[🧑‍💻] Life RPG - Planning: Until an Amateur Developer Builds ‘Life RPG,’ a Service with 1 Million Monthly Users (Fictional Interview)

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This is a fictional interview written while imagining myself five years later as the CEO of ‘iruri,’ the company that successfully built the ‘Life RPG’ platform service.

• Original: http://blog.naver.com/hyeogikarp/223919298351
• Naver publish time: 2025/07/02 15:36 KST
• Original category: Planning Log

Original

This is a fictional interview written while imagining myself five years later as the CEO of “iruri,” the company that successfully built the “Life RPG” platform service.

Now there is a service you cannot leave out when talking about “growth.” It is “Life RPG.” In just four years after launch, it surpassed 1 million monthly active users(MAU), turning people’s daily lives into a “game.”

“Life RPG” is not a simple to-do list or habit app. It is a huge platform that converts all user activities - exercise, study, work, even rest - into data and shows them as levels and stats. At its center is a unique app ecosystem called the “Life Store.”

Today, we met IngHyukKing, the founder of “iruri,” who created this innovative platform. Surprisingly, he was not a developer with a flashy career. His beginning was as an “amateur developer with no experience.” We asked him about the journey and philosophy through which he turned the lives of 1 million users into a game stage.

Q. Hello, CEO. Please introduce yourself first.

Hello. I am IngHyukKing, CEO of “iruri” and a “routine system designer” who wants to make reality the greatest game. I create and operate “Life RPG,” a platform that gamifies the user’s entire life.

Q. “Life RPG” has now become a cultural phenomenon. Did you imagine and prepare this huge platform carefully from the beginning?

Yes, that is right. “Life RPG” was not a service born by coincidence. As a “routine system designer,” I dug for a long time into the question, “Can we overcome the limits of willpower through systems?” In that process I concluded that gamification was the core, and from the beginning I imagined not a simple app, but a huge platform called a “life operating system” that covers all of life. Only after researching countless materials and establishing the philosophy of the system could I finally take the first step.

Q. Then what role did the early app “Oharu(Today?)” play?

“Oharu” was the first prototype for implementing the huge worldview called “Life RPG,” and a tool for validating the core hypothesis. It was meant to test the hypothesis, “Do people really feel fun when their effort accumulates as data?” Through “Oharu,” I directly confirmed that users were excited by records and growth, and based on that data, I gained confidence in developing the bigger vision: the “Life RPG” platform.

Q. I understand this was the challenge of an “amateur developer with no experience.” The development process must not have been easy.

That is right. I am not someone who formally learned coding. So my role was closer to “system designer” than “coder.”

Instead, I actively received help from AI. With AI like Gemini, I constantly talked through the system logic and architecture and refined the design, and for actual code implementation I proceeded with help from AI coding tools like Copilot. I was the architect who clearly drew “what kind of house to build,” and AI was the capable construction team laying bricks based on my design.

Q. As the service grew, what was the biggest crisis?

It started when users passed 10,000. The “amateur” code I had made alone quickly hit its limits. Servers kept going down, and bug reports and CS inquiries poured in from everywhere. I had named it grandly “Life RPG,” but it felt like my own life had become an RPG full of bugs.

“Can I handle this?” I worried every night. But when users sent messages like, “Thanks to this app, I started studying again,” and “I found joy in exercising,” I could not give up. That was when I first found colleagues who would share the vision with me, redesigned the system from the beginning, and formed the current “iruri” team.

Q. The core philosophy of “Life RPG” is “gamification.” Could you explain this more?

Yes. I do not think gamification is simply a reward or ranking system. The core is this.

• Willpower is energy that gets consumed.

• Willpower can be increased through training like a muscle.

• If you feel “fun” in the process, willpower consumption decreases.

Every feature of “Life RPG” is based on this philosophy. A representative example is the “two-track system” appearing in “Oharu(Today?),” our platform’s main app. Users first find daily stability by clearing “survival quests(to-do track),” and based on that stability, they challenge “growth quests(goal track)” and taste accomplishment. The system first relieves stress from urgent tasks and creates the “mental room” to focus on important tasks.

Q. The ecosystem model called “Life Store” is very unique.

Right. I cannot make every element of life myself. “Life Store” is the app store of “Life RPG.” Developers in various fields such as exercise, study, reading, and meditation can create and upload apps linked to our central DB.

Users can choose and install apps that match their lifestyle, and developers can create new businesses on top of our platform. “iruri” plays the role of laying the board so this ecosystem runs well.

Q. What are the dreams of “iruri” and “Life RPG” going forward?

The ultimate dream is to create a world where the data accumulated on the platform becomes proof of qualification in the real world.

For example, if you get a driver’s license and register it, an official “drivable” badge is attached to your avatar. If you achieve coding skill level 50 inside “Life RPG,” an “iruri certificate” is issued and can be attached to your resume. I want to make a society where process data containing a person’s effort is recognized as much as, or even more than, result-based diplomas or certificates.

Q. Lastly, is there anything you want to say to people who are just starting out, like your past self?

I want to tell them it is okay not to be an expert. I was the same. I think the most important thing is sincerity in trying to solve “my own problem.” If you make what is truly inconvenient for you and what you truly want, somewhere in the world there are definitely people with the same problem as you.

Think of your life as one great game. Countless failures are not bugs. They are only quests for becoming stronger. Your “Life RPG” has only just begun.

We at “iruri” want to accompany you on that long journey. Even great quests that look impossible alone can surely be achieved together.