Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 271: 269: It’s the Players Who Want to Eliminate It!

In the end, Lincoln decided to invite the person into the company to chat.

After calling a passing administrative girl to help pour tea, Lincoln didn’t directly accept the interview but asked the reporter Miss to have some tea and wait a moment as he had urgent matters to attend to.

Indeed, he had rested after returning home yesterday, but Mavis hadn’t.

Mavis happily worked on the large open zoo, getting it mostly done.

Not all the animal information was available, so it wasn’t fully completed.

But with the current level of completion, it was ready for review.

In order not to waste time, Lincoln handed a copy of the game to Samuel and asked him to run an errand to submit the game for review.

“A new game?” Samuel asked in confusion, “Boss, when did you make this? Haven’t we all been busy recently?”

“Just made it, worked a whole day yesterday and it was only done after extra work was done.”

“Yesterday?” Samuel was first puzzled and then his face was full of disbelief, “Boss, you made a new game in one day?”

“No, there was an expert who helped, and it wasn’t finished yet, so hurry up and submit it for review.”

Lincoln urged, “By the way, ask Sister Qiao to notify everyone that this afternoon, any employees who can spare their hands should pause their work temporarily and let’s all test the game together.”

It’s already at the testing stage, and it’s still not finished? Samuel was speechless and hurriedly left with the game.

After finishing the urgent matters, Lincoln hurried back to sit down in front of Zoe, drank some water, “Sorry for the wait, everything is arranged, and we can start now.”

The intellectual-looking reporter Miss opened her notebook, picked up her pen, took out the recording pen and gestured to Lincoln, who nodded in agreement before she turned it on.

—To get the truth, many reporters don’t mind using some “special” techniques, but Lincoln’s identity was not just an entrepreneur.

Unlike small newspapers or new so-called “self-media” on society, newspapers with certain official backgrounds like “Great Xia Industrial Observer” have never participated in any gossip, prying, discussion about Lincoln himself on the Internet.

They had only reported objectively on his public inventions and the achievements of his entrepreneurship.

Because of this, Zoe was extremely polite and courteous from beginning to end, which of course, included respect for a top scientific researcher.

However, even though she was polite, she wouldn’t be polite in her manuscript nor would she whitewash it; she would only report the truth.

She would rather not publish her manuscript than to write about something untrue.

This is the pride of a feature reporter.

“Let’s first talk about what happened in the past two days.” Instead of rushing into the topic, Zoe chose a recent event as her entry point.

“Because a video producer was sued for copyright infringement, using your trailer to make paid videos, video platforms removed his video yesterday afternoon, do you know about this?”

“Many video producers are worried about this now, some have used your materials in their videos, others are concerned that they can’t use them in the future. How do you view these concerns?”

“I never thought about it before, after all, I like to watch videos occasionally for fun when I’m free. So as long as it’s not too excessive, I usually don’t bother with it.”

Lincoln thought for a moment, then added, “Since you brought it up, I can state my attitude: if you’re conscientious about making videos and use our material, we won’t trouble you in principle. But for those with ‘low originality, copying, plagiarizing, and article laundering,’ they’d better be careful. If I’m not in a good mood one day, maybe I’ll use a lawsuit to relax.”

Zoe looked at Lincoln in surprise, he seemed serious, not joking.

So does Cloud Dream really not have relevant regulations? Is it based on the mood of this boss to decide whether to sue or not?

Is this unpredictability, like the saying, “the more unknowable the punishment, the more powerful the fear”?

The reporter, who had seen a lot of ups and downs, couldn’t help but blink her eyes in confusion, but she didn’t make any comments and moved on to the next question.

“The grudge between you and NetDragon is well known. So, have you been paying attention to NetDragon’s recent situation?”

Have I been paying attention? Lincoln thought, I am so paying attention!

NetDragon was a “special concern” for Mavis, who reported any changes to Lincoln when he woke up and washed up.

Lincoln was even planning to snipe the DLC for “Blaze 3”!

But obviously, this was not suitable to say as it would seem petty.

So Lincoln shook his head, “I’ve been busy developing new games and haven’t had time to pay attention, why do you ask?”

“NetDragon’s R&D department supervisor suddenly resigned, and in a short period of time, several scientific research talents in NetDragon’s R&D department left one after another. According to predictions, NetDragon’s latest generation of VR device ‘Flying Dragon Fourth Generation’ is highly likely to be delayed from its scheduled launch.”

“Oh, that’s really unfortunate.” Lincoln expressed his formal regret. He only knew about the core talent leaving the R&D department, but not about the delay of NetDragon’s new device.

Great news! He’d have to rub Little Milkshake’s dog head a few times later to celebrate.

“In addition, relevant statistics have shown that since the launch of the virtual reality console – Mirage, sales of VR game equipment have been rapidly declining. After entering September, when the Mirage reached a weekly shelf of 15 million units, sales fell off a cliff.”

Zoe showed obvious concern in her serious expression, “This is not just a decline in device sales for NetDragon alone, but for the entire industry. All VR equipment manufacturers are experiencing a cliff-like decline in sales.”

“In recent years, sales of VR game equipment have been steadily growing, and the entire industry chain has benefited from it. But in the past two months, sales have plummeted, and the future is no longer optimistic, causing unease in the industry.”

“What’s your opinion on this?” Zoe finally asked her biggest concern, “Will virtual reality games completely destroy the VR game industry?”

Lincoln put away his schadenfreude and said seriously, “Arcade machines, hand-held consoles, and home consoles have all experienced similar situations. It’s just that their scale did not grow as large as VR games before losing most of their market space, so the decline of the VR industry appears more worrisome.”

However, from the perspective of game types, the intensity is actually the same. But you see, no one complains about arcade machines or handheld consoles. Why? Because people inherently pursue progress, better sound quality, better graphics, stronger expressiveness and immersion, better storytelling and freedom ot interaction…

In this regard, VR game equipment is indeed a progress, which is why the scale of VR game equipment has been expanding in recent years. ”

But I’m willing to bet that even without the birth of virtual reality gaming equipment, the market share of VR devices would eventually hit a ceiling in the near future and could no longer maintain growth. They might even be overtaken or defeated by PCs, home consoles, and mobile phones, which have become subordinates in recent years.”

Zoe was surprised by this viewpoint, as she had done her homework before the interview and had a detailed understanding of the development of the gaming industry.

She knew very well that VR games had decisively defeated other game types and dominated the market. But what was Lincoln saying?

Defeated PCs, home consoles, and mobile phones make a comeback and defeat VR devices?

Zoe looked at him incredulously, even suspecting that Lincoln might be holding a grudge against NetDragon and projecting it onto VR devices.

“Don’t get me wrong, I have no prejudice against VR games.” Lincoln saw her disbelief and understood it.

After all, she had never seen a world where console games were popular all over the world, where PC games had 800 million daily active users, and where everyone had a mobile phone and could pull out a “pesticide” anytime anywhere.

It’s normal for someone who has never seen a world with player numbers in the “billions” to be skeptical.

Lincoln explained to her, “Not only do I have no prejudice against VR games, but I also genuinely believe that they are a great form of gaming.”

— Indeed, it is a great form of gaming and the only type of gaming in this world’s short history of gaming that has surpassed the previous life. It is indeed admirable that much of the hard work of game developers and technology researchers has been soaked in it.

“VR games have many advantages, such as graphics, music, immersion, physical health… You can almost say that everything is good. But there’s one thing that’s not good about it — it raises the barrier to entry for gaming.

And it raises it by a lot!

It has made too many people “unworthy” of playing games: players who can’t afford the equipment, those with poor physical health, those with illnesses, those who easily get dizzy due to poor balance, any limb-disabled person… all have been eliminated outright.

In the era before VR devices, a single finger could tap the keyboard to release skills, one hand could hold the controller to speedrun high-difficulty real-time combat games, and even completely paralyzed players could play games with their mouths!

But in VR games, with the increasing complexity of the games, and the highly customized controllers, even ten fingers are barely enough for manufacturers, let alone using only five fingers to play!”

Lincoln looked at Zoe, “How should we judge which is good progress? Should we eliminate outdated technology equipment or players who can’t keep up physically?”

Without waiting for Zoe’s answer, Lincoln decisively gave his own answer: “We shouldn’t make people adapt to technology, but rather technology should serve people!”

“Leaving behind players who are unworthy of playing games? They have no right! Such gaming equipment will eventually be pulled off the divine altar as the player base grows and become ‘niche!!”

“So it’s not me who wants to eliminate VR games, but the players who want to eliminate them! Even their own limitations will eliminate them!”

Zoe, sitting opposite him, looked at Lincoln in shock.

Obviously, she had never heard such an argument from anyone or anywhere before.

But the argument was so persuasive!

Both logical thinking and intuition told her that — Lincoln was probably right!

She wondered in astonishment: Is this the way a genius thinks?

She even thought further: at the very beginning, when Lincoln first appeared in the media’s line of sight, it was because he criticized NetDragon’s “new equipment” for being technologically backward.

Was it because he believed from the start that continuing to advance VR devices, while adding more burden to players, was a dead-end?

Finally, he couldn’t bear it anymore, so he personally stepped in and developed virtual reality devices.

His intention was to personally “rectify” the crooked path the gaming industry had taken?!