Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

“Gun, fight, technique?” Randall repeated Lincoln’s words one by one, trying to understand, “The technology of gunfighting?”

Lincoln nodded, but corrected, “I prefer to call it the art of gunfighting.”

“Art?” Randall was a bit confused, how could gunfighting be related to art? “Yes, the art of gunfighting, that’s the core selling point of the new game.”

Randall blinked, not quite understanding.

But Lincoln was unwilling to explain further, “Don’t worry about that now, let’s focus on hiring. Our current manpower is enough for one big project, but two is too much. With the production speed of the consoles already past its initial difficulties, we need to pick up the pace in game development.”

“Okay.” Randall nodded in agreement.

However, all day long, he couldn’t stop thinking: how could gunfighting be linked with art?

At the same time, Lincoln was also pondering the same question, but he was thinking about the trade-offs.

He wasn’t a purist, like, “Since we’re making a gunfighting game, we must trace it back to its roots and adapt ‘Tear of the Apocalypse’”, he didn’t have that kind of compulsive thinking.

On the contrary, he had already made up his mind not to adapt ‘Tear of the Apocalypse’.

Because apart from the concept of gunfighting, Lincoln could hardly find any other highlights in the movie, it could almost be called mediocre.

The protagonist’s lengthy consciousness changes and psychological growth, and the philosophical ideas conveyed by the movie were not suitable for adaptation into a game.

Players just want to know, “Who do I target? How do I do it? What rewards are there after completing the task?”

What about awakening the mind, what about philosophical thinking, who cares? Who the fuck cares?

Unless your story is very fascinating and well-integrated with the game, like ‘The Last of Us’ Part 1, which can bring strong emotional impact to the players, then it’s acceptable.

But the problem is the story of ‘Tear of the Apocalypse’…Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, all you can say is that it’s mediocre.

Lincoln doesn’t plan not to make games with deep and touching stories, it’s just that in his plan, that is something for the mid-term.

Before that, some blockbusters have to be made to establish the concept of “Cloud Dream produces masterpieces” in the minds of players.

That way, when new games come out in the future, players naturally will have more patience and be more open-minded to try different games.

Hopefully, when players encounter a game they do not understand, they will first doubt themselves, “Is it me who has problems?” rather than doubting “Has Cloud Dream slipped up?”

So, it’s all about making players ecstatic first, and the rest can be discussed later!

Speaking of excitement, there’s one movie that has to be mentioned – “Speed Chase”! Also known as “Give Me My Life Back”!

The plot is simple and rough, no thinking, no choices, and no soul-searching needed.

Just hold a gun in your hand, kill through all obstacles, and chase your enemies to the ends of the earth!

Under this backdrop, incorporate the fighting concept and visual expression of “gunfighting”, and rampage at close range amidst the hail of bullets!

Take the concept of making thrilling games to a whole new level!

You give me money, and I give you excitement, isn’t that very reasonable?

Even better, the two game worlds actually have a lot of similarities, and many city and NPC templates produced for “Assassins’ Alliance” can be used directly.

This will save a lot of production time.

But he needs some time to modify “Speed Chase” based on the battle scenes of “Tear of the Apocalypse”.

That’s still a bit troublesome.

But it’s also exactly what Lincoln wants: it allows the employees to relax a little for a few days and do some lighter work.

Meanwhile, he can also take the time to expand the team.

As for now, let everyone focus on “Assassins’ Alliance”!

The arrival of the workday didn’t affect the popularity of the game at all. According to Mavis’ statistics, today’s number of online players remained above 3 million throughout the day.

It was quite an outrageous number.

Not only were the players in the server lively, but the noise online never stopped either.

Lincoln was very suspicious that many people were playing the game in the virtual world while using Mirage’s external interface to post complaints online.

Lincoln didn’t know how many players’ short videos he had seen!

The petition for casual players to allow payment for in-game currency never stopped.

And until the evening, Lincoln waited and waited, “Bullet Curving” never became a hot topic, let alone made it to the trending list.

— This made him suspect somewhere had a problem.

In Lincoln’s initial thoughts, the game was released on Saturday, and they should be able to see players talking excitedly about it on the same day.

After all, no one in this world had ever proposed a similar idea. He had specifically checked!

But no, on the first day, players were focusing on rushing their progress, hitting the bathroom, visiting the amusement park, robbing everywhere, and having a great time.

They didn’t pay attention to the brief bullet-curving phenomenon in the opening movie.

Lincoln then thought that by the next day, a group of fast-paced players should unlock the bullet-curving skill, and it should become popular by then, right?

Yet, it still didn’t happen.

Everyone was caught up following the media’s lead, either cheering “A new king is born” for Mirage or having a blast under the gang leader’s video.

Players who really unlocked arc shooting were focused on the first completion of the game and had no interest in going online to chat.

Lincoln couldn’t help but yell at these players: “The bullets are curving! Aren’t you surprised at all?!”

— Lance was actually quite surprised.

Though he couldn’t play for 16 hours a day like Warehouse Bird and other hardcore players, Lance’s online time still exceeded 12 hours.

Combined with his experience and preparation during the closed beta, his progress was ahead of Warehouse Bird’s.

After the server launched, he didn’t do any side activities like Super Tomato. Instead, he went straight to speedrunning the plot.

Upon arriving at the textile factory, Lance happily saw that the subsequent plot was successfully unlocked.

He learned from the killers that “Father” Mr. X was ambushed and killed by the Traitor Cross, and now Cross was targeting him because of the assassin’s bloodline passed down by his father.

This was the reason why he occasionally had panic attacks — they were not panic attacks, but manifestations of the assassin’s bloodline.

After the conversation, Lance saw a system prompt: You’ve acquired [Assassin Bloodline Level 1].

With the help of the guide task, Lance experienced the effect of [Assassin Bloodline] for the very first time—

His heart was pounding fiercely, blood was raging through his veins, time seemed elongated and slowed down in his senses, enough for him to clearly see the flies buzzing around the trash can!

Almost as if by conditioned reflex, he raised his gun and fired!

“Rang. ..Rang…Rang

After the three shots, even without Leader Sloan’s demonstration, Lance was sure he had accurately hit the flies’ wings without hurting their bodies!

This was an absolutely incredible experience!

Lincoln had played “Bullet Time” games in VR before, but the feeling was completely different now!

In VR gaming, he could clearly feel that it was just the game screen slowing down, and his senses remained unchanged.

He could even wiggle his toes and feel the tight harness on his body; these sensations and movements were at a normal pace, creating a strong sense of disconnection from the slowed-down game screen.

Even in well-performed games, they could only focus on improving the screen’s detail so that players subconsciously ignore their bodily sensations and focus on the game. Yet they could never overcome this sense of disconnection.

That’s because VR games can only affect what’s inside the display, but not the outside world.

It’s a natural hardware limitation.

However, Mirage’s appearance changed everything: the virtual reality device created a completely life-like virtual world, and even the neural modulator-demodulator could directly affect your senses!

These two technologies combined to create the incredibly realistic “Bullet Time” right now!