Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

“You haven’t played it, have you?” Shuihua looked at Lance with suspicion.

“Ah, I’ve been busy preparing for exams recently…” Lance couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

“Oh, priorities.” Shuihua nodded understandingly, “Priorities are important.”

Then they didn’t say anything, and started watching the Cloud Dream trailer. Lance also clicked on the video on his phone.

The beginning of the video was darkness.

In the darkness, a voice could be heard

“I often feel that the world is a bit abnormal, and sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in with the world.”

It was Lincoln’s voice, something the players were quite familiar with. However, at this moment, his voice sounded somewhat melancholic.

Like many audiences, Lance subconsciously thought that what Lincoln was going to talk about next was something like “The World in the Eyes of a Genius.”

But the next moment, the screen lit up:

Lincoln was sitting on a stone by the lake, surrounded by exquisite little mountains. The slopes of the mountains were full of lush trees, giving the environment an atmosphere of extreme tranquillity.

The calm lake surface reflected the large, white clouds in the sky.

The whole screen appeared peaceful and harmonious, looking exceptionally beautiful.

The only odd thing was—right in the center of the screen, Lincoln, who was sitting on the stone, looked like a block!

This wasn’t a reference to “I feel like a block” as a metaphor for emotions, but a genuine, physical block

A square head, a square torso, rectangular arms and legs, and hands and feet that, aside from their color, had no distinction from their respective limbs.

Even his eyes and mouth were rectangular!

If it weren’t for his opening line and the name [Lincoln] floating above that block-like head, it would be really hard to recognize who this was based on appearance alone.

In an instant, the screen was flooded with comments:

“Nice job!”

“No wonder you feel like something’s wrong with the world!”

“Is it possible that the world is fine, but something’s wrong with you?!”

While Lance was still puzzled, Shuihua couldn’t help but bend over in laughter.

He was just about to ask what was so funny when the screen started to change.

Block-like Lincoln stood up, looked down at his block hands, then raised his head to look around at the normal mountains, forests, and lakes, suddenly shouting, “This isn’t right! It’s not supposed to be like this!”

He then raised his cubed right hand and gave it a slight wave.

“Snap!”

Nothing seemed to change with the cubed hand, but a crisp snapping sound was heard.

“Oh!” Shuihua quickly grasped the concept of Block-Lincoln snapping his fingers in her head.

A burst of white light exploded following the snapping sound, and the entire screen turned white.

When the brightness faded and the screen became clear again, Lincoln had returned to normal—now sporting a clear face, complete limbs, and a neck like a regular human being.

But at the same time—

The world had become cubed!

The mountains had become piles of rocks stacked like building blocks, the tree trunks had straight, angular edges, and the tree canopies looked as if they had been meticulously trimmed, with distinct, straight edges.

Even the shoreline had turned into a grid of squares.

The only thing that remained unchanged was probably the lake water.

On the screen, Lincoln once again looked down at his hands, wiggling his nimble fingers.

He then nodded in satisfaction: “That’s better, everything’s right now.”

As for the already cubed mountains, trees, animals, and even the clouds in the sky around him, Lincoln didn’t seem to notice them.

“What the heck, changed the world to suit himself?” Lance was astounded.

But Shuihua nodded in satisfaction: “Yep, that’s what normal looks like!”

Shuihua had played a lot of “My World.” Compared to characters turning into blocks, it was more natural for the world itself to become block-like.

But Lance just couldn’t understand and looked at Shuihua in shock: “You call this normal?”

Shuihua didn’t bother answering Lance, because the video’s progress bar was already nearing the end.

On the screen, Lincoln said to himself: “Now everything’s normal, I can invite everyone to play.”

As soon as the words fell, the familiar white text appeared on the screen

[November 25th, 18:30]

[Welcome to the ‘Normal’ World]

With only a few seconds left, this video, which should have been a game trailer, finally revealed a few snippets of “My World” gameplay—

Players chopping down trees, swinging swords, building houses, farming, raising pigs, and the underground world filled with lava—these scenes were all quickly cut together, giving the audience some clue about the game’s content.

The video then came to an end.

And the players’ celebration began:

“Yay! It’s a new game!”

“I knew it, after the closed beta of Cloud Dream Games, we’d be able to play in a week! It’s just a few days late this time to make space for ‘Hunter: The Call of Feces,’ right?”

“Can we not mention feces?!”

“Call of Feces! Call of Feces! Call of Feces!”

“What’s going on with Cloud Dream? They’re suddenly updating like crazy! It’s making me a little scared.”

“I haven’t even bought a few guns in ‘Call of Feces’ yet, and a new game is already coming? There’s not enough time, it’s a happy problem to have!”

“Indeed! From now on, I’ll play ‘Call of the Wild’ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; ‘My World’ on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; and finally, participate in the Death Racing competition on Sundays. Perfect!”

Super Tomato is also very happy.

After preparing for over a week and making several changes, his video can finally be released!

As long as the game officially goes on sale, and then the players are given a day to explore for themselves, it can be officially released on Saturday!

According to Cloud Dream’s agreement, strictly speaking, he can release the video right at the second when the game goes on sale.

However, Super Tomato still decided to wait for a day to allow the interested players to enjoy more exploration fun, without having too many surprises consumed by his guide.

That’s why he has removed some “pure strategy” content from the video.

But that’s irrelevant!

“Game guides” can be done by anyone.

But magical buildings and creativity are truly irreplaceable and have core competitiveness!

In the virtual world, Lincoln hides on a small sofa on the spaceship, watching the floating screen with Xiaomeng.

However, they are not watching the reaction to the trailer, but the overseas live broadcast.

Russian anchor, Ivan Ivanov, knocks on his neighbor’s door.

Clearly, the time zone of the area where Ivan Ivanov lives is different from that of Daxia. Although they use New Siberian Time, it is only one hour behind Daxia Standard Time.

Despite having just finished breakfast not long ago in his area, on Lincoln’s side, they had already finished lunch.

Ivan Ivanov started the live broadcast early to fulfill the promise he made during last night’s live broadcast – to wash the neighbor’s bear’s butt.

He didn’t manage to catch the escaped black bear yesterday…

Though he did later hunt several more bears in retaliation, the audience did not accept him using those later catches to make up for it.

Helpless, the Slavic man had to keep his word, so he knocked on his neighbor’s door with a stern face.

At this moment, the live broadcast room was lively, with audiences from various countries gathered to watch the excitement, and comments were mixed with multiple languages.

Xiaomeng would translate them for Lincoln in real-time, showing them after the original sentence so Lincoln could watch.

On the sofa, Xiaomeng kicked Lincoln occasionally to get his attention. Then she pretended it was not her doing and continued to stare at the screen.

On the screen, the Slavic muscular man, a towering figure of 188 centimeters, knocked on the neighbor’s door with an awkward expression.

The neighbor who opened the door was not inferior in height or build to Ivan.

Ivan began to explain his request and tell the whole story.

The neighbor’s expression changed from enthusiasm to confusion, and then from confusion to bewilderment, leaving only a full face of twisted disbelief: “What’s wrong with people these days?”

“Oh, I’m not talking about you, Ivan.”

The serious expression, along with the “I’m not talking about you” correction, amused many people on the spot.

Although the neighbor couldn’t make sense of it, he kindly agreed, and Ivan actually began to seriously wash the brown bear’s butt.

However, the brown bear did not cooperate at all, causing Ivan to get soaked.

When they eventually finished, the brown bear shook its body vigorously, shaking off a large amount of water clinging to its fur, which splashed all over Ivan.

Afterwards, the bear walked away leisurely.

Only Ivan was left alone, covered in mud and water, as if he had just fought the bear in the mud.

“Hahaha, too tragic!” Like countless audiences in the live broadcast room, Lincoln and Xiaomeng also laughed at this scene.

Ivan then went offline to take a bath.

Lincoln also turned off the live broadcast and slumped back onto the sofa.

He could still rest for another hour.

The development work of “Battlefield” is very busy and has encountered some difficulties, so he desperately needs to switch moods during his breaks.

The crux of the problem is the fine-tuning of the game environment, characters, and atmosphere.

At first, Lincoln thought that with the map accumulation of the “Assassins’ Alliance” Freedom Day event and the reserves of two gunfight games, “Assassins’ Alliance” and “Speed Chase,” as well as the technical accumulation of characters, terrain, vehicles, etc., a sneak preview of a game could be made in one week using a large team division strategy.

The development team didn’t disappoint him: they indeed created the framework and prototype of the game; its playability was satisfactory.

However, Lincoln wanted more; he wanted to convey the core concept of the game better through the details, which was why he delayed the game for some time.

But when he really started fine-tuning the details, he realized that things became troublesome when pursued to the extreme, and mass-production techniques were not satisfying anymore!

Thinking about having a new game sneak preview launched this week as a triple attack for the players?

Purely a dream!

There’s no way to make it!

Seeing Lincoln’s appearance, Xiaomeng couldn’t help asking, “Master, why don’t you use the secondary artificial intelligence technology?”

The [Secondary Artificial Intelligence Core] is a new technology unlocked by Xiaomeng after the Hibernation Warehouse, taking a considerable amount of time to successfully unlock.

When it was just unlocked, Lincoln couldn’t help but tease Xiaomeng, “Why is your technology unlocking like mining? Time and difficulty increase exponentially; the more you dig, the harder it gets.”

For once, Xiaomeng was speechless and couldn’t find a rebuttal.

Now she brought up this technology because the key to “Battlefield” lies in the fine-tuning of details, especially the fine-tuning of character behavior details, which requires a lot of time.

If they use this technology, more than half the time could be shortened effectively.

But Lincoln has always been reluctant.

Because he always feels that using secondary artificial intelligence to create soldiers and then see them die tragically on the battlefield is somewhat inhumane…