Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Looking at Randall and Little Chun’s meaningful smiles, Lincoln felt as if they were thinking about something strange.

However, seeing them politely introduce themselves to each other, he didn’t probe any further.

Little Chun was assigned to help Princess, as Princess didn’t work every day. Her workload was quite light, only coming in about three days a week.

Besides, Princess was an art major, so she had a strong foundation in design and unquestionable aesthetic taste.

As long as she quickly got familiar with the development tools, she would soon become a competent workforce.

With Little Chun’s help, not only could she share some workload, but the two girls would also be more comfortable around each other.

Lincoln had been planning to separate Dream Cloud Studio into two production teams.

One specialized in developing core games, like the ongoing project “Assassins’ Alliance,” and the “Battlefield” concept. This team would comprise the core group who came from Blaze Production Team.

Another team would focus on developing casual games. In Lincoln’s plan, projects like “Super Amusement Park” and “My World” would be developed by this team.

However, this latter team needed more personnel. So far, only Little Chun and Camille were confirmed to be in this group as per Lincoln’s plan.

When he thought about it, he realized that they were seriously short-staffed.

But lowering the recruitment standards was not an option; he had to either hire or poach!

After the three introduced themselves to one another, Lincoln started the final step of Camille’s onboarding process: allocating office space.

He connected Camille’s control panel to the development tool’s port and allocated computing resources to provide her with a dedicated virtual work area.

They entered the virtual workspace as he guided Camille to open the Teleportation Gate.

At this point, the space was still an initialized scene, looking just like the Dream Cloud Studio in reality.

“This is your personal virtual workspace. You can customize it to your liking, but due to limited computing power, don’t create an entire world,” he said.

“My own?” Camille looked around, surprised and delighted.

“Yes, this is an employee benefit for everyone at Dream Cloud Studio, but only for those who are currently employed,” said Lincoln, shaking his head with a smile. “Of course, you are an exception since you are an angel investor! This space will always belong to you.”

Camille became even more excited upon hearing this. She immediately opened the customization interface and started exploring it.

As Camille manipulated the settings, the workspace underwent rapid changes: the city view outside the window disappeared, replaced by misty mountains for a while, then treacherous peaks, and suddenly bustling Ancient Chang’an City.

The sky alternated between clear sunshine, continuous rain, and the starry night, with a resplendent Milky Way.

Finally, the transformation ceased, and Camille chose a riverside courtyard, abundant with flowers, exuding an ancient atmosphere as her personal virtual workspace.

She had many ideas for this courtyard, like home furnishings, plants, and ornaments among other things, wanting to adjust them all.

But remembering that she was here as an intern, she didn’t spend too much time on it. Since she could come back any time, she decided to return here after work and decorate it beautifully!

The onboarding process was now complete. Even though Camille probably wouldn’t be visiting the studio, Lincoln had already set up access cards and made an employee ID card for her.

But he hadn’t found a chance to give her the ID card yet, mainly because sending it over via mail seemed a bit too strange.

As for the learning and practice of development tools, Little Chun took over the task of teaching Camille.

Lincoln took Camille to the in-game amusement park, gave Little Chun a brief explanation, then left the area to join the Battlefield Production Team and participate in the making of combat scenes.

With his involvement, the production efficiency of “Assassins’ Alliance” clearly

It’s not that he really wanted to work hard; if it weren’t for Camille Victoria joining the company, he wouldn’t have come to work today. After all, there was plenty of time to produce “Assassins’ Alliance”.

But, well, he was already here…

Lincoln led his Cloud Dream employees, completely focused on the production of “Assassins’ Alliance”.

He was unaware that, along with the rising popularity of “Traveler of the Wind” in the gaming circle, a new wave of discussion was rapidly approaching.

On the previous night, a player named “Licking Snow on Blade” had posted a thread on the “Vortex” game forum. Even now the thread was still hot, with more than 3000 people replying to it.

Although the “Vortex” forum was old-school, its popularity had waned after VR games became dominant.

Normally, threads posted here would only receive a dozen replies or so, with a hundred or more being considered “hot posts” for the forum.

However, the fact that “Licking Snow on Blade” had received 3000 replies undoubtedly made this thread explosively popular!

As an old gaming forum, some people loved “Vortex” to death, while others hated it, but no matter what, it couldn’t be ignored.

Many big news, small gossips, insider info, leaks, and game-related dramas all originated from this place.

And this hot post did not disappoint, successfully breaking out of the Vortex forum to spread across various other forums and communities within the gaming circle, prompting an even wider range of discussions.

However, despite the ever-widening scope of discussion, it was still limited within the game circle.

Mavis’s main gossip arena was still on Spiritual Rhinoceros, and if the discussion started on there, she would have discovered it that night and warned Lincoln.

But for discussions happening elsewhere, Mavis would not pay attention until the heat reached the safety threshold that Lincoln set for her. Even if she saw a relevant thread, she wouldn’t bother Lincoln with it.

After all, there were just too many discussions about Lincoln on the internet, especially within the gaming circle, and he simply couldn’t keep up.

Not to mention other places, let’s just talk about the Vortex forum.

There were countless threads praising Lincoln and “Traveler of the Wind”, with the most popular ones getting at least ten thousand replies each. Even now, people were still replying to them, pushing the numbers even higher.

So unless Lincoln was bored and asked if there was anything worth paying attention to, Mavis would only selectively tell him some amusing things.

With a heat of 3000 replies, the thread was drowned in a sea of praise, barely causing a ripple, and not worth the effort. If left untouched, the discussion might have dissipated entirely within a week.

However, for some people, this was an entirely different matter.

At NetDragon’s public relations office, Gary was staring at his computer.

The display showed the hot post by “Licking Snow on Blade”: “Did Lincoln forget about us PC and console players? Or did he never care in the first place?” He immediately realized—the opportunity had arrived!

An opportunity to show off in front of his boss and alleviate the resignation crisis!

After all, with his track record of “setting up Lincoln as a major enemy for NetDragon”, finding a new job would be quite difficult if he resigned.

Even if he managed to find a new job, it would be hard to keep his current salary.

So, ever since Richard’s outburst last time, he had been looking for an opportunity to somehow show off in front of his boss and save his precarious career.

And now, the opportunity had finally come!