Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 479: 462: 【Player’s Vote】!

The next day, as soon as Lincoln arrived at the company, Samuel came to find him.

Lincoln and Mavis developed games together, and although he cared about them, he only paid attention to important matters.

The daily operation of the game was handed over to a specialized operation team, which was under Samuel’s management.

Samuel’s team had expanded many times, and as the content developed by Lincoln increased, it was expected that the team would continue to recruit and establish new groups.

Seeing Samuel walking into the office, Lincoln spoke before she could say anything: “Player feedback? The smell of shit?”

These two keywords made Samuel stop in her tracks and even unconsciously take a step back.

Samuel noticed the massive player feedback immediately.

To verify the authenticity of the feedback, she entered the game to experience it with a responsible attitude.

As for the specific feelings –

Her response seemed to reveal some psychological trauma since she instinctively stepped back as soon as Lincoln mentioned the “smell of shit.”

Although feeling somewhat uncomfortable, Samuel still nodded her head and said, “That’s right. The two biggest complaints from the players are about pay-to-win and the smell of shit.”

“The players nowadays are too fragile!” Lincoln felt disappointed, but quickly compromised, “Reducing the smell a little bit is not impossible.”

However, Lincoln’s compromise was not complete: “We can’t just lower it because they ask. We have to consider the silent majority, who might not care or even think it’s a game feature.”

“After all, players who don’t care won’t specifically send feedback saying they [don’t mind the smell of animal feces, and you don’t have to change it], right?”

“It seems like… that’s true?” Samuel was a bit uncertain, “So what do you suggest, boss?”

“Let’s hold a vote, and let all the players participating in the closed beta vote. We’ll decide how to make changes based on the final results.”

Samuel blinked her eyes, feeling that this was a good and democratic idea, and nodded her head in agreement.

Having resolved this issue, Lincoln asked about another problem –

“You said that players have complaints about pay-to-win. What do you mean? We don’t have any pay-to-win channels. What complaints could they have?”

Samuel couldn’t help but smile and answered, “The complaint is that there is no pay-to-win channel. They hope Cloud Dream can open pay-to-win channels, so they can directly purchase guns, fishing rods, and mountain bikes in the shop.”

“Especially the latter two, the demand is particularly strong. Also, among the players who raised this issue, there is a very large proportion of ‘tourist players’ who are not interested in hunting.”

[‘Players actively calling for pay-to-win’] was not the first time something like this happened at Cloud Dream.

Apart from the free “Traveler of the Wind,” every subsequent game from Cloud Dream had players who wanted to spend money for convenience.

Some games had stronger calls for it, and some were just a token gesture. Samuel was almost used to it.

Given Lincoln’s heightened vigilance against things like “in-app purchases” and “microtransactions,” he didn’t want to approve them. Otherwise, the money earned from previous games could have been doubled.

However, he also knew that he wasn’t infallible, so instead of expressing his thoughts, he asked Samuel for her opinion: “What do you think?”

“I think we can open it with limitations.” It was evident that Samuel had already thought about the issue before meeting Lincoln, “Open only fishing rods and mountain bikes, do not open hunting guns.”

“The theme of the game dictates that its content will be entirely biased towards players who like hunting. However, players who are not interested in hunting can find very little pleasure in the game.”

“Compared to the wilderness area of ‘Paradise,’ the scenery is only different, and the appeal is obviously not enough. If we can enhance the interest of leisure activities such as fishing and sightseeing, the appeal to this type of players will be significantly enhanced.”

“At the same time, players who are passionate about hunting can also benefit. With more guns available for purchase with in-game currency, it won’t significantly reduce their enthusiasm for hunting.”

Lincoln thought about it and felt that Samuel’s reasoning was very convincing.

However, in the end, he said: “Let’s include this in the next voting session as well; if over 70% agree, we’ll open it.”

Samuel nodded and efficiently prepared for the vote.

Lincoln logged into the virtual world, intending to check the progress of “Battlefield.”

However, as soon as he logged in, Little Chun’s invitation was sent, without wasting a second.

Looking at the invitation’s content, it said that there was an issue in the “My World” closed beta testing and that he needed to go and take a look.

So, Lincoln changed his plans and immediately accepted Little Chun’s invitation and went to the development map of “My World.”

“What’s the hurry?”

In front of him was a flat grassland, and more than a dozen developers of “My World” were floating in the air, staring wide-eyed at the towering, strange building in front of them.

Lincoln also walked over, looked up at the building, and wondered, “What is this?”

Little Chun responded, “Come take a look, this is the problem.”

Lincoln opened the panel, let himself hover, and followed Little Chun’s pace.

He stood in the air and began carefully examining the building –

There was nothing special about the base, which seemed to be a simple pedestal that supported the main structure of the building.

At the core of the building, there was a comfortable house: two rows of small beds, torches on the ground, a chandelier on the ceiling, and even full glass walls on both sides, providing excellent lighting.

However, inside this comfortable house, five villagers were running around in panic, unable to escape due to the enclosed structure of the house.

Why were the villagers panicking?

It was because less than five meters away, separated by just a crude fence, a zombie was glaring at the villagers.

“What is this for?” Lincoln didn’t understand.

“Take a closer look; it’s almost the moment.” Instead of answering him, Little Chun asked Lincoln to pay attention to the roof.

The rooftop was constructed into a rectangular rock pool, with flowing water placed on one side, forming a water source that constantly flowed towards the other side.

At one corner of the other side, there was an opening, with a magma block hanging above it.

“?” Lincoln didn’t understand.

Suddenly-

“Boom!”

An iron golem appeared out of nowhere, falling into the pool.

“Oh!” Lincoln realized why they used zombies to scare the villagers below.

When the villagers got scared and couldn’t escape, they would pray for a warrior to be sent by the gods, and then an iron golem would be summoned.

However, as soon as the iron golem was summoned, it was pushed by the water towards the other side.

Waiting for it there was a magma block!

The iron golem was pushed onto the magma, and with a loud “bang,” a fire erupted!

The iron golem’s body immediately turned red-hot, its health rapidly decreasing until it was burned to death by the magma.

After the iron golem died, the iron ingots it dropped would fall through the hole and be collected in the chest below.

So, the zombies below roared forever, and the villagers in the house lived in constant fear.

Even when night fell, they would be startled awake just as they were about to sleep, unable to rest and forced to constantly pray for a warrior to come save them.

But the warriors that were summoned were immediately pushed by the water toward the magma, burned from head to death, turned into iron ingots and collected in the chest.

So, strictly speaking, this was actually a sophisticated “iron farming machine”!

“Who the hell came up with this?” Lincoln was amazed.

He was very curious about what kind of mental state the player who invented this device had…

It was simply devilish!

“This was made by Super Tomato in his own world this morning,” Little Chun explained to Lincoln.

“This behavior is just… too cruel,” she said, frowning as she looked at the panicked villagers in the house, who were as lifelike as real people.

“Should we make some changes?” Little Chun suggested that it might be necessary to improve the villagers’ protection mechanism.

“Yeah, we do need to make some changes,” Lincoln agreed.

Upon hearing that, Little Chun and the employees around her had their eyes light up, with one girl nodding repeatedly: “Right, right! This is too hellish!”

But Lincoln’s next words were, “So, let’s turn all the villagers into fools!”

“Huh?” There was a chorus of incredulous gasps around him.

Lincoln explained to them: “You feel sorry for the villagers mainly because they’re so realistic and so much like real people. As long as we make all of them look like fools, with simple and crude behavior logic, it won’t seem so cruel, right?”

After hearing this explanation, the employees were all dumbfounded.

But no matter what they thought, Lincoln would not ban this way of playing the game.

In his previous life, he had been a standard peace-loving player, diligently exploring and building houses, focusing his energy on constructing various large-scale creations. This kind of outrageous thing was really unheard of to him.

This was probably another example of the information cocoon room effect.

But this didn’t stop him from appreciating such creativity.

Especially considering that Super Tomato had uncovered so many hidden rules within a day, even skillfully using these rules to create this contraption, Lincoln couldn’t help but be amazed!

He loved seeing players use their own intelligence to find unique ways of playing the game.

Instead of following the set route, following the rules and proceeding step by step.

So, not only would he not forbid it, but he would also encourage this kind of gameplay.

However, just looking at this “iron farming machine”, Lincoln could imagine that players with inspired creativity would certainly come up with even more outrageous things.

The torment the villagers were about to endure was far from over.

Lincoln turning the villagers into fools was just a way to help players overcome their psychological barriers ahead of time.

“Alright, alright, get to work! Chop down the regular villagers’ language modules and behavior logic as much as possible, aiming to fix it in two days.”

“Fine…” the development team girls, hearing Lincoln describe turning the villagers “foolish” as a “fix,” wanted to roll their eyes at him.

But they had to listen to the boss’s requests, reluctantly deleting the behavior logic they had compiled.

At the same time, in the world of “Hunter: Shit… Call of the Wild.”

A letter popped up in front of all the online players, automatically unfolding in front of them.

The letter contained the two votes for “animal feces odor” and “limited opening for pay-to-win.”

Even offline players could receive the voting information through the Cloud Dream Game App on their mobile phones.

All the players who participated in the game’s closed beta received the invitation without exception, making the democratic spirit utterly impeccable.

Although the content of this “player referendum” was outrageous to some extent…

It was absolutely advanced in terms of democracy!