Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Interestingly, this was the first time the two were so close together.

But this encounter didn’t have the dramatic intensity seen in movies where sworn enemies meet and have hateful looks in their eyes—Richard couldn’t even see him.

After observing for a while, Lincoln looked away and watched the group busy “building a house.”

This was NetDragon’s programming team, who had been incessantly urged by their boss Richard for several days, at least three times a day, as if he was whipping them.

Not only were they unable to further analyze the meaning of each line of code built on the reverse-engineering results of the R&D team, but they couldn’t even thoroughly grasp the functional modules of the code.

The virtual world they made now was less their own creation, and more so a fluke where they stumbled upon the entrance to the original template.

After entering, they wanted to use the virtual world’s built-in physics engine?

Well, they need to know how to operate it!

Cloud Dream staff could summon panels and development tools with a wave of their hand, but that’s because Lincoln had prepared them in advance.

Now, NetDragon’s programmers could also summon panels with a wave, but their panels were blank and in an initialized state.

Want development tools?

Go explore on your own!

The development tools at Cloud Dream were not available for free.

Although it was Mavis who helped build the first few virtual worlds at Cloud Dream.

In other words, Mavis was Lincoln’s initial “development tool,” and the specific way to use it was to shout, “Mavis! Help!”

As for now, Cloud Dream staff used development tools created through a collaboration between Mavis and Lincoln.

The programmers at NetDragon, however, were not afforded this luxury.

They were still painstakingly researching and developing tools, and the mentally challenged cows strolling nearby, as well as the unfinished house in front of them, were all made using rudimentary development software.

Using this poorly functioning software had taken their department an entire day and night.

Even so, both Richard and the programmers themselves were extremely excited.

For the programming team, no matter how rudimentary, this was still virtual reality technology! Revolutionary technology!

As for Richard, since it had been proven feasible, everything else was simple; just pile on manpower.

Using the core team to analyze the technology and ensure secrecy, expand the team on a large scale, and complete the tool development. Once the tool issue was resolved, the game’s preliminary preparations would also be completed, which could then be incorporated into the production process.

As for the money problem, they could just keep getting loans!

With virtual reality technology, who would fear being unable to obtain money?

The more Richard thought about it, the more excited he became—he felt success was beckoning him!

Lincoln, on the other hand, had seen enough.

He was considering how to handle this situation, and his first three plans were as follows:

1. Find Lorin, report to the police, and send Richard to jail.

2. Since the other party used such underhanded tactics, Lincoln was fully justified in directly sabotaging NetDragon’s servers, wiping all their online data and making it irrecoverable.

3. Pretend not to know anything and let NetDragon recruit people, develop games, and diligently expand the virtual world. Then, take it over afterward, making NetDragon put in all that effort for nothing.

Of course, there was an even more ruthless method:

Still pretend not to know anything, but wait for NetDragon to begin operating in the virtual world. Then, suddenly take over their system and delete the exit option for all people!

Or, find a good time to delete Richard’s exit option only, and then overload his senses with negative stimuli like “depression,” “sadness,” “pain,” “soreness,” “hunger,” “fear,” and so on, eventually destroying his mind.

Lincoln wasn’t sure he could do it, but he felt it was highly likely!

However, this was just a thought, as they weren’t truly enemies with deep-seated grudges, so there was no need for such inhumane measures.

As for the first three options, from a purely profit-based perspective, the third one was clearly the best.

But—

“Forget it, I’m too lazy to deal with you. You can just go to jail, Richard.” Lincoln said.

Letting him stay would only lead to endless troubles, and in case the technology was leaked again, especially to overseas parties, it would cause a heap of trouble.

So, it was better to just forget about it.

It’s better to act swiftly and decisively!

*

But before he left, Lincoln could still give them a little surprise.

After some thought, he turned his gaze to the group of mentally challenged cows.

First, he adjusted the cows’ horns to make them sharper and longer, then added the behavior of “attacking red objects”. Finally, he introduced visual deception, making everyone’s buttocks emit a red light that only the cows could see.

For NetDragon’s current programming team, this workload would take a whole day to complete, while it took Lincoln less than 5 minutes to pull it off effortlessly.

Afterwards, he pulled Mavis back a few steps away from the crowd, just as he was about to start the operation, suddenly another idea struck him:

“Almost forgot, since this has nothing to do with Cloud Dream, it’s fine to add pain sensation.”

“Might as well collect some data for Chang’an while I’m at it.”

Upon finishing this operation, Lincoln had another thought: “Since I’ve added pain sensation, I might as well add more expressive blood plasma effects to make it more terrifying.”

“Hmm, for safety, Richard’s pain sensation will be set to 150%, others 50%, OK, that’s it.”

Having solved the final issue, all that was left, of course, was to start the operation!