The next day.
Yoo Sona woke up early in the morning and got into her car where her CEO was waiting.
“You must’ve done great with KND’s president last night! He hired you to model for the KND’s TV commercial! One million dollars for a 1-year contract!”
Yoo Sona flinched. “I didn’t do anything special.”
“If you keep this up, you should be able to pay your family’s debt back by the end of this year.”
“It’s all thanks to you, sir.”
“No, it’s all you, Sona. I told you, I will make you famous!”
“We will go to the shop now.” The manager informed them as he started the car.
The CEO continued, “I know this may not be the nicest way, but this is how the real world works. If you want to make it fast, you need to do whatever it takes.”
“I know. Just please make sure you pay me my share.”
“Haha, of course! You are the jewel of my company, so I will take good care of you!”
Yoo Sona closed her eyes and thought about what happened last night.
‘Why did I do that?’
While she told her story, she started to cry.
She cried in front of a complete stranger. Strangely, the man seemed to give off a genuine form of concern. He handed her a napkin, and he consoled her.
“I should get you something good to eat. You look tired and your skin looks rough.”
The CEO yelled at the manager, “You need to take better care of our star. You’re her manager!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fine. Now, Sona, we got a possible contract from Dongnam Pharmaceutical company. They think you may be the right person for their TV commercial for a vitamin drink. The only thing is that its Chairman is old, and…He likes things in a certain way…”
Yoo Sona knew what he meant. She answered quickly, “I’ll do it.”
If she wasn’t in this profession, she would have ended up in a brothel. She kept reminding herself this was what she wanted and it was better than the alternative. She closed her eyes tightly.
The CEO smiled and continued through the day with an ecstatic grin.
Jang Gwangchul asked worriedly, “Are you sure nothing happened? I can trust you?”
“Yes! I’m telling you the truth. Do you really think I would take advantage of a young girl? I just talked to her, that’s all.”
“I trust you as a person, but I’m not so sure about you as a man.”
“Gosh! I’m telling you the truth.”
“But that’s odd too.”
“What?”
“You are a healthy 27-year-old man, yet you don’t have a girlfriend, and you don’t sleep around. You just work. That’s really odd.” Jang Gwangchul continued quickly. “Men want to make money so we can use it, especially to get women. That’s what normal men do. Yesterday was a perfect opportunity for you.”
“I’m not like that. I’m a businessman.”
“But unless you are a monk…” Jang Gwangchul murmured quietly. “A…are you by chance suffering from…erectile dysfunction?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Jang Gwangchul’s eyes widened. “W…what?”
“I think it’s something to do with my mental health. I just can’t do it.”
“Oh, then let’s get you a doctor. I know someone very good. You should have told me so I can get help for you.”
“I’m fine. It’s getting better slowly.”
Jang Gwangchul looked at Woosung sympathetically. “Are you seeing a doctor? If not, you must! I’ll take you.”
Woosung stood up. “I have a few businesses to take care of outside of the office. I’ll see you later.”
Jang Gwangchul’s eyes welled up. “Just let me know if you need any help, ok? We can even go abroad for treatments.”
“Alright. Just go.”
Woosung picked up his laptop bag and left.
He arrived at Jung Jinsup’s game company. When Woosung entered the headquarters, some people looked at him and murmured among themselves. They seemed like they recognized him.
He was on TV after all when he publicly announced that his company would take over Tel-Tech.
‘I must be famous now.’
Just then, Jung Jinsup came down to meet him. “Oh, you’re here.”
Woosung bowed. “Nice place here.”
Jung Jinsup poked Woosung in the waist and joked. “We are leasing this space, but I hear you own your own building.”
“Yes, but I’m not sure if that was the right decision.”
“It’s in a good area, so of course that was the right choice. Anyway, let’s go up.”
Every game users’ actions were recorded in the database.
Item purchases.
Movement between the towns.
Monster hunting.
Item usages.
Every move was logged. Woosung analyzed the data Jung Jinsup gave him and found about 20 IDs with abnormal activities.
After a few days of monitoring, it was revealed that 17 of these IDs were involved in illegal actions including copying items and using internal bugs to play unfairly. Oh Minjae, who was the chief of the OS team, listened intensely to Woosung.
“I used the STL analysis. With this method, I picked out the unusual IDs that were bug users.”
STL analysis.
It was short for Seasonal and Trend Decomposition using Loess.
“Could you explain in more details? Like what equations you used, what kind of filters you used for the raw data, and so on.”
Woosung replied, “I can’t tell you everything, but basically, I used STL analysis, reminder, and Jitter detections to find these IDs. If I had more time, I could probably do better.”
Jung Jinsup listened in awe. He thought Woosung was just a clever businessman, but he was clearly more than that.
Oh Minjae asked in awe, “It’s already at 85%…”
“I can make it to 90% in no time. It could be even better, but that would take a while.”
Oh Minjae turned to Jung Jinsup and nodded. “Then we have no reason not to use his system.”
Bug users.
Or nuclear users.
They were those who abused the game. In 2018, they were eliminated by an internal analyst team, but this was 2009.
It was less sophisticated now. Many CS agents were hired to monitor these users manually.
Jung Jinsup smiled proudly. “We’ll be able to cut down on CS employees.”
Oh Minjae agreed, “We won’t know for sure till we implement it, but I think you’re right.”
Woosung replied, “I’m glad to be of help.”
“Well, now we come to the matter of fees.”
“Of course I won’t charge you a lot, sir. I will send the estimate to Oh Minjae, and it will be a fair number. Oh, and I can also analyze the customer satisfaction level. Would you be interested? If you are, you’ll have to provide us with more of your data.”
Jung Jinsup nodded. There was no reason not to trust Woosung.
After a drink with Jung Jinsup, Woosung came back home and logged on to Jung Jinsup’s company’s game Legend.
It was one of the most popular games in Korea with over 300,000 users and sales of over a billion dollars. There were over 30 servers available.
Woosung created a character for each server and formed a guild.
“There is nothing you can’t do with money.”
He hired a substitute gamer and got all the characters to reach level 90.
He also owned a few castles in several servers.
“Now, let’s see if I can cause inflation within the game.”
As a castle owner in the game, he could control the prices of items in the castle. He set the prices and the taxes at their highest level.
Kim Yonggun enjoyed playing games after he got off work.
Legend was his favorite.
As soon as he logged in, a popup came up.
“Every user in this castle will have to pay 20% more for all items?”
Kim Yonggun’s character was currently in a castle named Arin. Arin castle was considered a popular place in the game because it was surrounded by many good hunting grounds.
In the game, it cost 10 cents to buy 100 gold. An increase of 20% was very upsetting.
He chatted with other users about this matter. The other gamers living in other castles were having similar problems.
“There is an increase of 25% in Dragon castle.”
“It’s 15% up in Noah Castle.”
It had become known that five castles all had increases in prices.
