He treated everyone equally, regardless of the job.
However...
At this thought, Ishino Mika frowned slightly, feeling a bit troubled.
Sometimes, she wished the President would occasionally treat her like a girl.
In every sense of the word.
"Anyway, let's do our best! Let's use our results to slap them in the face!" Ishino Mika secretly clenched her fists.
"Oh. Okay."
Yokoyama nodded; Ishino Mika's words had calmed him down a bit.
He then looked at Jun Maeda beside him.
This guy also seemed completely indifferent.
Jun Maeda had been at the company for quite some time now, always appearing laid-back. He was currently wearing Sony headphones and listening to music; there was no telling what he was actually thinking.
Your game is about to go on sale. As the scriptwriter, aren't you anxious at all?
Instead, it was she, the artist in a supporting role, who was bearing the most pressure.
Is that fair?
***
In fact, despite Jun Maeda's calm and indifferent appearance, he was panicking on the inside.
He was wearing headphones, but there was no music playing. He was pretending to listen to music the whole time, while actually silently eavesdropping on the two people's conversation.
Jun Maeda was someone who feared competition and pressure, to the point that it could be said the character "Blanket Man" was a true reflection of himself.
Whenever he encountered something unsolvable or beyond his capabilities, he would shrink into his shell.
That was why, in his past life, although Alice Soft was his first choice during job applications, he still joined scoop, which seemed like it would offer him room for growth and development.
Back then, at Alice Soft, the survival competition was extremely fierce because the development director, TADA, had declared, "If you haven't shown any results after one year, you will be fired immediately." This was one of the reasons he didn't join them.
As a newcomer who hadn't even touched the Windows operating system before, Maeda wasn't confident he could survive the cutthroat environment at Alice Soft.
In this timeline, if he hadn't received a personal promise from Aoki Haruhi, Maeda probably wouldn't have had the courage to brazenly join Pokeni.
Jun Maeda pretended to listen to music while being anxious out of his mind.
Yabai, yabai...
The company doesn't have a layoff policy, right?
I wouldn't lose my job just after joining Pokeni because "Blanket Man" performs poorly, would I?
That wouldn't happen, right?
"Blanket Man" won't perform poorly, will it?
***
"Ah~ if only this had been produced by Kogahara Tsubakiaki, the results would surely have been excellent. But the producer's name written on this game is [Ishino Mika]."
Inside the Elf company, Masaki Takei let out a sigh.
He is the renowned scriptwriter and character designer for Doukyuusei; many of the character settings and story arcs in Doukyuusei were handled by him.
He and the company president, Hiruta Masato, could be said to complement each other perfectly—one focusing on the writing, the other on the business.
"Who doesn't miss Kogahara Tsubakiaki?" Hiruta Masato sighed from the bottom of his heart.
To some extent, Kogahara Tsubakiaki was the guiding light for Elf.
In the field of galgames, Pokeni was the first company to perfect the entire game mechanism, including the [Memory Corridor], [Affection Settings], and [Route Branching Settings]...
If it weren't for Pokeni, Hiruta Masato felt that galgames could never have developed so rapidly.
You have to realize that a few years ago, galgames always gave people a bad impression.
But now, more people feel that they can harvest love, gain inspiration, and find tears in galgames...
All of this is because of Kogahara Tsubakiaki.
But Master Kogahara Tsubakiaki is no longer working in the gaming industry.
For some time now, Hiruta Masato has felt as if he had suddenly lost his direction in life; it felt like the lighthouse on the ocean had suddenly vanished, and the entire world had gone dark.
If Kogahara Tsubakiaki were still here, what kind of game would he be able to create?
Hiruta Masato always pondered this question in the quiet of the night.
"Kogahara Tsubakiaki leaving the gaming industry is truly a huge loss for the industry," sighed Hiruta Masato. "Honestly, there isn't a single galgame player who doesn't miss him. If only President Aoki Haruhi had been able to persuade him to stay back then."
"Hmm," Masaki Takei nodded. "But that's just a matter of a year or two. In a few years, once a galgame producer with real dominance emerges, Kogahara Tsubakiaki will probably just become history."
"Hasn't the newcomer Mikami Shinji proven his own strength?" Masaki Takei turned to look at his president.
Hiruta Masato laughed. "Mikami's games are in a completely different genre; that's an ARPG, not a galgame."
"Then it all comes down to whether Ishino Mika can take up the mantle from Kogahara Tsubakiaki?"
"Yes, that's right."
***
The entire gaming industry, not just industry insiders but players as well, is focused on this question—
Just who is the successor to Kogahara Tsubakiaki at Pokeni?
Or, to put it more bluntly, who will be put in charge of P-Club's galgames after Kogahara Tsubakiaki leaves?
And who has the ability to take up the mantle?
It's mainly because the Old Thief Kogahara's previous works were so good that players doubt anyone else could possibly possess such talent.
Just as Hiruta Masato said, no matter how good Mikami Shinji's "The Witcher" is, it will always be an ARPG.
Only if a galgame can pick up the torch will there truly be a successor.
***
However, this time, the situation is much, much better than when "The Witcher" was released.
At least players are very willing to give it a try, whether out of curiosity or because of effective promotion; in any case, the buzz is there, and so is the willingness to purchase.
All of this, in fact, is something to thank "The Witcher" for.
It was the combination of Mikami Shinji and Gen Urobuchi that gave players confidence.
It made them willing to believe—
That even without Kogahara Tsubakiaki, Pokeni could still produce high-quality game titles.
***
On October 11, 1993, Blanket Man was released as scheduled.
Long lines formed in front of major game retail stores.
The scene was quite reminiscent of the release of Your Name back in the day.
Hirozawa Furukawa and his friends had also lined up early.
"No matter what, I have to give Blanket Man a try. If it's not good, I'll just consider it a tribute to Kogahara Tsubakiaki."
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