After hanging up, William felt like Aunt Lisa still had something she hadn't said, but he didn't feel right asking. He would just wait until she was ready to bring it up herself.
He pushed aside such unimportant thoughts and went to do an interview since his work goals for the day weren't done yet.
The open audition for Craftsman Wood had only ten days left. Once it ended, the show would air on TV. The best case, of course, would be to release the game right after the show started, so the game could update along with the show.
The show was scheduled for two episodes a week, with three works shown in each episode. In other words, the first season would only have seven episodes and would finish airing within a month.
Actually, they could have stretched the schedule longer, like one episode per week, which would last two months. But since games usually don't stay hot for long, this was risky. Take Piano Tiles, for example—it came out just a month ago, and without updates, the rankings were already looking weak. Players now mostly opened it just to listen to the songs, which basically meant it was cooling down.
But Cynthia already had a backup plan. She told William she was working on selling the songs. She planned to package the original piano tracks from Piano Tiles into an album. The only problem was that there weren't enough tracks.
Since the company's finances didn't look good lately, William also thought selling was fine. As for the lack of tracks, he immediately thought of Castle in the Sky. But the commercial rights to that song were in Tiffany's hands. William didn't think Tiffany would mind him making an album, but it was better to sit down and talk it over.
After all, this was business, and they had to make sure everyone's share was clear. Nothing could be sloppy.
William originally thought Cynthia and Tiffany could handle it, with him just making the introduction. But before he could say that, Cynthia brought it up herself—she wanted William to contact Tiffany for her, so he wouldn't even need to show up.
That worked out just fine.
At eight-thirty in the morning, William was woken up by his alarm. He had stayed up late last night making six models, so he was worried he might sleep until noon if he didn't set it.
He went downstairs.
Cynthia had already finished breakfast and was watching TV. Aunt Oliver, hearing him come down, served him millet porridge with pickled radish and stir-fried edamame with salted vegetables.
The radish and salted veggies were all homemade by Aunt Oliver, and the taste was great—sour and perfect with porridge.
Since she had a lunch meeting, Cynthia said she was going to the beauty salon in the morning. That meant she wouldn't go with William, and he should take a cab to work.
William thought, it wasn't like she was going on a date—was there really a need to run to the salon? Plus, since she wasn't wearing makeup now, she'd probably have to find somewhere to put it on later. Could it be she was planning to use her looks for the talk with Tiffany? Wouldn't he be a better choice for that?
He only thought it, of course. He didn't dare say it out loud. After she left, William obediently called a cab.
It was about time to buy two cars.
William's thoughts itched. In his last life, he didn't buy one because of the mortgage. Just paying that was already tough, and adding a car loan would have made life impossible.
Now it was different. He had enough money to buy a sports car if he wanted. But that would be too flashy, and William didn't like that. He decided to wait until he got his license.
"Driver, what kind of car do you think looks cool?"
William rarely talked in the car, but this time he struck up a conversation.
The driver didn't hold back, speaking with ease: "I think Porsche is good, but there are too many of them on the streets. Ferrari has a great engine sound, but the cars are a bit small. GTR is also good, but there haven't been new models these past two years. Lotus has a new one coming next year, but those cars are even smaller than Ferraris. At the end of the day, the real dream is Koenigsegg. Just the other day I saw one on the road—ah, that's every man's dream!"
"Didn't think you knew so much about cars."
William was impressed. Of all the brands the driver listed, he only knew Porsche and Ferrari. The others he had never even heard of.
"Haha, here in Riverdale, it's good for us drivers to learn about luxury cars. That way if we ever bump into one, we won't panic. Otherwise, if you open your mouth and say you'll pay two hundred, that'd be embarrassing."
"True."
The driver asked, "So? You thinking of driving a cab too?"
William said, "Ah, ah, yeah. Jobs are hard to find these days, so I was thinking maybe I could try ride-hailing after I get my license."
Back then, when William had just gotten his license, he really had thought about it. Work in the company during the day, and ride-hailing at night. But in the end, all the constant overtime made him give up on that idea.
And now, there was no way he would do it. He was only saying this to match the driver's mood.
"Tsk, kid, let me give you some advice. While you're young, study hard. Besides, you can't just casually drive for ride-hailing. You need at least three years of driving experience. Judging by the look of you, you just got your license, right?"
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror, but William didn't flinch. "Not yet, I'm taking the road test next week."
"Ha! You don't even have a license yet, and you're already thinking about buying a car? What are you, some rich kid?"
Seeing the driver's look of 'if you're rich, I'm going to overcharge you,' William definitely didn't dare admit it.
"You don't think I look like that kind of person, do you?"
"Well, you never know. Don't young people all like to hide their strength? Hey, now that I look at you… you do seem a bit familiar?"
It was obvious the driver had watched last night's show. William gave an awkward laugh and decided not to chat anymore, in case he got recognized. That would be hard to deal with.
Luckily, the ride from his neighborhood to the company was short. Before the driver could get a good look at him, they had already arrived.
Thinking about how he might get recognized in a taxi again, William felt even more determined to buy a car. The company already had one, but it was basically for Cynthia's use. She was busy, often running around, and the company wasn't short on money anyway. William didn't want to fight her over it.
After letting the others know that Cynthia wouldn't be in today, William did his usual check around the office. Leon was already working on their third character design, this time based on history again—Zhuge Liang from the same Three Kingdoms era as Cole Yun.
People's strongest impression of Zhuge Liang wasn't necessarily his wisdom, but that white feather fan he always carried whenever he appeared in dramas or films.
It might sound cliché, but it had already become part of his image. So Leon decided to go with it, and even planned to use the fan when designing Zhuge Liang's attacks and movements.
Next to him, Tina was tuning Cole Yun's virtual model. She had also taken on another task—creating the first character from The Sims.
Over the past few days, Chris had figured out the first-gen Sims engine, and simsys was finally running smoothly on Windows. The next step was to actually remake The Sims 1. Since it was just practice, Tina was willing to try building characters inside the engine.
Her virtual human tech could be used in film and TV because pre-rendered footage didn't need much computing power. But running a virtual character on a phone or PC was a whole different story.
The current virtual characters were mainly for future promotions. Since high-quality models could later be simplified, William didn't have her jump straight into making game characters in Unity.
This was all to help her keep up with Leon in the beginning. After that, William asked her to start learning Unity, and now it was time to see how much progress she had made.
Meanwhile, Marcus had been helping Claire make new levels for Happy Match Mania. As Claire got the hang of it, the update speed went from five levels a day to ten.
Because of that, the game's revenue finally started to recover.
As for Angela and Zach, the two of them finished the main story animations for the first four chapters of Journey. But when it came to the in-game cutscenes, they ran into some trouble. Since the cutscenes had to be made inside the game engine, they had to learn how to use it step by step.
The pace slowed a little, but things were still moving forward.
Once they trained a few engine specialists later, they wouldn't have to handle that work themselves.