Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

A common sense that is easily overlooked is: the relationship between people in the same strategic alliance is not always harmonious.

It’s because of their close relationship that more disputes arise.

Especially for these two countries, during Daxia’s entanglement in war and the difficult times of national reform, they fought fiercely for more than ten years, and their hatred could be described as deep as the ocean.

Latter, as the suzerain country stood up again and the situation required, plus inertia, the two countries returned to the same faction and jointly resisted foreign enemies.

But can hatred be easily eliminated?

Especially since the two countries were not on the same battlefield and did not fight side by side, they did not cultivate much camaraderie when faced with foreign enemies.

In the end, this hatred was brought into the era of peace.

Especially when both sides spoke Daxia’s language, it not only did not promote communication and ease hatred but even further intensified the conflict.

Izumo and Baekje players often argue on the Internet, with small arguments every two days and big arguments every three days.

The bigger the news, the more violent the argument.

The reason for the huge reaction from Izumo players this time is that not long ago, they suffered a crushing defeat in a critical argument battle.

It was because their royal family’s Princess Yuzi didn’t know which nerve in her brain had gone wrong, and insisted on marrying the Crown Prince of Baekje’s Summer Star.

Eventually, she even gave up her royal identity and married him.

This left the netizens of Izumo at an absolute disadvantage in the war of words, unable to refute and secretly cursing the princess for being blind.

Many Izumo netizens “unfollowed” the princess, feeling that they had been blind themselves and had completely fallen for the wrong person.

By the way, an interesting thing is that during that time, Princess Camille Victoria gained a bunch of Izumo fans for no reason…

Since their own country’s princess has a poor vision and can’t recognize people, it should be fine to switch to supporting the suzerain country’s princess, right?

The little princess of Daxia wouldn’t marry Baekje, would she?

At least according to the information on the Internet, even if there were only a few netizens shipping the CP of Princess Camille Victoria and Lincoln, the potential object should also be Lincoln.

In their eyes at this time, Lincoln was great!

Because he had a core advantage— he wasn’t a Baekje person.

That’s enough!

However, this change of heart did not cover their great defeat in the war of words, and they had been stifling to death, with anger pent up in their stomachs and no way to vent.

Now, the Baekje post has completely ignited the powder keg.

Izumo players immediately divided into two groups, one group going to fight on the Baekje Internet, replying to the original post to exchange Daxia’s foul language vocabulary with Baekje players.

The other group immediately logged on, asking who was in [World No.6], and then frantically pulling people in.

Luckily the call had just been issued and there were no signs of [World No.6] being filled, so the Izumo players began to quickly recruit people, refusing to stop until the world was full.

Meanwhile, Daxia players were doing the exact same thing—

Recruiting people, recruiting people, frantically recruiting people!

Even the non-stop battle in [World No.22] took a brief halftime break to squeeze into [World No.6].

Even the world expanded by Lincoln couldn’t withstand this rapid influx, and even pulling people one by one quickly filled the public world.

— Yesterday evening, after the number of public worlds exceeded 150, Lincoln quietly doubled the server capacity.

Otherwise, if the growth continued indefinitely, players would have to flip through dozens of pages when choosing the world number, which would be ridiculous.

Considering that there are 10 world numbers per page, having 15 pages is already a bit much.

Lincoln has been looking forward to players returning to their personal worlds to play in large numbers, so he could merge some public worlds.

It would be best to reduce it to within 10 pages, keeping the world number below 100.

He prefers simplicity.

After the recruitment phase is over, the next step is naturally— war!

The Izumo players vowed to settle old and new grievances together.

Daxia players, on the other hand, simply found this kind of “domineering” behavior unpleasant— if you distinguish by nationality rather than gameplay, isn’t that domineering?

So, the war began!

…

At the same time, media reports on “My World” began to emerge in large numbers.

However, unlike the previous few games, which were all in praise, this time a rare diversity of voices appeared— many media outlets felt this game was a bit rough.

Having a high volume on the Internet and high game quality are two different things.

With Cloud Dream’s influence and large player base, it’s easy to create a huge discussion heat as long as a new game is released.

Within 24 hours of “My World” being released, the game had exploded the topic three times, fully proving this point.

But unfortunately, this heat can perhaps be converted into sales but cannot be converted into reputation.

Media outlets with aspirations and rational players focus on the game itself when evaluating games.

However, the heat generated by “My World” is mostly centered on the players’ behavior, with very little relevance to the game’s content itself.

Such heat not only doesn’t add points to the game but is also a negative factor.

After a night of experiencing the game, what have the media played in the game?

Digging holes, chopping trees, farming, fighting skeletons, zombies, and creepers, and then it seems there’s nothing else.

Compared to the previous games–with a well-crafted guidance system, numerous choices, complete quest lines, various content outside of the storyline, a plethora of interaction, collection, and growth elements…

The content of this game seems too scarce!

It’s almost like a crude half-finished product.

As a result, the headlines of the reports are less courteous—

[Hard to comprehend, this is probably the least Cloud Dream-like game made by Cloud Dream Games.]

[Should there be a question mark over whether Lincoln was truly involved in the game design?]

[Innovative? Certainly. Outstanding? We find it difficult to acknowledge it wholeheartedly.]

[Players deserve better games!]

…

Not only do the media not understand, but game industry professionals also don’t. They can only speculate based on past experience—

“Could it be that this game is designed by Lincoln as virtual building blocks for children to play with?”

“If we look at it that way, then I’m willing to admit: it’s a pretty good set of building blocks.”

“But don’t building blocks get boring easily? This childish gameplay may be just right for children, but can older players stand it for more than a few days?”

“Making a quick buck and leaving? That doesn’t sound like Lincoln’s style…”

…

Not just them, even Cloud Dream Games’ “hardcore fans”–“Game Base” have hesitated in their rating for the first time, straying from their usual high praises.

“Game Base” has always been treated well by Cloud Dream.

Since Lincoln chose “Game Base” as the closed beta experience media for “Traveler of the Wind”, the subsequent closed-beta games and external interviews have often been taken care of by the operation team, providing them with testing quota and interview invitations.

“Game Base” was never stingy with compliments towards Cloud Dream either.

Every game by Cloud Dream had extensive evaluations and a variety of praises from “Game Base”.

And it’s not just blind praise, but rather justified compliments each time.

With access to Cloud Dream channels, “Game Base” could also often get insider news and anecdotes from the development team, and players enjoyed reading their evaluations.

Previous famous entries include:

“Assassin’s league | Who said that your girlfriend cheating, killing your old dad and the goddess committing suicide can’t be fun?!”

“Paradise | Although I step on people, kick people, and push people, I never treat them as human beings, but I know I’m a good baby!”

“Speedy Chase | Milkshake: One to exchange for two hundred, my dog life is full of no regrets”

…and so on.

However, even such intimate partners hesitated in their review of “My World”. Instead of publishing a long critique as usual, they reluctantly posted a short review—

“‘My World’ is undoubtedly innovative and unprecedented in its unique and fresh gameplay, but the innovation isn’t as impressive as ‘Traveler of the Wind’.”

At first glance, the game world may seem a bit crude; however, that’s just an illusion: using similarly-sized blocks to build will inevitably give the impression of a crude and rough appearance.

But in reality, every block is intricately designed, not only having different appearance skins for various environments, but also with a dedicated self-adaption algorithm that allows the blocks to make minor adjustments to the overall building requirements.

It must be stressed that though seemingly unremarkable, this technology has a high value and requires a lot of effort and dedication.

Behind the simplistic initial impression of “My World,” every detail is finely polished, and both the presentation and underlying technology have immense value. It is not a careless response, nor meant to appease players.

However, one undeniable fact is that for now, the game’s high-quality art and technical excellence have not been able to change the monotonous gameplay, and the content available for players seems all too similar.

Of course, out of trust for Lincoln, we speculate that there might be another possibility—

The gameplay and content of the game are not limited to what is currently being shown, and there are more hidden aspects of the game awaiting players’ exploration.”‘

For the players, the key takeaway from this review is that “Game Base” barely maintained a neutral stance.

This review, compared to other game media outlets, seems to lean towards Cloud Dream. However, at most, it includes some “excuses” and “defenses” and somewhat helps explain Cloud Dream’s position.

Telling players that Cloud Dream “put in effort” and “didn’t take them for granted”, but also admitting that the gameplay does indeed seem monotonous.

In the end, out of a protective instinct toward Cloud Dream, they didn’t definitively say the game was boring, and instead left the door open for interpretation by raising a guess as a conclusion.

This gives players hope while expressing their own trust in Cloud Dream and Lincoln.

With such a writing approach, players won’t have a negative impression of the game, minimizing any potential damage to sales.

This whole report could truly be described as well-intentioned.

Yet, despite these efforts, they can’t avoid being targeted by the players— who aren’t going overboard, just spamming “bootlicker” in the comment section, causing the Chief Editor of “Game Base” to almost lose their cool.

On the [RANK-Popular Game Rating], the current rating for “My World” is—

[7 points]

This is still due to Cloud Dream’s reputation. If not for their previous track record and image, the real score might be 0.5 points lower.

The hundreds of thousands of players who participated in the rating for the first time played a few hours of the game and still couldn’t quite figure out what the game was about.

Those who were truly immersed in the game felt that they had just touched the edge of the core gameplay, finding not only enjoyment but also an increasing sense of fun the more they played.

However, they still need more time to explore before they can give a complete evaluation, so they aren’t in a hurry to give their ratings.

Yet those media outlets and self-media that were blocked by Lincoln don’t have that kind of patience.

They had been waiting too long for Cloud Dream to make a mistake!

Now, they finally have a chance to vent their frustrations on Cloud Dream justifiably!