The ice cubes clinked against their teeth with a crisp sound. Both men exhaled long, cold breaths, striking a pose that said, "Bring it on—as long as I don't die of shock, I'll listen."
"What's the default ICQ avatar these days?" Takuya Nakayama pointed at the screen. "The system-provided cat, dog, or landscape—just a few dozen pixels."
"We're going to create an ICQ Show."
Takuya casually drew a stick figure, then added a few strokes beside it. "We'll give every user a virtual avatar. Not just a profile picture, but a complete, full-body digital persona. And we'll sell them clothes."
"Sell—clothes?" Frank's brow furrowed into a deep crease. "You mean mail them T-shirts?"
"No, sell images." Takuya smiled, his grin as seductive as the serpent tempting Eve. "Virtual jeans, sunglasses, even a pair of angel wings. The marginal cost of these items is zero. Once the artist draws them once, we can sell them to a million people. Plus, it's about individuality. On the Internet, no one knows you're just a dog—but if you're willing to pay, you can be a cool dog wearing Ray-Bans and a leather jacket."
Frank's hand, holding a pen, froze mid-air. As a finance expert, he instantly calculated the numbers. With almost no cost, the profit was pure, leveraging humanity's most primal instinct: showing off.
"But this is just the first step," Takuya Nakayama said, giving them no time to breathe. "Once we have the image, we need a stage to display it. Just peeking into the chat window is a waste. We're going to add a game arcade to ICQ."
Tom Kalinske's interest was piqued. "Port Sega's games?"
"No, the network can't handle that yet, and they're too hardcore. After all, the overlap between computer users and gamers is too small. We need games that anyone can play, anytime, and stop anytime." Takuya Nakayama wrote a few words on the paper: [ Poker ], [ Bridge ], [ Chess ].
"These games have no copyright issues, and their rules are universal. Users can challenge friends directly within ICQ, or—and this is the key—share a link to a game room in a group chat. 'Three players needed, come quickly!' Click the link, and you're in."
"At the card table," Takuya Nakayama said, tapping the stick figure on the screen with his pen, "their purchased virtual avatars—that expensive suit, those shimmering sunglasses—will be fully displayed at their seats.
When you win a hand, your avatar can applaud; when you lose, it can cry. That's where the true value of virtual goods is realized."
Frank felt his breathing grow heavy.
This wasn't just a chat tool anymore; it was an amusement park, a social arena where status and fame were currency.
"Finally, to make players spend money, we need to introduce a privileged class," Takuya Nakayama said in a low voice. "We'll call them Members."
"We'll give paying users special markings—their names turn red, or they get a red V symbol. In the game lobby, they can prevent being kicked from rooms, squeeze into full rooms to spectate, and even get more intelligent auto-play logic when they time out during a hand. We'll sell them 'unfairness'."
"Wait," Frank said, his voice laced with concern, "won't that enrage free users? If the privileges are too strong, we'll lose our regular players."
Leaning back in his chair, Takuya Nakayama gazed at the ceiling and uttered the words that would later become a cornerstone of business strategy, yet would also evoke a love-hate relationship among countless players.
"Frank, consider this: which of the privileges I just granted compromises the fairness of these card games? Remember this one thing."
He lowered his gaze, locking eyes with both men, and enunciated each word deliberately: "Free-to-play players aren't just our customers. They're also part of the gaming experience we provide to paying players."
The conference room fell into deathly silence, broken only by the faint hum of the air conditioner.
The words were too cold, too transparent.
They tore away the Internet's sentimental veil, revealing the bloody logic of commerce beneath.
Frank opened his mouth, as if to protest, but swallowed his words.
He chewed on the phrase, the moral struggle in his eyes gradually fading, replaced by a near-fanatical reverence.
"Paying players buy happiness with money, and free players keep them company, boosting engagement, and serving as the backdrop to that happiness. Yet the card games themselves remain completely fair, ensuring the most basic gaming experience for free players," Frank murmured, his hand tightening so hard on his pen it nearly snapped. "My God—this is a perfect closed-loop ecosystem."
"Of course, just don't make it too obvious," Takuya Nakayama said, pulling him back at the right moment. "The core features must remain free and excellent forever. We need to keep free players happy so they'll willingly stay and form that massive user base. After all, without the green leaves, no one will buy the red flowers."
"As for the future..." Takuya's eyes glinted with cunning. "When we host online board game tournaments, we can waive the entry fee for members or give them two tickets to the offline finals. That'll make them feel like their monthly few dollars for membership are a bargain."
Hearing this, Frank's eyes lit up with the familiar glow of dollar signs. He stared at the sketches in his notebook, as if he could already see countless little figures in virtual suits lining up to drop coins into Silicon Valley Online's piggy bank.
Tom Kalinski leaned back in his chair, watching Frank frantically scribbling notes. He couldn't resist teasing, "Frank, I think you should bring a recorder to the next meeting instead of testing your speed-writing skills here."
Frank didn't even look up, his pen flying across the paper as he muttered, "A voice recorder won't help me calculate the expected returns for the ICQ Show. Good God, treating free users like paying customers for the gaming experience—that's a devilish idea."
"Don't praise the devil too quickly. The gates of hell have only just cracked open," Takuya Nakayama said, tapping his fingers on the desk to forcibly pull Frank's attention back. "ICQ is just social, and that URL navigation we discussed earlier? It's just a transitional product."
Frank's pen froze mid-stroke. He looked up abruptly, his face a mask of bewilderment. "Transitional product? You just called it a cash printing machine!"
"It does print cash, but it has a ceiling." Takuya stood up and walked to the whiteboard, erasing the navigation classification diagram he had just drawn, leaving only a giant question mark. "Frank, how long do you think we can keep collecting and categorizing websites through manual editing? A thousand sites are manageable. But what about ten thousand next year? A hundred thousand the year after? Are you planning to hire the entire population of San Francisco to help you copy and paste links?"
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