Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

The tiger tried to lick the wound on its neck by twisting it around, but no matter how it stretched its tongue, it just couldn't reach it!

Frustrated, it spun around in circles, looking rather silly in its urgency.

Lincoln opened the panel to adjust the permissions and walked over with Mavis.

He lightly stroked the edge of the tiger's wound, and it rapidly healed and disappeared.

The fierce tiger turned back into a harmless big cat, carefully nuzzling against his leg.

Lincoln petted the big cat's head while asking Mavis, "How is that player doing? Is he still in good shape?"

Initially, when he saw the player with the ID "Hu" suffering from a broken arm, Lincoln was planning to intervene and save him from the tiger.

However, when he saw the muscular man continuing to stand his ground even with a broken arm, even aggressively attacking, Lincoln hesitated and chose not to reveal himself.

He felt that he should maintain at least a basic respect for such a courageous person.

After all, it wouldn't truly hurt.

But even though the situation of being killed by a beast would be mitigated by the neural modulator-demodulator, preventing any real issues, Lincoln couldn't help but check with Mavis about the situation.

Mavis looked towards the direction of the amusement park, blinked, and answered, "No problem! And he's driving a new shuttle bus and coming this way again."

"Coming again? He hasn't given up yet? Does he have a grudge against the tiger?" Lincoln was surprised.

Then he quickly thought of something and looked at the 'railing spear' dropped nearby.

In "Paradise," players' dropped items are refreshed daily.

"Does he not want to spend another two hours crafting a weapon and is specifically coming for this spear?"

"Possible!"

"Then should we wait for him?"

"Yes." Mavis clearly hadn't had enough of the excitement yet.

Lincoln and Mavis spent some time petting the big cat, and before Hu could come, they patted the tiger so it would leave first.

Then the two of them continued to stand hidden, watching Hu drive up, get off the car, find the iron spear, pick up a nearby stone, and laboriously sharpen the spear tip.

Then he headed west and embarked on his journey again.

"This guy must've explored in advance, right?" Lincoln said uncertainly.

Because the direction Hu was driving towards was a common haunt of the cheetah.

On this wilderness, the animals had a wide range of movement, but apart from the Easter egg creatures like the lion king and lion cub who would hide, all other animals had fixed routes and habitual residences.

But for Hu to be moving so accurately, he most likely wasn't travelling this route for the first time.

Mavis, pulling on Lincoln's arm, teleported in advance to the edge of the cheetah's habitat and waited for Hu's arrival, planning to watch his impressive skills.

Lincoln also held a similar expectation.

Yet, the development of events once again contradicted his predictions:

Hu rushed over quickly, repeating the method he used to approach the tiger to get close to the cheetah resting under the shade of the tree.

The pouncing action appeared just as swift and agile as before.

Unfortunately, the result didn't change much...

The crude iron spear fell to the ground, and Hu disappeared in a flash of light, respawning elsewhere.

...

After respawning and hurrying back, Hu learned his lesson and reduced the size of his target prey, setting his sights on the lynx.

But he didn't anticipate that the lynx would instantly scamper up a nearby tree the moment he lunged at it, destroying his hope of triumph with a single attack.

What was even more outrageous was that when he decided to give up, the lynx used its agile body to continuously harass him, and actually "scratched" him to death...

Now Hu had completely lost his cool, he didn't even bother looking for his weapon, he just drove the shuttle bus off to vent his anger on the wolves.

Lincoln, on the other hand, was pondering: how is it that this player seemed incredibly fierce at first glance but seemed a bit foolish upon further observation?

Or could it be that he had inadvertently set the intelligence of the animals too high?

After hesitating for a moment and then watching Hu's struggle against the wolves with his bare hands—the shuttle bus slows down when it approaches beasts, which was a part of the setting—

Lincoln was still in no hurry to make any changes.

A single player was far too small a sample to be used as a reference.

Furthermore, what he was challenging were the most ferocious large-sized feline carnivores, it's almost similar to a player just leaving the novice village and challenging the BOSS with the worst sword from the village.

Failure was the norm.

Over there, Hu was fighting one against three, enduring the wolves' savage attack, strangling a wolf to death with his bare arms before his health bar was emptied, further proving his identity as a muscular man.

Having seen this, Lincoln was even more sure that there was no rush, and he should let everything develop naturally first.

Any significant changes should wait until after the launch of "Speed Chase."

Now was not the time to be diverting the players' attention.

Next, Lincoln and Mavis left this place and moved to the "Virtual Wildlife Reserve" map.

The development and creation here were largely reliant on the expert team that was hired at a high salary.

On this map, both the lifestyle and hunting habits of the animals, as well as the characteristics of their living environment, all leaned as closely to reality as possible.

And considering the vast variety of wildlife, this team was not static.

Instead, it was made up of some permanent core workers and many short-term specialized researchers.

These specialized researchers were studying very narrow fields, focusing on a certain category or even a certain type of animal.

But when it came to the species they were studying, they had a deeper understanding than anyone else.

This project was actually somewhat similar to the project on the [Ancient Architecture Recording and Protection Foundation] map.

These two projects couldn't directly become a popular game on their own.

But they can become the source of many game technologies, inspirations, and resources, and they can even serve as the foundation stones for building certain game genres.

Of course, even disregarding these utilitarian ideas, the existence of these two projects in itself has irreplaceable significant value.

For instance, ancient buildings that have collapsed or are collapsing, and wildlife species that have gone extinct or are on the brink of extinction!

*

After checking the development status of the [Protected Area] map, Lincoln suddenly remembered someone.

"Mavis, what about Cathy, the one who previously criticized us, saying our animals are too tame and not realistic enough? What's the situation now?"

After Daniel, the employee with a PR background, took over this issue, Lincoln didn't follow up on the situation.

If he didn't visit the [Protected Area] today and observe the wildlife ecosystem that fully aligned with reality, he wouldn't have recalled this.

"She has been unemployed for a long time!"

"Huh?" Lincoln was somewhat surprised, he had thought at most a public apology would suffice.

"Hehe, Daniel is really good!" Mavis chuckled while praising Daniel, "But the main credit goes to the players."

"Not only was Cathy scolded by netizens those days, but the show she was hosting and the company she worked for were all boycotted by netizens."

"After being boycotted, Cathy was dissatisfied. She said many malicious words online. Mavis didn't show them to you because she didn't want to upset you."

As Mavis finished speaking, she cautiously looked up at Lincoln with a pitiful expression on her face.

Lincoln gently pinched her face, "So, what happened after that?"

"Well, the Internet company she worked for couldn't withstand the criticism from netizens and fired her. Credit for that goes to Daniel too!"

After praising Daniel, Mavis continued with a disgruntled voice: "When Cathy was first fired, she acted like a victim, saying she was suppressed and treated unjustly."

"Then Daniel compiled all her history of stirring up controversy and published it on the 'Paradise' account."

—Every game under Cloud Dream Official has a dedicated account for posting game-related news.

08:09

Now it made sense for 'Paradise' to deliver the final blow.

Unsurprisingly, netizens bombarded her with fresh and old resentments.

—Especially with the things Cathy had done before. That made her far more hated than her attack on Lincoln!

So, she has been job hunting ever since, with no media-related company daring to hire her.

"She publicly apologized to the netizens just a while ago, but it had no effect. Everyone said she didn't reflect on her actions and was only apologizing because she had no other choice. They believe she's still harboring some ill intentions."

"I see." Lincoln nods his head, "Well done, I should add a bonus to Daniel's salary!"

"Yes, yes, yes." Mavis agreed repeatedly.

Next, Lincoln checked the time, planning to find Xu Chun to complete today's boxing training task.

However, just as he was about to log off, Little Chun sent him a virtual world invitation.

Lincoln thought it was related to "My World", oh no, "Block World (tentative)" development problems, so he immediately accepted the invitation.

But unexpectedly, after exiting the teleportation gate, he arrived in the development world of "Light Encounter".

"What happened?"

"The Light Encounter team is researching new season map development, and they submitted their theme to me yesterday." Little Chun greeted Lincoln and got straight to the point.

"I thought I should let you know in advance after seeing their theme." n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"What theme?" Lincoln was slightly confused.

"Clark, show him your idea." Little Chun motioned to the girl behind him.

The group leader of the Light Encounter team, whose real name was Clark, manipulated a few panels and transformed herself into the art style of a character in "Light Encounter".

Then she started to alternate various appearance decorations on herself: straw hat, sword, jade pendant, wooden hairpin, folding fan, ancient clothes...

Various items also started appearing in front of her: the pipa, guzheng, transverse flute, tea set, incense table, palace lamp, paper umbrella...

Some of the appearances were new, while others were already existing.

This girl obviously piled up these things together for a better display of the theme.

And Lincoln, seeing these things, immediately understood the new season theme they wanted to develop — evidently it was an ancient style.

However, he still asked: "What's the season theme you want to create?"

"Visiting Ancient and Seeking Seclusion." Clark replied.

Just as expected!

Well, Lincoln had to admit that the employees at Cloud Dream were indeed a group of people who were unwilling to remain idle and embraced challenges.

If they were to undertake this theme, they'd have to do more than just adding some new maps and tasks based on the existing foundation.

This theme is a notable supplement to the overall aesthetic style of the game, having a significant innovative streak.

And innovation often comes with risks.

To put it another way, they could fail.

If this were any other company, they would likely not risk a successful project so lightly.

But Lincoln was different.

He greatly appreciated seeing his employees strive for perfection and challenge themselves.

If it weren't for the plan of "Assassin's Creed: Chang'an", he wouldn't hesitate at all and would definitely agree right away.

Unfortunately, now that there was a plan for "Assassin's Creed: Chang'an"...

So he could only give them a disappointing answer right now —

"You can do it, but you have to wait a bit."