Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch - Chapter 538

Chapter 538: Chapter 518: Ashamed and Angrily

After Richard’s speech, everyone in the meeting room was excited and applauded enthusiastically.

Such flattery!

But in reality, many people had completely different thoughts.

For example, Gary, the public relations director, who looked excited on the surface, but was actually fretting in his heart, ‘Where did this technology come from?’

This is too sudden!

There was no news before this.

Not just NetDragon, but countless organizations, enterprises, and countries across Daxia and the world have been trying to crack virtual reality technology.

According to historical experience, once a technology is broken through, no matter how difficult it was before, it will be much easier for others to replicate.

However, because of Lincoln’s outrageous achievement, the technology seemed to have emerged out of the cracks in the stone, leaving little for those who followed to reference. The only information they had was that this technical route was indeed feasible.

This is valuable, but it’s far from enough.

At least until now, there has been no group in the world claiming any progress, let alone any individual who could replicate Lincoln’s achievement.

But out of the blue, NetDragon has cracked this technology?

It sounds like a scam no matter how you hear it!

Could it be that the boss has been duped?

Or did Richard poach the core technical staff from Cloud Dream at sky-high prices, and those people brought the technology over?

Wouldn’t that be illegal?

Gary was not excited at all. Instead, he was filled with worry.

At least half of the employees in the office shared Gary’s thoughts. Everyone could understand each other’s ideas with just a glance across the table.

Jason, on the other hand, was different.

He was genuinely excited by Richard’s speech — he was already somewhat idealistic and thus refused to give up.

Recently, after playing through Cloud Dream’s games one by one, he indeed felt a horrifying gap.

But he couldn’t determine how much of this gap was due to the hard technical reasons and how much was due to differences in game production concepts and design.

Jason thought he would never be able to figure this out, but now Richard had actually placed the opportunity right in front of him!

And as the person in charge! He has full authority!

He could fully mobilize NetDragon’s resources and show off all their strength on the new virtual reality platform, directly challenging Cloud Dream!

Put an end to the feud! And… Let’s just settle for a winner, there’s no deep hatred anyway.

He already had ideas for the new game!

Jason was in his prime, a time when his expressive desires were at their peak. Furthermore, he had been playing Cloud Dream’s games recently, and his inspiration seemed endless. The only regret was that without virtual reality technology, many ideas were just delusions.

But now, they even have the hardware!

For a moment, Jason felt a bit dreamy!

He didn’t care about thanking Richard for the promotion or expressing loyalty or setting goals. He directly asked, “Is the game engine mature? Is it hard to get started?”

Unexpectedly, Richard’s excited expression paused for a moment.

Jason didn’t notice and continued to speculate excitedly, “It shouldn’t be too difficult! Since it’s also the development of virtual reality games, the difficulty of getting started with the game engine should not be too different. If it’s very difficult, the learning cost would be too high, and Cloud Dream’s development team couldn’t have expanded so quickly!”

“What about software tools like intelligent algorithm for program design? I’ve seen their NPCs having very rich behavior patterns and high intelligence. It would be too much work to achieve this effect with our traditional tools. Should there be simpler tools available?”

…

Jason kept talking, with technical details popping out non-stop.

The smile on Richard’s face froze a little bit.

He suddenly realized a problem — they had indeed replicated Mirage Console’s technical, but strictly speaking, they only got the qualification to build a virtual world.

Specific tools required for use, especially the most important game engine, and time-saving development tools, are not included in the Mirage Console!

So, could these software tools be quickly developed based on the reverse-engineered technology?

Richard subconsciously looked at the only insider in the meeting room — Wesley.

But Wesley was also clueless.

Please, he is in marketing. Pulling strings, negotiating contracts, singing, drinking, and massages are his specialties.

But game development technology?

He knows shit about it!

Not to mention that he doesn’t understand, even the researchers in the R&D center doing reverse-engineering don’t understand!

—The technical field they are researching has little to no overlap with the technical field of game development!

What Jason and his team need is the work of a programming team, not their R&D team.

The R&D employees, marketing director Jason, and business student Richard, the three groups of people couldn’t come up with a single game developer, so naturally, they had no sense of it.

Now that Jason has brought it up, Richard realized that he had overlooked a serious problem.

Jason also finally sensed something wrong with the atmosphere and stopped talking.

The meeting room suddenly fell silent.

The warm celebration atmosphere dissipated, and the air became tense…

Gary couldn’t help but become more worried.

…

After a few seconds of silence, Richard suddenly got angry: “Programming department stays! Everyone else, dismissed!”

*

On the other side, the Cloud Dream meeting was also about to end.

Originally, only “My World” and “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness” were released last week. After Little Chun finished the report, and Samuel went over the sales situation and current state of the games, Lincoln intended to end the meeting.

― The things Samuel reported about weren’t much, just the new hunting map’s progress, the non-hunting “pictorial book” gameplay, and finally adding a lifeline for those players with the four-fold heavy crap-like taste.

Lincoln generously nodded in agreement.

But before he could announce the end of the meeting, Jerome quickly continued, reporting on the Marketing Department’s work: “The overseas market is developing steadily, and the console sales in Australia and Russia are booming, while our partners are also putting a lot of effort into promotions.”

“Also, in the European and Central Asian countries where we haven’t yet partnered, oh, and New Zealand, player communities are gradually emerging, and we’ll probably be approached for collaborations soon. Boss, do you have any specific instructions?”

“Let’s talk first, we have our conditions, and we won’t compromise them. If they can accept them, we’ll collaborate; if they can’t, we’ll put them on hold. After all, our production capacity isn’t going to increase anytime soon.”

“Understood.” Jerome continued: “Next is domestic matters.”

“Mainly the [Virtual Xiajing] project, after the first round of screening, the Marketing Department has collaborated with the Virtual City Building Department to start external negotiations. Some merchants have taken the initiative to mention that they hope we can provide technical support for players to place orders directly in the virtual world and buy real-world products.”

“How many merchants have made this request?” Lincoln asked curiously.

“There are currently six, mainly in clothing and jewelry.”

Lincoln thought for a moment; technically, of course, there was no problem, but he needed to consider the social impact: he was worried about causing people’s concern about complete monopoly.

But wouldn’t conducting a small-scale pilot be okay?

Lincoln decided to test public opinion: “Let’s start by opening up 10 slots, and you can decide which merchants to work with, but make sure to screen them well and establish an exit mechanism in advance: if a merchant can’t guarantee the shopping experience and after-sales support for players, or if player reviews are too low, they’ll be removed and not renewed.”

“We don’t lack money, compared to money, player trust and reputation are more important.”

Jerome nodded again: “Understood.”

“So, is there anything else? If not, let’s adjourn!” Lincoln declared the end of the meeting impatiently.

Before the people sitting in the meeting room could even stand up, Lincoln vanished with a flicker.

Leaving those in the virtual meeting room looking at each other, especially those who understand the technology.

Unable to help himself, Randall blinked at Little Chun then looked at Fred, “That wasn’t a teleportation gate or an eyepatch just now, was it? What was it? A new plugin feature?”

Little Chun and Fred shook their heads; it was their first time seeing it too.

“Don’t think about it, let’s get to work.” Little Chun shook her head, opened the teleportation gate, and left the office.

Randall and Fred accompanied her.

They still had a lot to do this week.

“Terraria” is already in the final stage, and “Battlefield” needs to complete as many single-player campaigns as possible.

Lincoln had already slipped over to Mavis’s side.

They had already taken care of the secondary artificial intelligence work and could now slack off a bit with peace of mind.

Of course, just for this morning.

In the afternoon, he still had to meet Camille Victoria, the teacher working at the Capital Museum, to see if the Capital Museum in [Virtual Xiajing] could be made more realistic and popular.

After all, the museum in [Virtual Xiajing] is likely to be the only place where all tourists can play with national treasures at will.

This would undoubtedly be a great thing for cultivating tourists’ aesthetic, cultural, artistic, historical, and other qualities.

So, strictly speaking, this is still a public welfare cause!

“This is all for the public good! And it’s a public welfare cause that can serve tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people. The museum should have no reason to refuse, right?”

Lincoln had made up his mind that he would use this excuse to persuade the museum staff.

If that doesn’t work, he’ll use his Money Ability.

If the Money Ability still doesn’t work, then he’ll have to try trolling people.

Anyway, he must have a good time!

*

“Hunter: Call of the Wilderness” has been online for nearly a week, and Samuel’s team has already completed the modifications needed.

Now that it’s been approved at the meeting, they’ll update it directly to the game.

In the “Hunter” world, on the vast South African Uerhoga Prairie, Ivan Ivanov is driving his all-terrain vehicle at full speed.

The horse runs very fast and is quite agile, making his chase very difficult.

Of course, this also has to do with his refusal to use a gun.

After chasing it for half a day, the unusual pure white “blue-horned horse” has exhausted its strength.

Its speed dropped drastically, panting heavily.

But Ivan Ivanov’s speed didn’t decrease at all, and he continued to floor the accelerator.

Seeing the opportunity, he leapt high with the help of the all-terrain vehicle’s speed, grabbing a huge ax at the same time and using all his strength to cleave it down!

“Ha!!”

With a roar, the huge ax falling from the sky mercilessly split the horse’s neck in half, blood splattered everywhere, and the rating went straight to the max!

‘Wild! Cool! A real muscular man!’ Ivan Ivanov rated himself in his heart.

After being trampled by a bear, he was determined to regain the “muscular man” label and refused to use guns, hunting with cold weapons instead. The audience’s reputation was quite good.

But contrary to the satisfied Ivan Ivanov, the live streaming room exploded:

“?????”

“WTF!”

“Are you serious? A rare albino animal, and you just axed it like that?”

“Is it you who’s crazy or me?!”