Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 718: Chapter 681: A Plea for Help from the United Kingdom

“Why does it have to be 4 days away!”

“Why did they have to tell me so early!!”

“Such a malicious plan!!”

…

Metropolitan News ended amidst the farewells of Zhen and Qiang.

But the players were in an uproar, lamenting everywhere that they couldn’t even wait for a day and wanted to play tomorrow!

As always, though, it didn’t help.

So everyone began to analyze fervently, transforming into Sherlock Holmes with magnifying glasses and watching the show repeatedly.

Some even downloaded the video – Metropolitan News now had its official account, uploading the video immediately after the “live streaming” ended.

The heavy-duty players downloaded the video, imported it into editing software, and played it frame by frame, looking for clues in each news segment.

Particularly the sections on Dinosaur Island and Hunting Field, where the analysis was extremely thorough.

Players with strong initiative logged in to the game right away, going to the places mentioned in the show for on-site checks.

Suddenly, everyone was surprised to find that these clues had really appeared in the game at some point!

What’s even more bizarre is that Jurassic Park and Dinosaur Island always had players visiting and camping, but everything was peaceful.

But ever since the news ended and the players truly found the open ground and saw the smoke and heat-spewing deep wells, the entire island began to tremble in that moment!

The trembling wasn’t intense – the strength was mostly that of a grade three or four earthquake.

But because the epicenter was shallow, even Jurassic Park, which was a bit further away, felt noticeable tremors.

In these instances, the hundreds of thousands of casual players still in Jurassic Park were astonished!

– They didn’t know yet what had happened.

It wasn’t unusual.

Cloud Dream now had over 300 million users – this refers to the number of users who have activated Mirage consoles and logged into the virtual world.

In fact, the number of Cloud Dream consoles produced and sold had already exceeded 360 million!

But many of these orders were in large quantities for overseas customers.

These astonishing numbers of consoles were packed into large containers, shipped on giant freighters across the ocean to five continents and all over the world.

The only exceptions were the Antarctica and Africa continents.

Africa also had orders, but not the large-scale orders of several hundred thousand or even millions; they were scattered individual purchases, sent by air freight.

The shipping costs were higher, but the speed was faster.

Although the speed advantage had no real meaning – in present-day Africa, unless you were on the northern shore of the Mediterranean and could find a way to connect to European networks, the virtual world wouldn’t be accessible no matter how you tried.

The network environment in Africa was simply too poor.

Per capita cable length was even less than in Antarctica.

…

With such an astonishing number of Cloud Dream users, it was natural that not all of them were heavy-duty gamers, or even gamers at all.

A significant number of users bought the console purely for the “revolutionary virtual reality technology” and “fully realistic virtual world” gimmicks.

Thanks to Lincoln’s foresight, the gradual introduction of casual games, tourism and sightseeing scenes, family amusement parks, and wilderness outdoor experiences kept them coming back, becoming accustomed to regularly logging in and eventually becoming casual players who truly enjoyed the virtual world.

These individuals occasionally checked Cloud Dream’s messages, but they didn’t constantly stay updated on Cloud Dream’s posts and wouldn’t be obsessed with pursuing every piece of news.

That was what the avid heavy-duty players did.

As a result, after being startled by the unexpected earthquake, they learned online what had happened and then naturally joined the discussion or went to the epicenter to “check-in.”

By the time they arrived, there were players brave enough to crawl into the deep wells.

These vertical wells were very narrow, barely wide enough for one person to go down, let alone crawl in headfirst while being lowered by someone else.

Even so, a large number of brave players stepped forward, wanting to see what was underground.

However, they soon discovered that they had arrived too early.

The depth of the wells wasn’t enough, and there was nothing at the bottom.

In the end, the NPCs had to come back and continue drilling deeper.

The players just stood around, staring at each other.

They were actually lucky since they found the target in the end.

Players searching for the murder scene in “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness” encountered a problem from the beginning –

They couldn’t find the location.

The “Hunting Field” was too big, and the traces were hard to find.

As for the “management” mentioned in the news, it simply didn’t exist in the game.

So they had no choice but to search hard.

*

At the same time, “My World” players were expressing their dissatisfaction in the comment section.

That’s because the new activities announced in this issue of Metropolitan News covered almost all Cloud Dream games, except for one –

“My World.”

As a result, “My World” players were outraged:

“You’re not gonna play with us, huh?!”

But their anger was immediately blown back at them:

“You guys are pissed for nothing! Cloud Dream has already released three major mod packs! Plus, there are hundreds of unofficial mods! You guys still aren’t satisfied?!”

“Exactly! We are the ones who should be angry!”

‘”Traveler of the Wind”, the real veteran, yet after all this time, all we got were two scarves?? Are you kidding me?!”

“Are we console gamers not worthy?!”

…

It’s understandable for the Wind Traveler players to be angry.

In this big event, Wind Traveler just added two scarves, obtained by “retracing the pilgrim path.”

Go through it once by yourself to get one.

Go through it with a friend, and get the other.

And that’s it…

As a pre-installed game, every Mirage Console owner can see this game as soon as they log into the virtual world.

Due to the high praise, pretty much all players would at least try it out.

So, Traveler of the Wind is a game that most Cloud Dream gamers would play!

Once they make a fuss, it’s incredibly exaggerated and unstoppable.

The next day, when Lincoln goes to work, players are still constantly complaining on social media, saying that Wind Traveler deserves more attention and better treatment.

It gives Lincoln a headache looking at it.

He also likes Wind Traveler, but the problem is: this game is really not suitable for adding a bunch of random things!

It is inherently a “simple” game, which is where its charm lies, and adding more things would only detract from it.

Seeing Samuel’s eager eyes, Lincoln thinks for a while and says, “How about… we add a few more scarves?”

“??” Samuel’s hopeful gaze quickly turns into question marks, “Are you serious, Boss?”

“If you nod, we’ll announce it like that? Just say it’s your idea.”

“No! No!” Lincoln quickly stops him.

After thinking for a long time, he finally comes up with an idea, “How about we throw the Wings of Light from “Light Encounter” into Wind Traveler for a week?”

After a while discussing, the not-so-fresh but barely acceptable idea is settled.

– It’s really because everyone’s energy is limited, and all departments are busy for the New Year’s activities right now.

Lincoln is no exception, juggling not only the event status of multiple games but also joining the development of “Chang’an”.

As the boss, he often has to deal with affairs outside of the game as well.

Today, for example, not long after he starts working, he receives a visit from an unexpected person-

His British partner, Chadwick, the founder of CC Game Company.

“Hello, Mr. Chadwick, what can I do for you?”

“Hello, Mr. Lincoln, we’ve run into some trouble and have no choice but to seek Cloud Dream’s help.”

“Is it the matter of the England and Scotland players’ competition?” Lincoln asks.

“Indeed, recently many players have come to our company’s doorstep to protest, which has become quite a headache.” Chadwick’s voice is full of exhaustion.

“Protests?” Lincoln is somewhat surprised.

But on second thought, it makes sense.

Organizing a competition between “England and Scotland players” in the UK is completely different from organizing a “North and South players competition” in Daxia.

It’s because the Scottish people have been pushing for independence every year recently.

If this competition took place in Daxia, netizens would at most make some sarcastic remarks, and find it amusing.

But if it took place in the UK, and patriots worried that it could promote a confrontational and divisive sentiment, leading to organized protests, Lincoln could completely understand it.

But, what can he do about this kind of thing?

“Well, I don’t think Cloud Dream can help much?” Lincoln wonders, “What kind of help do you need?”

“Yes, you can!” Hearing Lincoln might refuse, Chadwick panicking, “This isn’t a big deal, we just need to extend the competition authorization time!”Nôv(el)B\\jnn

“Authorization time? You want to extend the competition?!”

Hearing this, Lincoln becomes even more puzzled.

Players are protesting at your doorstep, and you’re not only not giving in, but you want to extend the competition time?

Are you that stubborn?

“Yeah, they won’t stop protesting unless we let them join,” Chadwick says with a tone filled with helplessness on the other end of the phone.

But something doesn’t feel right to Lincoln.

Join?

These people are protesting to join the competition??

“Hold up!” Lincoln feels like he might have misunderstood something, “Who exactly is protesting?”

“Huh? Don’t you know?” Chadwick is surprised, “Players from Northern Ireland.”

“What?”