Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 408: 392: Short-lived, the Respawn Point is Blocked!

“Mavis doesn’t know either.”

Lincoln considered what he had to do and decided to go to Fred first.

He had seen enough of the players’ fights yesterday.

However, as soon as he arrived at Fred’s virtual office, he saw that everyone was staring intently at a massive display.

In the screen, a row of limousines stopped outside the Continental Hotel, and a group of gunmen with Mahjong-shaped masks got out of the cars simultaneously.

Without any superfluous words, they started spraying bullets into the hotel lobby.

“Holy shit!” Lincoln was surprised, couldn’t help but whispered, “Mavis, didn’t you say the bandits were going to rob the casino’s cash transport vehicle? How come they’re at the Continental Hotel?”

Mavis also lowered her voice and answered in a whisper, “These people are not the bandits who robbed the casino yesterday. I was about to tell Master, they were the ones who planned to attack the Continental Hotel yesterday.”

“You mean there are now two groups of bandits causing trouble simultaneously, and the ones attacking the Continental Hotel are being impersonated by others?”

“That’s right!” Mavis confirmed, “They are fake.”

“Alright…” Although Lincoln was surprised at first, after thinking about it, he didn’t find it that surprising.

—There wasn’t anything the players couldn’t pull off.

“Let them be.”

Lincoln walked forward, patted Fred on the shoulder, and dragged him back from watching the excitement.

The process was the same as with Samuel’s group – first talk about the virtual concert, then check out the honorary player selection.

In the end, Fred’s group decided to give 40 out of 100 slots for honorary players to the top 40 players in the “Killer Ranking”.

The reason being “It’s only been a week since the game was officially launched, with players having exaggerated online time and little exploration in other aspects. The main focus is on completing the main missions, so the first honorary player selection can’t avoid this aspect.”

The “Killer Ranking” is only officially unlocked after players complete the main missions.

Since the “Killer Ranking Battle” has not yet started, the current rankings are almost the order in which players clear the main missions.

Only a few of those who ranked ahead had completed the Continental Hotel’s bounty missions or happened to kill players who were ranked much higher than themselves, raising their rankings.

But according to Fred’s data, at least 6 out of the top 40 had changed, with very little overall change.

“After a month, when players are familiar with Night City and discover more ways to play, we will reduce the number of slots for this part in the honorary player selection,” Fred explained finally.

“OK.” Lincoln nodded in agreement.

He then specifically visited the Game World of Little Chun’s Team for game development and informed intern Camille about the arrangements for the virtual concert.

He also checked the progress of the new game.

But here, something unbelievable happened according to Lincoln.

As the game developed, its name remained unsettled, and the name of the development world was always “Block World (temporary)”.

During this process, “Infinite World,” “Construction World,” “God of Creation,” “Endless Journey,” “My Home,” “Free World,”… one name after another was proposed and then rejected.

Until now, when the game was finally completed, and everyone’s attention was about to turn to the Mod World, the name hadn’t been decided.

In the end, Little Chun had to hold a fair competition between all the names through a vote.

As a result, “My World” defeated the already popular second place, “Block World,” by a mere two votes.

—Lincoln also saw “Mini World,” which was ranked almost last.

He found it funny but understandable: In the virtual environment mode, the game world was huge, so it made sense for the name “Mini” not to gain everyone’s approval.

However, after going around in circles, the result came back to the starting point, which made Lincoln somewhat amused and helpless.

Of course, that was from his point of view.

In fact, his influence in Yunmeng was so high that if he had a preference, the name he mentioned could very likely become the final name.

However, he intentionally handed the naming rights for this game to the development team, so he never mentioned “My World” publically; he only thought about it in his mind.

So, this was actually a result that the employees of the development team came up with and voted on themselves…

Little Chun also explained their idea: “After the game is released, the players’ own game world is entirely up to them, each person’s world is different from others’, so it’s quite fitting for players to call the game ‘My World’.”

“And after opening up multiplayer, when players visit their friends online, it can directly display [XX’s World], which is not only convenient but also motivates players to build their own worlds.”

All Lincoln could do was nod in agreement: “Yes, you’re right. It’s a great name.”

For the remaining time in the morning, Lincoln joined the “My World” development team and worked together with Intern Camille on the design of particle effects for combat magic.

As always, any design team that Lincoln joined would see an immediate increase in development speed.

By lunchtime, the six-member team had completed a whole day’s worth of work according to the original schedule, and they went offline happily to eat.

Lincoln was no exception, going to eat with a sense of accomplishment from working hard—although he had actually only worked for less than an hour and a half in reality.

In the restaurant, he ran into Jerome.

Jerome had already completely figured out his boss’s personality and had lost the nervousness he had when he first joined.

He sat down without hesitation across from Lincoln and said, “Boss, NetDragon is releasing a DLC.”

“I know, ‘Red Flame’, right? What about it?” Lincoln looked up from his phone and asked with some confusion.

“Aren’t we going to do something about it?” Jerome asked eagerly.

“Like what?”

“There’s a lot we could do! For example, we could create a big event in the game with generous rewards that players can’t miss, keeping them all in the virtual world, not having time to play their DLC, and so on.” Jerome felt like he could come up with a bunch of ways to target NetDragon.

He was indeed a pure worker, but he thought that if the boss was like Lincoln, it was possible to have a bit of personal friendship.

Based on “personal friendship,” it’s okay to help with ideas.

Lincoln blinked, “But this is the last official part of the ‘Blaze’ series—a lot of players have fond memories of it.”

Jerome also blinked, seemingly more confused than Lincoln, “So what?”

Apparently, he didn’t understand the connection between the players’ fond memories and Yunmeng’s targeting of NetDragon.

“This DLC is the player’s nostalgia,” Lincoln had to be more explicit.

“Nostalgia?” Jerome the Worker asked, not accepting such an explanation, “Isn’t that just an excuse for capitalists to make money?”

In Jerome’s eyes, any capitalist’s promotion and packaging in the name of nostalgia should be treated as moral kidnapping and leek harvesting.

“It’s really not this time…” Lincoln tried to explain, but thinking about it, he realized it might not be necessary.

After all, what he planned to do wasn’t much better than Jerome’s idea…

Just as Jerome’s dish arrived, Lincoln quickly ended the topic, “Let’s eat, I’m prepared for NetDragon’s move, just wait for the excitement the day after tomorrow.”

So Jerome didn’t say anything more, and the two of them ate their own meals face to face.

Lincoln didn’t care about dining etiquette, keeping an eye on the battles in Night City on his phone while eating.

On the phone screen, the image was split into two parts by Mavis: one part was the “fake bandits” attacking the Continental Hotel, and the other part was the “real bandits” robbing the casino cash transport vehicle.

Of course, the situation on the screen had long since changed from the initial one.

By now, it had turned into a huge chaotic battle between players and players, players, and NPCs.

And on both sides…

At this point, Lincoln was starting to get a bit confused: what were these people thinking?

They fought all night yesterday, and now they’ve been fighting all morning, and there’s no sign of it stopping…

Where do they get the energy from?

Especially the players at the Continental Hotel.

They’ve been fighting for so long, they should’ve found out by now: killing bandits won’t complete the bounty, and there are no rewards, right?

At this point, even if they teamed up to attack the Continental Hotel, it would make much more sense than the current messy situation. At least the Continental Hotel has a huge safe.

But they stubbornly insisted on fighting each other, even blocking the respawn points of players to kill them!