After the meeting ended, the members of Group 9 immediately sprang into action.
They were already highly experienced in game development, so as soon as they received a new task, they could begin executing it smoothly and efficiently.
This time, Takayuki didn't provide very specific development details — those would have to be figured out by the team themselves. It was a major challenge for them, but also a very exciting one.
Without Takayuki supervising them the entire time, what level they could reach on their own was something worth paying attention to.
After the meeting, Takayuki prepared to return to his office.
He walked to the elevator and waited. When the elevator reached his floor and the doors opened, he heard some female voices that sounded vaguely familiar.
"Senior Tsukino Aya, thank you so much for your invitation. I know I've said it many times already, but I still really want to thank you properly."
A calm voice responded, "No need to repeat yourself. Since you're interested in working in the game development industry, letting you get familiar with it first is only natural."
…
…
"Huh?"
As the elevator doors opened, Takayuki let out a soft surprised sound when he saw the people inside.
There were four people in the elevator.
One of them was Tsukino Aya.
And the other three were also familiar to Takayuki — they were the lucky players who had defeated the Rathian during the carnival event. He had spoken with them face-to-face at the time and learned about their aspirations to become game developers. He had even encouraged them.
He didn't expect to see those three girls again.
"Wow! It's President Takayuki! The God of Games!"
Hazumi, one of the three, looked visibly excited.
Ever since she had the chance to meet Takayuki last time, she had looked up to him as an idol.
Then, she and Aiko and Oto-chan formed what they called the "Game Development Triangle."
The three of them even recruited Tianchong and a few other students who were just coasting through school to start a game development club, spending their days discussing how to make games.
However, while game development sounded simple in theory, they quickly ran into problems once they actually started.
The most important part of game development is, of course, computer programming.
And they had never had any opportunity to study this field before — let alone all the other areas beyond coding.
They even went out of their way to find journals and books related to game development.
But since the industry had only emerged about ten years ago, resources like books and journals were still underdeveloped, and they couldn't find the information they needed.
That's when Hazumi began to get discouraged. She started to feel that game development really did have a high barrier to entry — something high schoolers like them couldn't handle.
She had been interested before, but that interest was fading fast.
However, while Hazumi was easily discouraged, Aiko and Oto-chan were not.
Since they had already decided what they wanted to do next, there was no turning back for the three of them.
So Aiko and Oto-chan dragged Hazumi along and started learning from scratch, collecting piles of programming books to study.
Of course, they still had schoolwork, and taking on a completely new subject was exhausting. But Aiko and Oto-chan's passion was unstoppable, and Hazumi could only grit her teeth and follow along — learning programming with her lifelong best friends, feeling both pain and joy in the process.
Six months later, they finally managed to create a barely functional game character.
But it was really hard — so hard that even Aiko found herself scratching her head at times.
That's when Oto-chan suddenly remembered something.
Gamestar Electronic Entertainment had previously offered courses on game development.
And not just in the past — they still occasionally hosted those courses at their headquarters, aiming to guide aspiring developers and lower the entry barrier to game development.
Oto-chan suggested that they apply for the course and learn directly from the top company in the industry.
The three of them quickly agreed, signed up, and joined the course in one seamless move.
As it turned out, the instructor for the course they enrolled in was Tsukino Aya.
Tsukino Aya currently worked as an all-around programming advisor at the company, while also serving as a game producer and occasionally lecturing.
Though she was only about thirty years old, her programming knowledge already surpassed that of many veterans in the industry.
She seemed to have a natural gift for this kind of work.
During her lecture, she was very surprised to see the three girls.
It was already rare enough to have even one female student attending such lectures — and this time, there were three, and they were all girls.
While teaching, Tsukino Aya paid special attention to them. After observing them for a while, she realized that she had indeed seen them before — during the carnival event.
That surprised her even more.
After the class ended, Tsukino Aya took the initiative to invite the three of them to stay behind — she wanted to hear about their goals.
With no one else around, the three girls honestly and openly shared their thoughts with Tsukino Aya.
Tsukino Aya was pleasantly surprised.
There were still very few female game developers in the gaming industry today.
She had always believed that women were just as capable as men in game development.
But it seemed that most women simply weren't interested in the field.
Even those who were interested usually went into roles like art or music, rather than core game development.
So when Tsukino Aya saw three girls who genuinely wanted to develop games, it felt like discovering hidden treasure.
Tsukino Aya had never had many friends — aside from Takayuki and Airi Hayasawa, she didn't really have anyone else.
But when it came to Aiko and the other two, she naturally became good friends with them — even with the age gap of more than a decade.
The three girls also really liked Tsukino Aya.
She was cool — the kind of cool girl who just gave off that vibe.
Getting to chat with someone like her made them really happy.
And once they found out that Tsukino Aya was the one behind the first major game led by a female producer, they admired her even more — practically idolizing her, second only to Takayuki.
Tsukino Aya also invited the three girls to visit the company. She hoped they would grow quickly into capable developers.