Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 335: 331: Finally Here After Much Anticipation!

Lincoln, who was eating breakfast, looked up at a serious-looking Mavis.

“Two things? What happened?”

Mavis didn’t waste any time and began her report: “First thing! There have been lots of people petitioning, hoping that when the Diving Season in ‘Light Encounter’ ends, the seasonal map can be kept.”

“Huh? We never planned to remove that part of the map anyway, did we?” Lincoln asked, puzzled.

Mavis showed Lincoln the source of the petition, and only then did he realize that the problem arose from the trailer.

Because the exact end time of the Diving Season was marked on the trailer, players thought this was a timed map, and once the time was up, access to this underwater area would be immediately cut off.

The small boat would no longer reach this sea area.

Just as he was considering whether or not to issue a public notice to clarify, Mavis interrupted his train of thought, saying, “Not true!”

“Hmm? No? What does Mavis mean to say?”

“The news Mavis wanted to report is: the popularity of this petition has been increasing constantly, but since yesterday, the heat noticeably stagnated, and people stopped discussing this topic.”

“Huh? What happened?”

“That’s the second piece of news Mavis wanted to say!” Mavis giggled, “Everybody is busy scolding you, Master!”

Looking at Mavis’ mischievous grin, Lincoln was initially perplexed, then deeply believed that this child had gone bad.

So, he stretched out his finger to poke Mavis on the screen.

“Ouch!” Mavis, as usual, gave face and was poked right on her forehead, her head tilting back.

“Humph!” Mavis rubbed her forehead, and with a yank, a row of player posts and forum threads appeared on the screen.

Whether posts or updates, they were all the ones that had received the most likes, and were very representative:

‘I have a surprise for everyone’ —— 30,000 likes, 12,000 comments.

‘Next time Lincoln says he has a surprise, I’ll absolutely spit right in his face!’ —— 25,000 likes, 3,000 comments.

‘I feel conflicted, I want to curse Lincoln, but I also want to praise him like crazy.’ —— 40,000 likes, 3,500 comments.

‘There’s a huge monster in the abyss, I can only say it’s very appropriate, but I’m going to curse first before I say anything else.’ —— 800 followers.

‘It said a huge creature in the emergency alert, I thought it just meant the glowing whale… Now that I think about it, the production team is so gentle compared to Lincoln being inhumane.’ —— 1100 followers.

‘Thrilling, exciting, beautiful, impeccable! But I can only say: job well done, don’t do it again!’ —— 3700 followers.

As Lincoln was eating, he finished looking over the content that Mavis had selected. It was quite an appetite stimulator.

After reading, he even felt that it was not enough.

“So, after the scary news about the mission spread at first, did the number of players going to do the mission decrease?”

“Not at all!” Mavis shook her pink little head, “Not only did the regular players of ‘Light Encounter’ all go to do the mission, but many players who didn’t log in to the game much anymore came back in droves to do the mission.”

“Hmm.” Lincoln nodded, “Well, with players, you can’t just listen to what they say, you have to look at what they actually do.”

Things like saying one thing but doing another, are too common.

Players curse at the designer while indulging in the game and playing it over and over again, this is even normal in some masochistic games.

Where is this even going?!

Lincoln’s guess is correct.

Compared to the teasing and venting nature of online posts, the actual actions of the players better explain the situation.

Not only did countless players pick up the mission and head for the abyss to experience the huge gaping mouth of the abyssal behemoth…

While they were screaming in fright, they still couldn’t help but open their eyes wide to look down.

An endless number of players, after experiencing being entrapped in the “fish” belly and then escaping unscathed, still felt exhilarated and were not satisfied enough.

They even brought along friends and returned to the abyss, seeking out the abyssal behemoth intentionally to experience that oppressive feeling.

Under his design, after a mission is completed, the Abyss Behemoth will still be wandering around that piece of the sea, but won’t attack players anymore.

So, if the player is brave and skillful, they can even ride the Behemoth’s head!

But as the “King of the Abyss Dragon”, wouldn’t it seem quite reasonable to be followed by a dragon or two?

These dragons actually actively attack!

Yesterday, countless children of Light lost their lives to the dragon’s mouth, yet they continued one after another, delighting in their activities.

Even the heavy price of repeatedly losing wings didn’t stop them from causing trouble.

Especially all the anchors, who are the disaster zones when it comes to courting death.

For these people, although the Abyss Behemoth is scary, not having any direct broadcast effects is even scarier, get it?!

The deep, dark, eerie abyss was practically being turned into a tourist attraction by these players!

The girls of the ‘Light Encounter’ operating team could only watch the development of this situation speechlessly.

But after Lincoln confirmed that aside from a little resentment towards him on the internet, there weren’t any other bad influences, he put this matter aside and naturally didn’t care about their feelings.

There are many more important matters to deal with on a Monday.

First of all: the group games of “Assassins’ Alliance” have officially kicked off.

Starting today, it’s the offline competition.

The competition venue in Xiajing City, transportation and accommodation for the contestants, scheduling, tickets, live broadcasts, and other complexities will all rush in one after another.

But there is also good news — Lincoln doesn’t have to worry about these.

This kind of competition had precedents, and there were already established teams in the industry. Cloud Dream had previously accumulated such relationships through the “Freedom Day” events.

The collaboration now was smooth.

All Lincoln needed to do was monitor the progress from time to time.

It is worth mentioning that, out of the 32 teams qualified in the preliminary selection stage, esports clubs accounted for two-thirds of the spots.

Even if many clubs were not strong, or just recently established, they managed to break into the group stage.

This showed that hard work could make up for lack of skill, at least in the preliminary selection stage, it was very effective.

On the other hand, the value of talent was fully demonstrated:

The one-third of the teams without clubs, not all of them were heavy-duty players. Their training time was far less compared to professional players.

Yet, they still kept winning and made it to the group stage.

They even eliminated six professional teams from esports clubs directly!

The audience watching the live stream was astounded by this.

Among the six teams that defeated the professional players, a slight hiccup occurred.

Two of the teams, having never expected to make it to the offline competition, were unable to make it to Xiajing City due to a lack of time…

Out of options, they had to implement an emergency plan to participate in the competition online.

However, competing online meant they would receive a significantly smaller portion of the revenue from ticket sales.

Interestingly among these six teams were the teams of Warehouse Bird and Wind Chaser.

Even Warehouse Bird himself thought it was incredible to have come this far!

Originally, they participated with the mindset of just having fun and to see how far they could go.

During his previous attempt to speedrun the main missions in “Assassins’ Alliance”, he not only lost to the professional player Lance but also to the “former” professional player Roger. At that time, he realized the gap between amateurs and professionals.

Therefore, in this competition, he didn’t expect to win against professional players.

Yet, they won!

And this was even with Wind Chaser, the boss who was a drag on the team!

It was hard for him to describe his joy.

However, if he had to describe it, he would say, “It’s even more awesome than getting that five-fold bonus!”

Pay-To-Win Lord Wind Chaser also felt incredible to defeat professional players, and in the end, he quintupled the ten thousand yuan prize money of this match.

The five-person team even began dreaming about entering the national top three!

The first place got four million! The runner-up two million! And third place one million!

And the tremendous fame that came with it!

Isn’t this more exhilarating than the prize awarded by rich people?!

As for the second matter of the day, it involved sending out invitation letters to all players authorized to log into [Metropolis – Public Edition].

Again, each person received two invitations.

After this distribution, the number of players able to log into [Metropolis – Public Edition] would increase to over ten thousand.

In another half month, it would expand to thirty thousand, and in the next update, it would be ninety thousand…

This is an incremental process.

It will continue until the limit is reached.

This matter was also handled by Randall’s “Assassins’ Alliance” operation team.

But compared to the competition, Lincoln paid more attention to this matter, so he was also present at the scene.

There’s a simple reason for this:

After performing a public map recheck and prohibiting violent behavior, the game successfully obtained an All Ages rating.

Then Lincoln combined this public map with “Paradise”.

When the players went through the ticket check to enter the amusement park through Metropolis, they would not find the old amusement park, but an expanded and richer “Paradise”!

Additionally, he had another idea.

Using a method similar to the Candy Portal of the “Candy Track”, he planned to incorporate the somewhat differently styled, non-realistic worlds of “Traveler of the Wind” and “Light Encounter”.

Then, after “Speed Chase” is released, he would incorporate Night City as well!

By that time, even though it would still be somewhat rough, it could be tentatively called a rudimentary virtual world!

Lincoln and Randall watched together as the invitation letters were distributed.

Afterwards, Randall continued to focus on the group matchup, and Lincoln went to Fred’s team.

There was the last matter of the day that needed his special attention—

Release the final trailer before “Speed Chase” goes live!

And then immediately after the release of the trailer, the distribution of—

“Speed Chase, closed beta invitation!”

Whether for the players or for the game development team, it felt as if they had been waiting for this day for a very long time.

Truly

It finally came amidst thousands of calls!