Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Surprisingly, this group did not belong to any teams streaming live, but was a group of college students from the same department.

Even more absurd: these 38 players were the only 38 male students in their entire department.

What’s absurd was not the small number of male students, as similar male-to-female ratios exist in many schools, especially in specific majors.

What was truly absurd was that these 38 students had adopted the Da Vinci Sleep Method to circumvent the anti-addiction system. They had fought the Ender Dragon for almost an entire day and night relying on their remarkable ability to stay awake.

What does this imply?

— All the courses in their major did not have any male students present for the whole day on Tuesday.

Not a single one.

This was too eye-catching!

Their counselor was already heading to their dormitory to confront them.

In the end, after Mavis made the announcement, she checked back on the team she had high hopes for only to find all 38 of them had logged off.

Mavis was puzzled, patting her head she checked on her sleeping Master, Lincoln, and decided not to disturb him. Instead, she went to the comment section to watch the heated discussions.

Mavis posted the announcement under Lincoln’s personal account, making the tone less formal.

「We are honored that the Ender Dragon BOSS battle has sparked widespread enthusiasm for challenges among players.

To encourage the spirit of courage in players, we will provide an additional reward for the first 10 teams worldwide to defeat the Ender Dragon—

Early access to module creation permission!

The original intention of “My World” was to give players greater freedom and allow everyone to create the world they love.

For this reason, we have broken down the entire world into simple blocks to make the process as simple as possible for everyone.

At the same time, we are aware that in simplifying the difficulty, we have inevitably restricted some players’ creativity due to the lack of materials and rules.

However, this was never our intention.

To make up for this shortcoming, the module creation function was born!

This is a creative system based on “My World” but is more complex and offers more freedom than the base game. It gives the game greater possibilities and satisfies players’ individual needs on a deeper level.

Custom blocks, custom monsters, custom items, and even custom stories and gameplay.

All rights will be restored to you.

Players who haven’t participated in the challenge need not worry, as the relevant permissions will be fully opened one week after the Ender Dragon has been defeated.

We wish every player a great time playing!」

Beneath this announcement, the heated discussions among the players were mainly focused on the ongoing battle for the first victory.

Mainly because the term “module creation” does not sound like something that ordinary players would engage in, and the announcement mentioned that this feature is “more complex” than the game itself.

Many players who started playing games due to Cloud Dream had not even heard of module creation and are still asking about it in confusion in the comment section.

Even for veteran players, many have only heard of it and have not interacted with it much.

Prior to this, not many domestic game companies had made games that grant module permissions, so there was a lack of foundation for this type of content.

But that doesn’t matter now.

After all, transitioning from traditional MOD creation to virtual reality game MOD creation won’t reduce the learning cost, despite not starting from scratch.

It is as if every player worldwide has been placed on the same starting line.

Of course, the focus on Lincoln also means that some people are discussing the possibilities of the modules.

Some creative players have been inspired by the series of “customization” in the announcement, enthusiastically discussing the possibilities:

“I wonder if the creation process is difficult, if not, creating a warfare MOD with airplanes, cannons, and submachine guns could let us play ‘Battlefield’ early, right?”

“That makes sense! It’s not like people are still waiting for game companies to make games at this point? If you want to play something, make it yourself!”

“Speaking of which, since even something as exaggerated as customizing rules can be done, customizing clothing shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Can we have sexy lingerie?”

“Nudist Beach?”

“Harem Village?”

“Too small! Think bigger! Isn’t Super Tomato always building palaces? Isn’t that a ready-made harem? Could it be that he got the news early and started laying things out ahead of time? Didn’t he always say that he had Lincoln’s contact information?”

“???”

“Just a thought: would adding serious mating modules be possible? I’ve been bothered for a long time by the calves, lambs, chicks, and villagers who just ‘poof’ into existence from thin air! Is there any creature that can produce offspring without mating?”

“Is that for game integrity? I can’t even be bothered to expose you! Not because I’m lazy, but because I want it too…”

“If that’s the case, shouldn’t the right to undress be given back to the players?”

…

In the comment section, topics derailed at the speed of light and quickly turned into a “Bizarre Human Preferences” contest.

Mavis can’t help but consider whether to delete some comments or not.

However, the players’ thoughts in the comment section essentially serve as a collection of opinions on the extent of module permissions, and deleting comments would contradict this purpose.

Also, Mavis is well-aware that most people here are just joining in the excitement and making jokes, not seriously discussing lewd topics.

Ultimately, she decides to pretend not to see the comments and discuss them with Lincoln after he wakes up.

On the other hand, this announcement also caught the attention of many industry professionals.

In the eyes of players, this is just a new gameplay feature, but for professionals, they would not treat it so casually.

After all, who could say for sure if this would be another trend in game development.

Just like when Lincoln successively created “Traveler of the Wind” and “Light Encounter,” almost completely revitalizing the casual game market.

Since November, countless casual games, either following the trend or having unique ideas, have been released and achieved very impressive results.

In the future, developers will no longer have to focus solely on the shooting game genre, but will have another path that seems small but actually has hundreds of forks to follow.

“Casual games” are not as simple as “shooting games.” They represent a game concept, a mine that countless small and medium-sized game development companies can tap into for decades.

So, will “opening up MOD permissions for players” be another opportunity, another trend?

With just one announcement, many game developers have already started thinking about whether they should also reserve space for MOD creation in their upcoming game projects.

This is the current influence of Cloud Dream – more accurately, Lincoln – on the Daxia gaming industry.

*

As people watch the excitement from the sidelines, players who have been wiped out repeatedly on the floating islands in “The End” and then restarted the battle can’t help but be more desperate to win!

Although many people don’t quite understand the use of mods and how to apply them in the short term, that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that they have something that others don’t.

A lot of teams played until they were kicked offline due to the anti-addiction system last night, took a sick leave from work, set the alarm clock, and went straight to sleep.

It wasn’t until they had slept for eight hours and fought off the addiction that they went back online full and hydrated.

After starting the battle this time, many teams felt that the difficulty had dropped significantly compared to before they went offline last night.

-In fact, the difficulty hadn’t changed; it was just that their energy and focus had increased, they responded faster, and made fewer mistakes based on their full understanding of the game mechanics and strategies yesterday.

Such an effect might not be obvious for an individual, but when the entire team is like this, the effect is significant!

In the Prelude stage, not only is there no difficulty, but they even start to get fancy –

Instead of methodically destroying crystals one by one, they build defenses before the battle begins, destroy several crystals all at once, and then quickly clear out the one or two hundred Endermen that spawn using the defenses and traps.

In this way, they only need to do this three or four times to end the Prelude stage and enter the formal battle.

The strongest in this aspect are currently the team of Super Tomato, who can destroy five crystals in one go, then destroy the remaining five crystals in the second round, and finish all the crystals in two rounds.

In this way, the subsequent two phases, especially the troublesome hurricane environment, are skipped directly!

Their team has been streamlined: some people can’t keep up with their energy, some have added enough excitement, and others think they will only cause chaos … In any case, by today, the original 135-member team has only 52 members left.

This is still far more than most pioneer teams.

To make up for this weakness, Super Tomato has invited a powerful outsider – a redstone expert.

This expert spent half an hour studying the Ender Dragon’s combat mechanics, another hour designing the battlefield in creative mode, and finally, with everyone’s protection, took half an hour to build the battlefield after entering The End.

During the battle, the expert stayed underground with four levers in front of him.

When needed, they pull a lever down, and a large group of Endermen are blown to pieces.

After the explosion, they pull the lever back up to isolate the explosives and the BOSS to prevent the BOSS from being blown up and entering the next phase early.

In the meantime, others can climb up a few blocks with him to replenish beds or TNT blocks when they’re attacking the BOSS.

– Underground is a good place; as long as you dig deep enough, you can avoid the damage from “Death Roll” and “Dragon Breath.”.

The only problem is, if you dig too deep and the Ender Dragon starts using “Earthquake”, you won’t be able to escape in time and will be killed underground.

This is another test of the team’s battle rhythm and execution.

Knowing how to skillfully use explosive materials like beds and TNT to quickly clear out small monsters and obstacles without blowing up the dragon—which would increase the difficulty of skipping stages—has become a key skill for improving the pioneering efficiency.

And those who can use redstone technology to construct “automated” buildings are undoubtedly the core talents!

However, redstone technology has only been around for a short time – not even a week – and such experts haven’t really come to the forefront yet, and they are still only known to friends and acquaintances.

As a result, many teams don’t even know this aspect of the game.

It wasn’t until they saw Super Tomato’s team, with the addition of a redstone expert, that the difficulty suddenly dropped, and everyone truly realized –

Redstone might be the key to winning or losing the race for the world’s first!

So –

All teams are desperately seeking experts!

For a time, everyone yearned for redstone experts, but could not find any.

As a result, many teams started posting bounties on live streaming platforms and social networking sites to invite redstone experts to join their team temporarily.

The price was even quickly pushed up to an outrageous 100,000 per day!

– Because beds, TNT blocks, and Ender Dragons will all destroy mechanical structures, redstone experts cannot simply build structures and leave. Instead, they must participate fully in the process and constantly repair and modify.

This limitation significantly increased the price.

Chasing Wind even publicly posted, seeking redstone experts who were willing to work part-time and join their team.

As for the remuneration?

30,000 per hour.

If they successfully get the world’s first, no matter how much was given before, it will be doubled again!