Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 771: Chapter 731: Unprecedented Generosity

Elvis got the applause.

But not much.

Among the groups of players and netizens, aside from the “silent users” who enjoy not talking, the majority are definitely fun-loving people.

Fun-loving people couldn’t care less who the last person to be promoted in the [Tower Climbing Battle] is.

Instead, it was Cody, who was the first to successfully trick the referee, cheat, and then show off on-site, who won the cheers and applause of the fun-loving people.

After the competition, Cody decisively worked overtime to go live, and the audience in the live broadcast room swarmed in, ten or even a hundred times more than usual.

In the past, he was just a small streamer, with only just over 10,000 audience members in his live broadcast room.

But this time, the whole event was very exciting, which immediately brought him a huge amount of traffic.

The card competition itself, because of this unexpected situation, also witnessed a surge in traffic.

Many fun-loving people even @Lincoln online, hoping for another [King of Cheat] competition, without any restrictions, just to let a bunch of people compete to cheat.

Find a veteran cheat to commentate in real-time on the players’ cheating techniques, and the attention from the entire network will undoubtedly skyrocket!

Lincoln saw this suggestion and felt that it could indeed be done.

However, it’s not suitable for a large-scale competition, but is more suitable as an entertainment event like a variety show, just for everyone to have fun.

Lincoln recorded it and forwarded it to Tang Mao, the current person in charge of the “Speed Chase” operation team, stating that after the [Card King] competition is over, they can consider organizing one depending on the situation.

Besides these, another significant impact caused by Cody is: he twisted the use of the [Armament Box].

Before this, the things everyone put into the Armament Box were all guns and swords, with the only exception being the [Grappling Hook].

But Cody put a deck of cards in it!

Although everyone still hasn’t figured out how he put it in, they are all in his live broadcast room asking about it, but Cody is keeping them in suspense.

But once the inspiration was sparked, the ideas of the players began to emerge rapidly:

“If a deck of cards can be used as a weapon, then why can’t a folding stool?”

“I thought of a street weapon – a brick!”

“Fun fact: if you use a power bank to hit someone hard on the head, the sentence will be several years lighter than using a brick or a hammer.”

“Who can say that a mud truck can’t be considered a weapon?”

“A mop… covered in feces?”

“What do you need a mop for?! Load up a few tons of feces, and you’re invincible!”

“Where does feces come from in the virtual world?”

“Are you stupid? Last week, the metropolis was updated with a breeding farm. There are plenty of chicken and pig manure!”

“Can I directly put a chicken inside? A chicken can also peck people to death!”

“…why does your next weapon have to be a weapon?”

…

The situation was spiraling out of control, to the point that many Cloud Dream employees began to worry and discuss it in the company group.

Only the development team of “Pokémon” and “Chang’an” did not participate in these discussions at all.

—They’re fully focused on the development of new games and simply don’t have time to care about these matters.

Since “Pokémon” initially set the tone as “light story, heavy interaction”, the development plan has always been clear:

The [UI Group] is responsible for designing various game interfaces and interactive UIs.

The [Graphics Group] is responsible for taking out a copy of the “Classics of Mountains and Seas”, taking in their own beasts, researching their personalities and appearances, and then designing a cute version.

They also need to design the looks of the “baby”, “growing”, and “mature” stages.

Because this part of the work started the earliest, 15 Pokémon have been initially designed.

At this stage, the style of the Pokémon is basically set, the graphic designers have an idea in mind, which improves their efficiency.

Lincoln considered that some of the beasts in the “Classics of Mountains and Seas” are not suitable for beautification due to the overwhelming sense of incongruity, so only 45 Pokémon were required for the first stage.

The graphics team plans to complete the remaining 30 in half a month.

The second stage is to continuously optimize while drawing inspirations from various mythologies and folk tales to design other Pokémon.

After all, with so many mythologies and folk tales throughout Huaxia history, it’d be a waste not to utilize the weird things in them.

Lincoln has not planned a specific number for this part; as long as it’s not less than 15, it’s considered task complete. But of course, the more, the better.

It wasn’t until having created 100 different types that the focus shifted to the expansion pack, designing monsters of other styles.

The [Combat Group] was in charge of designing various monster skills and combat effects.

Designing special effects for dozens to hundreds of skills, while also differentiating them as much as possible caused them a lot of headaches.

The [Numerical Group] was in charge of designing combat values, growth values, enhancement values, and other numerical content.

The emphasis was on designing the power hierarchies of the little monsters and the balance between monsters of the same level.

The last group was the [Commercial Group].

They were responsible for designing the “Monster Store” with the types of products, prices, purchase limits, etc., all requiring their careful consideration and calculation.

Furthermore, they also carried a responsibility: to balance free players and pay-to-win players, to be able to generate profits without impacting the game’s balance or ruining the gaming experience of the free players.

Lincoln’s guiding suggestion was: Players can spend money to save time, but they can’t spend money to reduce physical exertion.

Everyone get moving!

The ideal goal is not how much cash flow the game can generate, but that people online will no longer worry about the decline of players’ physical fitness.

With all groups fully committed, the game development progressed very smoothly, and as long as nothing unexpected happened, it could be launched before New Year’s.

Lincoln had even thought of a promotional slogan–

“Bring your little monster to compete with your relatives!”

However, Samuel and Little Chun take some issues with this slogan…

*

The “Chang’an” development team is a bit different, as they didn’t really start to feel the pressure until today.

Although everyone was burning with enthusiasm, since the main storyline had not been finalized, everyone was doing their own thing. There was a bit of a scattered forces feeling.

But today, Lincoln finally decided on the plot.

He was also a bit speechless: The employees didn’t know if it was because of too much pressure or if they were influenced by someone, but the stories they designed were one more outrageous than the other. They all stood out for their wild imaginations and shocking content.

We won’t mention all the narratives of entire families tragically dying at the start, or the stories of hunting down murderers after entire villages were wiped out.

The most outrageous idea was this: The protagonist’s fiancée ran off with someone else at the start of the game. The protagonist believed that his fiancée was tricked, so he chased them all the way to Chang’an, hoping to find them.

The cheating wife and her lover, in their passion for each other, ran all over Chang’an, trying out every single festival event.

The protagonist always followed behind, naturally following the footprints of the adulterous couple, trying every gameplay once.

The proposal submitted by this employee did not use such explicit language of course.

But setting aside the surface, deep down it was a shocking story of a victim wearing a green hat, following behind and watching his fiancée show their love with someone else.

After Lincoln finished reading it, he stayed silent for a long time, and immediately arranged for Vincent to provide psychological counseling for this employee.

…

In any case, the story that Lincoln finally settled on was unoriginal, even a bit clichéd: searching for relatives.

The protagonist enters Chang’an alone to look for his lost sister.

On the way to finding his sister, he meets diverse people and experiences a variety of adventures, growing along the way, before finally finding his family.

This story is certainly not extraordinary, but it is most definitely conventional.

That being said, it won’t lack freshness.

After all, this story doesn’t take place this year, where a big brother living in a fourth-tier city can hop on a high-speed train to Xiajing City to look for his sister, only to dial her number upon leaving the station to ask: “Hey, little sister, where are you?”

This is a story of searching for relatives that takes place 1400 years ago, near the end of the Tang Dynasty.

Not only has the protagonist in the story never seen Chang’an before and doesn’t know what he will encounter in this city.

The players are also in the dark.

They are faced with the same unfamiliarity and the unknown.

And the goal of Lincoln and the development team is to fill this “unknown” with enough dreamy content.

To provide everyone with an unprecedented journey!

After finalizing the plot, Lincoln also finished dividing the development team into groups.

They are not grouped in the same way as in “Pokémon”, rather a shockingly huge 25 teams!

This is a move that Cloud Dream has never done before.