Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 178 - 178: 176: Opening a Store in the Virtual World?

First, he thought about the launch plan for “Light Encounter” and logged into the virtual studio at 9 0’clock to discuss it briefly with everyone.

Considering the extreme popularity of “Assassins’ Alliance,” everyone agreed to delay the launch for a week and release a trailer this week.

They also decided on the direction for the trailer—piggyback on the popularity of “Traveler of the Wind.”

It was only half a month since the all-platform version of this game was released, and each week after the release of a Mirage batch, millions of new players enter the world of “Traveler of the Wind.”

Under these compounded factors, “Traveler of the Wind,” although nowhere near the phenomenal “Assassins’ Alliance” in terms of popularity, has a terrifying amount of players compared to “Assassins’ Alliance.”

Since the popularity is so high, it would be a waste not to piggyback on it!

However, Lincoln did not plan to get involved in these matters. Despite his busy days, the studio employees were not idle.

New employees were constantly being recruited, and everyone was helping them to quickly grasp development tools and adapt to the new work rhythm and corporate culture.

—In other words, complete your tasks during working hours.

Otherwise, when it’s time to get off work, everyone will go fishing, skiing, or matchmaking. You won’t find anyone to help.

Even you are not allowed to work overtime, which means you can only pile up your work for tomorrow, and that can be troublesome.

Although the boss wouldn’t make things difficult for you, these new employees have strong comprehensive abilities and a corresponding strong sense of self-esteem. They can’t accept being the team’s weak link and slowing down the overall work.

So, the studio has always been bustling.

Unbeknownst to the players, the Continental Hotel, which was used for training new staff at the studio, has already updated more than 30 new tasks.

Not only were the new employees practicing, but many old employees who had nothing to do would also add some interesting ideas here.

With this group of vigorous and unspoken employees, Lincoln would just have to give the trailer a final look.

Then Lincoln assigned a new task—collect data for an issue of “Assassin’s Weekly,” to be released on Friday.

In simple terms, it involved compiling interesting, large-scale, or crazed player data to show to players, increasing game popularity and player loyalty.

With this, the meeting ended, and Lincoln didn’t share any more ideas.

—He was changing his approach. Previously, due to inertia, he always released games on Saturdays, which wasn’t convenient for everyone to rest. From now on, he decided to finish tasks on Fridays as much as possible.

This way, not only would the employees be relaxed, but he would also save trouble, making it a win-win for everyone.

After assigning the tasks, Lincoln breathed a sigh of relief. As he was about to log off, Randall stopped him: “Wait a moment.”

“What’s up?”

“The tomatoes Super Tomato sent to you have arrived at the studio. Shall I bring them to your home?”

“???” Lincoln looked at Randall in confusion. “Just a few tomatoes, why not just cut them up and eat them?”

“Super Tomato sent specific instructions, saying these are freshly harvested Plateau Tomatoes, grown at an altitude of 3500 meters, taking eight to nine months to mature, and can only be harvested once a year. They are said to be the best-tasting sandy tomatoes, which are usually hard to come by.”

Recalling the contents written on the card that came with the tomatoes, Randall recounted it to Lincoln. “It’s a gift from someone, so we shouldn’t eat it casually, right?”

“Alright, fine. I’ll have someone pick them up and post a thank-you message.”

After hanging up the phone, Lincoln found Yue Pengju and asked him to help him pick up the items from the studio— the security conditions in the neighborhood were good enough for Pengju to leave with ease, especially with other security team members watching over things.

After finally finishing these work-related trivialities, Lincoln, with his smooth train of thought and fiery state of mind, once again stood in front of the large-scale neural modem in the living room center, eager to finish it as quickly as possible.

However, trouble always found him: less than half an hour later, his phone rang again.

Lincoln glanced at the incoming call display with the name “Luke” and was momentarily puzzled: “Who is this?”

“Oh, the lawyer.” He hurriedly answered the phone; with so many recent events, he had almost forgotten about him.

“Hello? Mr. Luo, what’s up?”

“Mr. Lin, all three companies being sued have contacted me and expressed their desire for private mediation. Two of them also said they wanted to meet you in person for communication.”

“I don’t have time to deal with them. Let’s mediate if they are willing to accept the terms. If not, let’s go to court.” Lincoln felt very impatient.

Feeling Lincoln’s strong stance, Luke didn’t say any more, “Understood.” He hung up the phone right after he said that.

Lincoln didn’t care at all.

The reason he hired a lawyer wasn’t to seek justice or fairness. His goal was simple: to disgust them.

If you’re convinced, apologize and pay up; if you’re not convinced, go to court and play there.

Think that I would waste my precious R&D time to sit down with you bottom-feeding people and discuss how to mediate?

Do you deserve it?

Do I care about your compensation?

What nonsense!

Adjusting his mood, Lincoln focused once more, attempting to dive into his research.

But it was just half an hour later when his mobile phone rang again!

“Mavis, turn off my phone!” Lincoln’s anger finally got the better of him, “Even if the sky is falling, leave it for tomorrow! I don’t believe that without me, this fucking Earth will not turn!”

“Okay!” Mavis agreed without a word and turned off the annoying phone.

The room finally quieted down, and Lincoln happily devoted himself to creating the large-scale neural modulator-demodulator.

He looked up at the expectant brand representative sitting opposite him and then reluctantly dialed the number again.

“Beep—Sorry, the phone you have dialed is switched off. Please try again later.”

Randall looked up again at the brand representatives who came to their office, blinked, and felt a bit awkward.

“I’m sorry, our boss is busy with important matters right now and is not available to answer the phone.”

Randall could only say that. As for whether Lincoln was truly busy, sleeping, watching a movie, or playing games, no one knew.

No choice, as Lincoln had always been busy with stuff unrelated to the studio.

Whenever he appeared in front of the employees, he was always like a salted fish, sitting instead of standing, lying down instead of sitting up, and always looking for an opportunity where everyone could take a break together.

In the eyes of Randall and the staff, Lincoln was a magical salted fish, possibly one of the smartest salted fish in the world.

Sitting across from Randall was the director of the marketing department of Southern Branch, a top-tier domestic clothing brand.

Normally, someone of the same level from Cloud Dream should be responsible for hosting them. The problem was that Lincoln had taken the company to the extreme end of flatness.

There was no company with a market value of over 10 billion in the world with such a simple personnel structure as Cloud Dream.

At last, it was left to Randall, a jack-of-all-trades, to act as the host. But the collaboration proposal from the other side left Randall confused—they wanted to open a few stores in the virtual world of “Assassins’ Alliance” to replace the virtual clothing stores within the game.

Randall originally thought that the top-tier clothing brand, Southern Branch, came for co-branded products.

Although the brand “Southern Branch” was inspired by the phrase “horses dependent on the north wind, birds nesting on southern branches” from the “Nineteen Old Poems,” it sounds very traditional.

However, it was completely different from that.

While inheriting traditional aesthetics, they also constantly moved towards modern elements. The clothes they produced often took traditional aesthetics into consideration while offering modern conveniences. The brand dabbled in both tradition and modernity.

The achievements of their products in aesthetics have always been difficult to surpass for their domestic peers.

Combining with trendy elements, co-branded clothing had precedents as well. However, they had very discerning taste.

Prior to this, there had been no precedent for them to collaborate with a game.

So, Randall assumed they wanted to collaborate with “Traveler of the Wind” since it seemed to be the best fit.

But opening a clothing store in a virtual world?

Randall had to admit that it was beyond his experience..