Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Lincoln’s attention was completely unnecessary, as Edmund had already stopped engaging in the group chat.

Even more so than Lincoln’s disappearance.

Originally he stayed at school for the summer vacation and didn’t return home. Since Lincoln launched the virtual reality device, he disappeared from his dormitory.

He probably wouldn’t show up until the start of school.

Finally, they calculated that 28 classmates would attend, discussed the timing, and set the date for two days later.

Lincoln was free anyway, or rather, he could gather material for his work anytime, so any day was fine.

He asked Princess, who had no schedule that day either, and agreed without any hesitation.

The next day, Lincoln came to the studio again.

For the first few days, he planned to show his face at the company to make his presence known.

As for the future, the employees would have to get used to the boss not being around.

As soon as he entered the company, he saw young Cheryl, who had just joined the company yesterday, sitting at the front desk in a daze.

Since the studio wasn’t big, Lincoln kept things simple: administration and human resources were essentially combined.

The two new administrators were both mature. Qiao was older and had rich work experience, so she took the supervisor position, covering both human resources and administration tasks.

The other young girl was Cheryl, who had just entered the workplace. Aside from being lively and cute, she lacked practical work experience. So she assisted Manager Quentina, doing miscellaneous tasks and helping at the company’s front desk when idle.

Seeing Lincoln appear, Cheryl was startled and quickly straightened up. “Good morning, boss!”

Lincoln smiled and nodded, “Good morning.”

After entering the office and greeting everyone, he went into his private office.

He really felt that there was no need to come to the company; it was a pure waste of time. After all, everyone in the office was working in the virtual world using Mirage.

So there was no difference between employees being at the office or at home. That’s why, at the beginning, he made it clear that anyone could apply to work from home.

However, none of the employees chose to work from home and everyone was willing to commute the long distance to work.

Randall also came, but Little Chun didn’t come along.

His view was different from Lincoln’s. Though he did work from home, he came to the company now to help his subordinates adapt to the environment of Dream Cloud Studio.

In fact, he supported the employees’ opinions, thinking that it was more appropriate for everyone to come to the office to work.

In his view, doing so would better separate work from personal life, preventing the two from interfering with each other and causing discomfort.

What could Lincoln say to that? Well, let them come.

Bored, Lincoln sat in front of his desk daydreaming for a while before starting the Mirage in the office and diving into the virtual world.

As he appeared, Mavis appeared in front of him, her little face close to Lincoln’s, asking excitedly, “Master, didn’t you go to work? How do you have time so soon to come and play with Mavis?”

“Ahem.” Lincoln was a bit embarrassed.

But he soon thought of an excuse and laid down comfortably on the familiar small sofa. While grabbing a cola from the mini fridge, he said, “I’m just giving them some space to perform! If the boss is always watching, the employees will be nervous, which will affect the efficiency of work!”

Mavis didn’t care whether Lincoln was slacking off or had a legitimate reason. She was always overjoyed when Lincoln came to play with her.

Through their time together, the inherently familiar Mavis had grown even closer to Lincoln.

She didn’t hesitate to throw herself onto Lincoln and then reach for the drinks over him.

Lincoln slowly got used to Mavis’s closeness, gently petting her head, and asked, “Anything interesting happened recently?”

Mavis got a small bottle of yogurt, leaned back on the sofa enjoying a few sips, then answered Lincoln, “Nothing much. NetDragon is still being ruthlessly criticized, many people refunding. Not only games, many new buyers of their Flying Dragon 3rd Generation VR Device are returning it. Some players even started selling their VR equipment on second-hand platforms.” “Selling VR equipment? Just because of the ‘Blaze 3’ DLC being postponed?”

“Not just that,” Mavis took another sip of yogurt, the cold yogurt caused her whole body to shiver and curl up her toes.

She let out a little cold breath, leaned closer to Lincoln for warmth, and explained the situation to him.

“The news of core employees leaving the Blaze Production Team and some gossips of high-level infighting being leaked from inside NetDragon made many people believe that the delay of the DLC isn’t just a simple postponement, but might become indefinitely uncertain.”

“Also, there have always been discounted VR equipment for sale on the second-hand platform, but after Mirage went public, more and more people are selling. This time, the online uproar caused many people to think that NetDragon’s Flying Dragon series will become less and less valuable, so a large number of players chose to sell it while it’s still valuable to get their money back in a short time.”

“Alright, it’s all good news.” Lincoln took a sip of cola, “Anything else?”

“Flying Fox Game announced their new game postponement. Their originally scheduled release of ‘The Last Moment’ at the end of this month was announced to be postponed this morning, and the exact new release date hasn’t been set yet.”

“Oh.” As for other game companies, Lincoln didn’t pay much attention. Despite being previously targeted during recruitment, it obviously couldn’t be counted as a grudge.

After all, no one wants their employees poached, and offering better benefits is a legitimate means. There’s nothing to argue about that.

“And also, and also.” Mavis swayed her body left and right, happily saying, “The popularity of ‘Traveler of the Wind’ is still on the rise! A lot of people are looking for the strangers they met in their first run. Now, the rating section of Cloud Dream’s ‘Traveler of the Wind’ has become a lost-and-found area, filled with various little essays seeking people.”

“Oh? Show me.” Lincoln was very interested in this.

Mavis quickly brought up a holographic display screen in front of Lincoln, which showed the rating section of ‘Traveler of the Wind’.

Beneath the game description on the right, there were four eye-catching characters – “Overwhelming Positive Reviews”.

There were already over 300,000 players’ reviews!

That means for every 8 people who played the game, 3 would come back and leave a review. This was an incredibly amazing ratio.

What’s even more surprising is that these people didn’t just submit a simple rating and a single praise; instead, many left detailed and heartfelt reviews filled with overwhelming emotions, praising the game to the sky, as well as sharing moving moments of traveling together with strangers they met by chance.

Of course, aside from those long stories of traveling with strangers, there were also some short and highly upvoted reviews.

‘Goodbye, my unnamed friend.

‘Meeting is a blessing, thank you, stranger.’

There was also a highly upvoted review that was extremely brief, starting with just five characters ‘Hello, stranger.’

Then followed by long stretches of white space.

Only at the very end, six characters appeared again ‘Goodbye, my friend.’

This concise review was truly ingenious, especially those long stretches of white space in the middle as the essence.

It perfectly aligned in temperament with ‘Traveler of the Wind’ — extremely minimalistic, but containing infinite meaning and lasting appeal.

An encounter with a stranger, a wordless journey side by side, and parting as unforgettable friends by the end.

Lincoln couldn’t help but sigh, “With such talent, why not be a writer instead of play games?”