Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Things like “Don’t tell anyone”, “Don’t mess with me,” “I don’t know what’s going on either.”

But realizing that it was already too late, and he was still streaming, he decided…forget it.

There was no point in saying anything anymore.

In the end, he just weakly waved at the audience and the crowd, and laboriously said, “Everyone, goodbye if it’s meant to be.”

Then, ignoring all the pleas to stay, he quickly ended the broadcast, exited the game, and disappeared from everyone’s sight.

But this ostrich-like act of burying his head in the sand was clearly not going to work.

Not to mention the heated discussions in the game, the atmosphere in the live broadcast room was even more buzzing:

“If this isn’t love!”

“Crossing Half the World Just to Sleep with You”

“Traveling a long way, crossing the boundary between life and death, such a touching story, hahaha!”

“I’ve said it eight hundred times, and I’ll say it again for the eight hundred and first time – Yelang, go to Siam!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, go find the hermaphrodite friend Mario, he can help.”

“Go there and come back, then you can confidently cross-dress! You’ll be fine, and so will I!”

“I always feel like something terrible is being said at the beginning…”

…

But no matter how much noise they make, Yelang is determined not to show his face again, acting like a dead man.

No, dead men are supposed to have their debts forgiven, and he suspects this situation… isn’t going to end anytime soon!

Thinking about it, the more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets. It seems like he can only vent his anger on Cloud Dream!

Tomorrow afternoon, there is a chance to confront Lincoln face to face. Should he… give it a try?

He shouldn’t get thrown off the airship, right?

…

On this night, all the players who were going to board the airship on Saturday afternoon to fly over Xiajing City had arrived in Xiajing in advance and were staying in the hotel prepared by Cloud Dream.

In order to have a better experience of “My World”, many people arrived on Thursday, and the latest players arrived around noon.

These people, other than Yelang, played very late into the night and even set an early alarm right before going to bed, intending to wake up early the next day and log in.

Especially the [Public World] players, their sleep was not at ease, fearing that someone might come to destroy their buildings in the middle of the night.

Many players in Camille Victoria’s floating island had decided to stay up all night.

Although [World No.57] has basically become a [Peaceful World] now, this peace seems extremely fragile in such a short amount of time. Who knows if there are people who want to cause destruction before the world is filled up?

Peace must be carefully maintained until it becomes inertia.

For those who play alone in the [Public World], they tend to build hidden shelters and try not to be found.

Finally, there is the most special [World No.22].

This world: no one worried about their buildings being destroyed tonight.

Because until late at night, there wasn’t much of a decent building, and to make matters worse, the use of TNT explosives quickly became rampant.

Warfare began to jump quickly from the cold weapon stage to the hot weapon stage.

However, this also brought a positive outcome –

Most players logged off the game with nothing left, either at home or on their body after losing a battle, and slept very soundly.

*

Just like that, the bustling night came to an end.

The sunlight slowly rose from the skyline of the city, the morning light reflected off the glass facades of the skyscrapers, waking up the entire city.

In a dark bedroom, the brightness of a tablet on the bedside table gradually rose.

In the screen, Mavis, hugging her little dinosaur doll, rubbed her eyes, yawned, stretched her arms and only then turned her head to the bedside.

“Hehe.” Mavis, who had just woken up, suddenly let out a mischievous smile.

The next moment, with the faint sound of the motor, the thick curtains of the bedroom automatically retracted to both sides.

Bright morning light immediately shone in through the window, lighting up Lincoln’s face as he lay in bed.

In his sleep, Lincoln instinctively scratched his face, shrank his neck, then tried to hide further into the blanket.

Seeing that this trick was ineffective, Mavis slowly started playing music, as usual, starting from the lowest volume, gradually increasing it.

Until Lincoln woke up helplessly, “Mavis, it’s Saturday! Can’t you let me sleep a little longer?”

“Mavis didn’t want this either, but Randall and Little Chun are looking for you.” Mavis explained righteously, “Or Master, continue your sleep, and Mavis will answer the call for you?”

As Mavis spoke, she started to mimic the conversation—

“Hello? Hi! The Master is still sleeping! Right in front of me. What? Who am I? I’m Mavis!”

“Stop! Stop! Stop! My bad! I’m sorry!” Lincoln apologized repeatedly, not even having time to wash his face, then went to find his mobile phone.

In the past, either during Yue Pengju’s questioning or questions from employees in the company, Lincoln dodged the questions by describing it as, “A genius little girl I met online, her future is limitless.”

If someone misinterprets him as sleeping with the little girl in the same room, this would create a big problem!

He was so wronged!

As Lincoln hurriedly searched for his phone under his pillow, Mavis took the opportunity to slip in a report—

This week’s 40 million [Mirage 2.0] units are ready and will go online in an hour.

Additionally, the newly-expanded production line has completed the loadout of 20 million all-new consoles, which will be handed over to overseas partners by tomorrow at the latest.

Looking at the demand, the production line dedicated to overseas markets still needs to be expanded further.

But at this point, production capacity has reached a limit.

It’s not that Cloud Dream’s own factory can’t handle it, but the upstream manufacturers can’t keep up.

In the past few months, Cloud Dream’s production capacity has been skyrocketing, and this efficiency relies on the desperate supply of upstream component manufacturers.

The cliff-like decline in VR game equipment production has indeed dealt a heavy blow to VR game manufacturers and downstream, but the more critical upstream industries have remained silent, with no one criticizing Cloud Dream for hurting the industry.

Why?

Because they make components, and the hardware used in Cloud Dream’s Mirage console is still made by them!

Cloud Dream’s crazy increase in production capacity has caused them to be overwhelmed by a massive influx of orders from the sky.

From top to bottom, from management to workers, everyone is working at full speed.

The best part is that, unlike the brief collaboration with previous factories, Cloud Dream has signed long-term contracts with these upstream suppliers to ensure a stable supply.

In one sentence –

“You just focus on production, as long as there are no quality issues, we will take as many as you produce!”

“If we feel saturated and need to slow down, we will notify you at least half a year in advance, so…”

“Rest easy and keep producing!”

Nowadays, Cloud Dream is undoubtedly the God of Wealth for the entire upstream hardware industry!

One enterprise is supporting an entire industry chain!

However, Cloud Dream’s rampant shipment volume has finally pushed these manufacturers to the limit.

Material, production, shipment… every aspect of the process has been stretched to the limit, and if there’s any further improvement, one of the links may break.

“Let’s slow down for now. The current speed is already quite exaggerated, and even I get anxious just looking at it.”

As Lincoln spoke, he also saw Randall’s message, but instead of getting up, he casually grabbed the headband and put it on.

As soon as he put it on, Mavis immediately helped him activate the headband and excitedly jumped into his arms wearing her pajamas.

Lincoln habitually hugged Mavis and spun her around a few times before putting her back on the bed and patting her pink head: “Alright, I have to go to a meeting now, Mavis can play by herself first.”

“Okay.” Mavis obediently nodded.

*

Cloud Dream Virtual Office.

This time, the massive floor-to-ceiling window outside was transformed into the morning scenery of Xiajing City, which was the initial result of the [Virtual Xiajing] project.

“What’s the matter? What’s so urgent?” Lincoln asked.

Randall looked at Little Chun and took the initiative to speak up: “It’s about the promotion of [Battlefield].”

“Battlefield’s promotion?” Lincoln was a bit puzzled: “Didn’t we say that we would announce it this afternoon on the airship, and ignite public opinion in one fell swoop!”

Because they were focused on leading the team in development, the two didn’t talk much about work after work, so much so that Little Chun only heard about the news from Randall last night that they were going to start promoting [Battlefield] on the airship, even directly announcing the release date.

The late-to-the-party Little Chun immediately wanted to protest to Lincoln.

She sighed helplessly: “From the very beginning, Cloud Dream has had no competitors, and crushing everyone has been unnecessary. Do we have to use such ruthless and intensive publicity tactics?”

“We want to give players a surprise! We can’t be arrogant just because we have a large advantage! The arrogance of large companies is absolutely unacceptable.” Lincoln naturally refuted, “Isn’t it a great thing to constantly bring surprises to players?”

“…” Little Chun was at a loss for words, and what he said was indeed too correct.

The problem is that it would be a loss in business…

Randall and Lincoln didn’t care much about this little loss, in their view: these losses were just short-term losses, and Cloud Dream’s quick construction of a sufficiently diverse range of games was definitely more beneficial than harmful.

Lincoln had already convinced them beforehand.

The problem was that as the leader of the “My World” development team, Little Chun couldn’t quite accept it…

Her new game had only been released for one day, and the announcement of the new game’s release next week was just too much to bear.

“Look at this data.” Little Chun pulled up the sales data for “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness” she had gotten from Samuel and showed it to Lincoln.

The sales of this game, apart from the explosive growth and cliff-like decline at the time of its release, which looked very dramatic, have been quite stable ever since.

But after the announcement of the release date of “My World,” this fairly stable sales curve saw a sudden drop.

Over the next several days, the curve did not fully rise to its previous levels, dropping nearly a quarter.

Lincoln looked at the curve, then at the total sales: [14.33 million].

Frankly, he thought the data was terrifying for a niche game that hadn’t taken much time to develop.

Moreover, it was only a week, and with the subsequent sales, 20 million was a very likely figure, and he was already very satisfied.

In the end, this game was a mere expansion of the wilderness gameplay of “Paradise” to meet the needs of a specific player group, so it wasn’t heavily anticipated in the first place.

However, Little Chun didn’t think this way: “If the release of ‘Battlefield’ is announced next week, the impact on ‘My World’s’ sales could be much more significant!”

Little Chun, unlike Lincoln, does not have such strong confidence in the long-term sales of “My World” and, on behalf of her team, has to fight for more time for the game.

But Lincoln had another thought: “With that, however, the influx of destructive players into ‘My World’ would be greatly reduced, right? You would also prefer that your own game world becomes more peaceful and harmonious, wouldn’t you?”

“No.” Little Chun categorically shook her head, “We want everyone to come and play, no matter how they choose to play.”

“Casual and hardcore players alike have the same right to enjoy the game.”

“If necessary, we can modify the game, rather than let the players leave.”

With that, Little Chun suddenly came up with an idea, and continued, “I was just about to ask you if we could turn part of the public world into a safe zone?”