Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

One hour and forty minutes had passed.

After the movie ended, Randall and Little Chun sat silently in their seats, unable to utter a word.

They struggled to describe their feelings at the moment. They couldn’t even remember how they had spent the past hour and forty minutes.

Even Little Chun, who had guessed it would be a movie full of flashiness, was completely dumbstruck, not to mention Randall, who had been working on gunfight games.

The plot of the film was simple: a useless individual with an assassin’s bloodline is deceived by a killer organization, trained to become a super killer and kills his own father, only to discover the truth afterward and destroys the murderer’s base in a fit of rage.

But what had they seen during this hour and forty minutes?

Shooting the wings off flies without harming the flies themselves; carrying out assassinations following the orders of a loom; “assassinating” people on the roof of a speeding train, doing 360-degree mid-air flips on the highway, shooting bullets from the sunroof of a bulletproof car; a butcher slashing bullets harmlessly at close range; using a gun to shoot oneself with a circular trajectory…

They could hardly determine which of these was more outrageous.

“Alright,” Randall broke the silence after a while. “I get it, our boss doesn’t want to make a typical gunfight game, but a… fantastical gunfight game.”

He hesitated to choose the adjective “fantastical.”

He had never seen such far-fetched gunfights, and didn’t know where to begin.

In the past, when making games, the focus was on leveling up health, stamina, shooting accuracy, bullet damage values, and the design and obtaining of different firearms, with the remainder revolving around plot and scenario.

No one had ever thought to challenge the assumption that “bullets travel in a straight line.”

One could only say that Lincoln was very daring, incredibly daring!

But Randall had to admit, this idea was brilliant!

After watching the film, he couldn’t wait to try out how it felt to fire a curved bullet, let alone the players!

Originally, after developing three gunfight games in a row, he had grown somewhat weary. After all, no matter how many ideas and talents one had, three years and three games had pretty much exhausted his inspiration.

But now, he felt countless ideas surging forth, and his source of inspiration was reactivated, making him eager to get to work!

However, Little Chun raised a question, “What about female players since this storyline focuses on the main male character?”

“Huh?” Little Chun’s question left Randall speechless.

It’s true that there were fewer female players for gunfight games than male players, but they couldn’t be ignored!

In the past VR games, players were separated by a display screen, so it wasn’t a big problem for female players to play male characters, or the plot could be designed with both male and female protagonists. But the opening plot of “Assassins’ Alliance”…

Well, as soon as female players entered the game, they would discover their best friend having an affair with their boyfriend? Could that be too intense?

Wouldn’t the female players just shoot these cheating couple the moment they got their hands on the gun?

“That’s not right!” Randall realized, “Even male players can’t stand being cuckolded at the beginning, let alone female players!”

“Well… cultural differences,” Little Chun nodded.

“??” Randall was puzzled. Could this even be related to cultural differences? Do foreigners not mind their partner cheating?

“In any case, we need to make some changes to the plot,” Randall concluded.

“That’s what I think too,” Little Chun agreed. “Our boss might have taken making the film too seriously and treated it as a complete movie. Many set-up and transitions are essential in a film, but in a game, they might not be needed at all.”

“Exactly. And the protagonist hesitates to complete the first mission, but when it comes to players, most wouldn’t consider any moral burden or struggle with their humanity. They know it’s just a game, and it’s all fake.”

“That’s true,” said Randall, who understood gamers’ psychology very well. “They never ask why we have to kill someone; they only ask who the target is, where they are, and what rewards they’ll get. If the rewards are good, they’ll even replay the mission again and again.”

“We can summarize our suggestions for plot modifications and discuss them together with the boss after he’s done. Let’s start with some basic work,” Randall proposed.

“I agree,” Little Chun nodded. “Now I understand what he meant by character image design. Some of these characters don’t meet our country’s aesthetic standards and need significant transformations.

Especially the female lead. If we want players in our country to be struck by her appearance, her design must closely align with Eastern aesthetics. However, her character setting also demands her to have a strong, cold demeanor. It’s easy to create conflicts if these two aspects aren’t well-integrated. Great, I love a challenge!”

“Alright, let’s get started.”

With that, Randall and Little Chun began working on their tasks.

As was his habit, Randall first set up the character level tree and upgrade curve. He determined what level and abilities the players needed to master to advance smoothly at each plot node.

He then allocated the experience needed to raise the players to these levels, dividing it among the actions and rewards that players could obtain at this stage, ensuring players wouldn’t get stuck or easily skip through the game content.

Once finished, he began designing the combat level of each plot node. With Lincoln’s movie as reference, this step wasn’t too difficult.

Of course, considering the virtual nature of the game, Randall made the scale of the levels larger to make the battles even more intense, exciting, and spectacular.

This required him to put his skills to the test.

Though their development tools were incredible, the project’s vast scale meant that it would take quite a while to complete even with the help of just one person. By Randall’s estimates, it would take at least half a year for him to complete the project on his own.

Even with Lincoln’s help – unless he had some other secret weapon – it would still take several months.

However, virtual reality devices would soon be widely available, and one “Traveler of the Wind” game probably wouldn’t last that long.

Especially considering that both he and Little Chun had experienced the test version of “Traveler of the Wind,” they could approximately estimate that dedicated players would probably be able to complete it with a full collection of items in just a few days.

In order not to let players put the devices away and gather dust, a second game had to be released as soon as possible!

But the workforce at Dream Cloud Studio was too small, and getting talented professionals to join the team was difficult due to the joint boycott by larger game companies.

What should he do?

When he made “Blaze 3,” he had a project team of over a hundred people assisting him. Now there were only three…

Wait a second! An audacious idea crossed Randall’s mind:

“Could I poach the ‘Blaze’ project team from NetDragon and bring them to

Dream Cloud Studio?”