Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 458: 441: Virtual Xiajing!

Translator: 549690339

Considering the current user base of Cloud Dream, the number of participants in this competition must be at least several million people.

Under this scenario, the vast majority of players don’t really think they’ll be the lucky one to win the four million.

Even the prize money for the top 100 doesn’t have much hope, so there’s no gains or losses attitude.

Basically, they’ve all turned into fun-loving people, just playing the game for a laugh and joining in on the excitement.

But ordinary players can have fun, eSports clubs can’t!

Although the development of this situation was completely unexpected, the various eSports clubs still acted quickly.

It’s their job, and they have to act.

As the Burned Boat Club’s manager began to call everyone together, this included main players, substitute players, logistics team, coach, analyst, nutritionist, and psychological counselor. Everyone had to attend.

After everyone arrived, the manager started asking questions.

First question: “Raise your hand if you can play cards.”

Second question: “Raise your hand again if you can play Mahjong.”

And then there was a problem—

About 70% of professional players had experience playing Landlord, but less than 10% had experience playing Mahjong.

If Lincoln knew this, he would definitely sigh: no successors, the national essence is not preserved!

But in fact, given the intensity of these professional players’ daily training, who would have the mood to play that?

Even if they had played it before, it was mostly because they went home for the New Year and learned it to accompany their elders for fun.

So, things were a bit awkward.

In the past, eSports clubs had only one goal: to win the championship.

But now, it’s not that simple!

A more accurate way to put it is: let the club’s players win the championship.

That’s because the club’s overall development is still immature, and many brand sponsors don’t sponsor the entire team but rather individual players.

That’s why when the team is in competition, some players have the same logo on their clothes, while others have completely different logos.

If all the players were to rest and let the janitors at the base take the field, it would be a bit difficult to handle…

Not to mention the fees for many sponsored brands would be unattainable, and the janitors might not be willing to!

Why wouldn’t they just go and participate themselves?

They signed a cleaning contract, not a competition contract…

“It seems that a temporary signing is not impossible.” The manager was silent, brainstorming while standing there, “The problem is, no one can guarantee that they can win!”

“Or should we have a small Card King competition within the club first?”

The more he thought about it, the stranger it became…

Lance was sitting down there, watching the manager scratching his head non-stop, and teammates staring at the ceiling with blank eyes, doubting life.

His mentality was quite good, and he even planned to look for Shuihua in the evening to teach him how to play cards.

Although Shuihua’s level was average, it was better than his, who didn’t even know how to play.

In the laboratory, after working all morning, Lincoln left on time for lunch.

At this time, he finally had time to pick up his phone and see if he had missed any news.

First is the company group, everyone is discussing the boss’s surreal ideas, and there’s no problem.

Then it’s the Internet trends.

This is a bit special.

Usually, when Cloud Dream does something big, there’s always a huge ripple effect on the Internet.

But this time, it’s a bit subtle, with only a lively comment section under the video.

But outside the comment section, the impact was much smaller than before.

Lincoln sank into brief thoughts.

But he quickly put down his phone and focused on eating.

—Let them be, with over ten million in prize money thrown out, there’s no way it’s not causing a stir.

As for the specific reason, he didn’t want to think about it too much; just wait for Samuel’s report later.

Out of habit, Samuel would summarize Cloud Dream’s major marketing and promotional actions every week, and specially note the details that should be paid attention to.

So Lincoln is happy to save some mental effort.

Now the most important thing is to focus on these truly advanced weapons of the last century and make up for the lack of Battlefield’s sensory database.

Oh, right, he also needs to find a place to learn horse riding.

Then he can join in game development.

But things don’t always go smoothly. Before he could return to the lab after lunch, Henry’s phone call came again.

Lincoln was somewhat reluctant to answer: I’ve said it twice, I’m not researching mechs, so why don’t you give up?

“Hello?” Lincoln sighed and answered the phone.

Henry’s somewhat hesitant voice came through: “Are you interested in… researching exoskeletons?”

“Huh?” Lincoln was quite surprised.

And subconsciously thought back: The last two times Henry asked him, was it actually about researching exoskeletons, powered armors, and such?

He thought Henry didn’t want him to mess around, and since he wasn’t planning on doing it anyway, he denied it without even thinking.

But now, listening to Henry’s tone, could it be that… he got it all wrong?

Was Henry actually hoping that he would research it?

“Well… I’m not against it, it’s just…”

“Just what?” Henry immediately asked.

“The timing is a bit difficult, I’m really busy!” Lincoln decisively began to pull away.

“I need to find a venue and go through approvals, and make some antique stuff from a hundred years ago, not even to mention installing some seriously outdated machine guns on them…”

“Stop, stop, stop!!!” Listening to Lincoln’s increasingly outrageous demands, Henry hurriedly called for a halt.

“I can help you solve the venue problem, and it’s okay for an airship to fly over Xiajing City. But we need to strictly review each person boarding the airship. Also, absolutely no machine guns! Once machine guns are installed, the nature changes, and even the most outdated fighter jet would still be a fighter jet…”

“Really…” Lincoln blinked, “But when I talked about approvals, I didn’t mean the airship thing.”

How could you ask a boss of an entertainment company to solve problems encountered with your exoskeleton technology?

You must mention all possible requests you can think of.

And Lincoln has so much money that his demands obviously had nothing to do with money.

“…” Henry was silent for a moment before continuing: “Then what did you want to say?”

“I’m planning to replicate Xiajing City in the virtual world.” This was something Lincoln had been planning for a while.

“But rest assured, it’s not a complete one-to-one replication.”

“My plan is to completely replicate the basic framework, but with some proportional deformations, where many peripheral landmark buildings and landscapes are pulled into the inner circle.”

“The final effect is probably to condense the Sixth Ring’s content into an area of the Third Ring.”

“There is no technical difficulty in doing this, but considering the special nature of Xiajing, I guess if I just go ahead without regard for consequences, it might be halted.”

On the phone, Henry opened his mouth but did not know what to say.

Because if an ordinary person does this, it is indeed possible to be halted…

“So, could you arrange for someone to help me see which buildings and which areas shouldn’t be included when the time comes?”

Strictly speaking, with the development of satellites today, there are hardly any secrets left in the maps of Xiajing or the capitals of other major countries.

Even if there are secrets, they would be hidden inside the buildings and not visible from the outside.

But Lincoln still took the initiative to invite supervision and impose restrictions on himself, although such restrictions might be completely nominal.

—After all, if you really want to keep a place secret, the best measure is for everyone to believe that such a place does not exist.

Lincoln deliberately made extra efforts to ensure that this project would not mysteriously stall due to some “unspeakable” strange reasons.

Although there are many other cities in Daxia to choose from, Xiajing is still special.

How many Daxia citizens still long to come to Xiajing but never make it?

“That should be fine,” said Henry, “Shouldn’t be a big problem.”

With so many foreigners coming in and out of Xiajing every day, there’s not much to worry about in creating a whole virtual world city. It could even be a good thing.

“Well, if that’s the case, I can free up a lot of things and tell me about the exoskeleton issue so I can see if I can help.”

“Control system.” When it came to the key point, Henry’s tone instantly became serious.

“Huh?” Lincoln was a little surprised.

Brain-controlled prosthetic limbs have been developed, so why not just transfer the system, replace the original electromechanical control exoskeleton directly with brain control, and call it a day?

Could they still encounter problems?

But as Henry explained, Lincoln gradually understood.

He had oversimplified the issue.

The experts had achieved this functionality long ago.

But they wanted more than just being satisfied with a simple improvement in logistics capabilities.

They hoped that the exoskeleton would become a truly flexible weapon, with not only a super-fast response speed but also an intelligent control system that could aid users in performing far beyond conventional capabilities.

For instance: jumping several meters high.

Furthermore: automatic aiming! Even autonomously shooting at targets in the user’s blind spot that the user had not noticed.

To integrate prediction, intelligence gathering, decision-making assistance, and other functions, making the exoskeleton not only suitable for logistics but also suitable for complex and changing battlefield environments.

In short, they wanted it to be intelligent enough to become a weapon in itself, rather than just a weapon carrier.

And all the functions had been developed, but the only issue was… compatibility problems.

The great systems they developed could not be integrated with each other…

The key issue is that they have not fully digested Lincoln’s brain control algorithm. They basically understand and can use it, but trying to modify it and make complex adaptive changes still requires more exploration.

They have been at it for a long time, and they want to see if Lincoln can give them some inspiration.

“I see…” Lincoln fell into a brief contemplation.

He didn’t ask why people who were advocating peace on the surface were secretly working on weapons – he wasn’t that naive.

What he was considering now was, how long would this work take?

Logically, he could solve this problem in a couple of days, given certain reasons.

But that’s not how things should be done.

It’s not like there’s an urgent need…

Considering the major countries and their efforts for lasting peace, the work would not be completed quickly, and even if the technology was developed, it would not be used or even revealed.

Completing it a few days sooner or later would not make a big difference.

“This job is a bit tricky. Give me half a month at least,” Lincoln thought about it and gave a time he thought was acceptable.

“Deal!” Henry had no objections and was even a little surprised, “I’ll send you the stuff this afternoon!”

As Lincoln returned to the laboratory, he thought about setting up a city construction team quickly and started building the Virtual Xiajing.

By the way, the team should be scattered across major cities around the world, absorbing some nutrients so that after Xiajing, replicas of those cities could also be created.

Although the virtual world is different from map software, avoiding huge computational waste, you can’t cast a wide net and replicate the entire world.

However, those global cities with unique characteristics should be doable.

When breaking into the local market, it will likely be a powerful tool.

As for whether they will have opinions on that?

Well…

They’ll deal with it when they come knocking at the door!