Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 312: 310: Who says squares are always simply?

However, when Camille Victoria and her viewers began chatting, he started to feel drowsy and fell asleep again.

So, he missed the scene where Camille Victoria became more open as the conversation went on and expressed her heartfelt gratitude to Lincoln.

Of course, missing it didn’t matter, as Mavis documented everything without missing a beat.

Mavis never misses any opportunity to capture footage that can make Lincoln feel embarrassed.

When Lincoln finally woke up, stretched lazily, climbed out of bed, and started eating after washing up, Mavis excitedly showed him the current Hot Searches list.

Thus, Lincoln saw a dramatically ironic term on the list of Hot Searches – “No Mirage 2.0”.

The tag was a stark contrast to “Mirage 2.0 Coming Soon” from yesterday morning.

Within a day, two completely contradictory search tags emerged.

Like Mavis, Lincoln also burst out laughing.

After having a full meal, he asked in the company group whether there was anything that required his attention.

After confirming that everything was under control, he invited Randall over for a visit after work and then played hooky from office to go to the underground control and experimental lab to craft the game cabin.

*

Randall was perplexed upon reading Lincoln’s message on his mobile phone.

But orders from the boss had to be followed.

After doing the dishes and tidying up the place, Randall took Little Chun for a walk while the weather was still favorable.

Upon returning, he handed a glass of water to Little Chun. After watching her take a few sips, he took out a towel to wipe the small beads of sweat on her forehead.

Subsequently, he put on the headband and logged into the virtual office with Little Chun.

Lately, Little Chun had been working late hours and needed supervision.

Immediately at the end of office hours, he would rush off to persuade Little Chun to stop working, in order to not disrupt her normal rhythm of life.

As a result, his efficiency at work increased once again.

Today was just another staple day, and as soon as Randall logged in, he began working diligently.

The announcement and participation rules for the “Assassin’s Alliance” competition were to be released today.

Meanwhile, Little Chun joined her team to develop the new game “Block World”.

This was just a temporary name. The final name of the new game was still under heated discussion among the team, with no progress in sight.

And to avoid getting too accustomed to the codename and finally settling on it as the actual name, they purposely selected the much-despised “Block World”.

Why does everyone despise it?

Because from the onset, their team was striving to make the world — constructed by blocks — look less “blocky”.

In the beginning, there was naturally a lack of confidence.

Especially since they had seen how Lincoln used blocks to recreate ancient architecture, seeing the noticeably cruder appearance of the blocks was bound to give them some concern.

But Lincoln confidently reassured them by saying:

“Building blocks don’t necessarily equate to primitiveness.”

Any player with a comprehensive understanding of “My World” knows very well:

If you have a powerful enough graphics card and don’t mind the smell of it burning, you must have heard about something known as—

Texture packs!

It’s a well-known fact that “My World” attracts all types of players.

There are some players who are passionate about constantly upgrading the game’s graphics!

Moreover, these upgrades appear to be never-ending:

From the most basic ’16X’ pixel textures, equivalent to 16*16*16 pixels per block, they’ve been upgraded to ’32X’, ’64X’, ‘128X’…’1024X’, ‘2048X’…

Even up to ‘4096X’ ultra-high definition pixel textures!

At this point, with the right lighting effects, the textures are almost indistinguishable from objects in the real world!

Videos showcasing these textures often shatter players’ preconceived notions and achieve high view counts.

Of course, this comes at a significant cost.

Each pixel texture upgrade represents a leap in hardware requirements. Towards the end, these leaps are multiple times greater than before.

This could be the main factor limiting their graphic upgrades.

If you see comments like “it caught fire” in those videos, it may not only be an exclamation about their technical prowess but also a description of the viewer’s graphics card state…

Using the fuzzy computing technology of the virtual world, they can directly upgrade the textures to the max!

The ultra-realistic architecture, the complex task and item-filled environment in the one-kilometer vicinity of the player can all run smoothly without any hiccups.

It’s clear how powerful and efficient Mirage truly is!

…Well, it’s mainly due to its superior technology.

With such technology, anything is possible.

All that Little Chun’s team needs to do is to optimize the textures of each type of block so that they look beautiful and harmonious.

Also, these blocks should not look too mismatched when stacked together.

This would enable easier optimization of block edges and interfaces in the future.

If everything proceeds without a hitch, the final game when ready, should definitely be breathtakingly beautiful and realistic!

Even recreating a city like Metropolis with 80-90% accuracy by handcrafting blocks is absolutely possible.

Of course, several materials would need a variety of textures for different visual requirements depending on the type of structure a player is building.

For instance, the same granite block used to build a “primitive hut” should display a different texture compared to when it’s used in a “modern home”.

But this is not a problem for Little Chun’s team.

The earliest members of this development team are all from a design background. They are experts at beautification and design and are now full of enthusiasm.

In addition to this, the design of other systems and gameplay, given Lincoln’s clear planning and explanation, is not hard and proceeding smoothly.

The real challenge comes after the completion of the basic game structure when they need to design different gameplay modules.

During that period, combat, exploration, dungeon crawling, bosses, game mechanics – all these aspects would fill them with a sense of mystery and challenge.

Thus, time slowly passed amidst their busy work.

At six in the evening, Randall came to Lincoln’s home with Little Chun, seeming somewhat puzzled.

Upon receiving them, Lincoln didn’t go upstairs. Instead, he took them straight down to the air defense laboratory and showed them the game cabin.

To avoid making it look like a coffin and causing unnecessary misunderstandings, Lincoln had intentionally designed it with a pure white shell.

Listening to Lincoln’s detailed explanation, Randall gradually understood the function of this equipment, his eyes growing brighter and brighter.

Once Lincoln mentioned that the equipment had already gone through a complete acceptance process and worked entirely as expected, Randall promptly requested, “Can I try it out?”

“Uh huh.” Lincoln was a bit taken aback but quickly understood Randall’s concern for Little Chun and nodded his agreement.

“But let me clarify upfront. You probably won’t feel too much, as this is essentially a technology to maintain muscle condition, not to enhance it.”

Unfazed, Randall decisively took off his shoes. Despite the worried expression on Little Chun’s face, he lay down in the game cabin, intending to have a 15-minute quick experience.

“Start,” Lincoln ordered.

The tail end of the game cabin lit up, revealing a screen that began to display a series of data related to Randall’s Cloud Dream account, including his ID and physical status.

Both Lincoln and Little Chun leaned in to check the data on the screen.

Little Chun kept her eyes focused on it with incredible attention.

Lincoln checked once to confirm there were no issues, and then went to fetch a chair for Little Chun.

Seeing that Little Chun in her seat was still staring nervously at Randall inside the game cabin, Lincoln was happy to leave her to it, and took out his mobile phone to chat idly with Mavis.

Besides work, he couldn’t find another topic to chat about with Little Chun.

But talking about work after work hours wasn’t something Lincoln liked to do.

Chatting with Mavis was more interesting!

However, what Mavis offered to distract him from his worries was a bit unexpected –

‘”Paradise” contains serious inconsistencies between the habits of its virtual animals and reality, which risks misleading minors and causing children to be accidentally bitten. Urging relevant departments to intervene as soon as possible!

Cloud Dream is also advised to correct its mistake promptly, take the game offline, and prevent serious consequences.’

Lincoln looked confusedly at the username of this account: [Cathy].

Looking at her profile, she seemed to be an internet show host who labelled herself as a “public intellectual”?

Mavis kindly rounded up more detailed information about her, as well as some of her most famous shows for Lincoln.

There were those calling for environmental protection, for human rights, and discussing women’s rights.

According to her timeline, it seemed she always aligned herself with hot topics in society, seamlessly altering her identity and standpoints.

Despite her shows frequently stirring up immense controversy, she was always able to generate a huge amount of heat.

Even though this worsened her reputation among netizens to the point where she lost her job at the television station,

After she left the television station to work for a new internet company and started making internet shows, she seemed more in her element than ever. Her statements were more provocative and unrestrained.

As Lincoln was reading her profile, another post was published:

‘When Lincoln was nobody, he could criticize NetDragon. Surely, he should be able to humbly accept criticism from netizens.

Otherwise, wouldn’t that be a bit hypocritical?’

Even more question marks popped up in Lincoln’s mind.

What does she mean by this?

I haven’t even said anything yet, and you’re already insinuating that I can’t take criticism?

Yes, I don’t really want to accept it… but I haven’t even opened my mouth yet, have I?

And aren’t you a science popularizer anyway?

Mavis saw Lincoln’s confusion – there were cameras all over the lab, and opened the comment section on the first post for him:

‘Is she sick?’

‘Makes sense. Why don’t you make a better one?’

‘This is the program getting no viewers. She’s trying to stir up some heat, right?’

‘Could you please not make trouble? Today, I took my child to the virtual playground to learn about animals. I think Cloud Dream did an excellent job.’

‘Did you find a new hot topic to piggyback?’

‘When will you care about the truly valuable social issues?’

…A barrage of criticism.

It wasn’t only Lincoln’s fans or Cloud Dream’s players who were criticizing. Actually, with Cathy’s current reputation, any post she made would attract a lot of unsatisfied netizens verbally attacking her.

However, this time, since her targets were Lincoln and Cloud Dream, the number of critics increased even more.

Among such harsh criticism and questioning, only very few netizens expressed their agreement:

‘She does have a point.’

‘The animals look so similar, but their behavior is different. Children could easily misunderstand, right?’

‘Yes. What if they encounter beasts in the wild and don’t even know to avoid them. How dangerous!’

These agreements started to confuse Lincoln a little-

Wait, are there many children in Daxia living in environments where they may encounter large carnivores at any moment, facing mortal danger daily?

And do all these children really need to study the real behavior of animals?

If they really need to, why don’t they go to libraries or classrooms instead of learning in a game?

I’m a game developer, not a science popularizer!

Also, Ms. Cathy, aren’t you afraid of my bad reputation being attached to you, even a little bit?