Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 196 - 196: 194: Not Revealing * is 16+

“Nightlife, Vice City, such places are inevitable… right?” He tried to make up for it.

Lincoln nodded approvingly and then asked an unrelated question, “Fred, how’s your… matchmaking going?”

Fred attended matchmaking events every three days, which was common knowledge among the old employees.

“Not…” Fred had only said a word when he swallowed the rest of his sentence, “Not bad, it’s going well, steadily improving.”

“That’s good, that’s good.” Lincoln nodded.

It would be strange if things were going very smoothly instead of not going well.

It’s not that being a pervert is bad, but who doesn’t have some perverted moments nowadays? The key is to keep it hidden!

The old employees were used to it, while the new employees stared at Fred curiously, not knowing whether they were looking down on him or admiring him more.

Fred tried to ignore these gazes, “Boss, how should we handle the rating of this game?”

As soon as this question was raised, everyone immediately focused.

“Try to keep it at 16+ as much as possible.” Lincoln didn’t hesitate and gave a direct answer.

Frankly, he really wanted to go big and change it to 18+, and the possibilities of developing the game would be huge.

However, because the possibilities were too vast, it would be difficult to control, and it could end up being an adult game inadvertently.

Adult content in virtual reality games is completely different from traditional adult content, and it’s easy to cross the line.

Activities like visiting brothels in “The Witcher 3” are okay on traditional platforms, at most it just means a higher age rating.

But doing that in virtual reality games could easily lead to an anti-vice operation in the virtual world, making history.

Don’t even try arguing that your game world isn’t in your own country, it’s just sophistry!

Lincoln is still cautiously evaluating whether to lift the intimacy activity restrictions for real-life couples in the virtual world, not yet making a decision.

And plus, it’s Vice City! Gambling King! Night Club! Dancing! Racing!

With so many things for players to do, do they really need adult content?

“Understood.” Fred nodded, “No nudity required for a 16+ rating, it won’t be affected, the strip club can still operate.”

“???” Lincoln was a bit confused, so you explained, and then you just understood a non-nude strip dance?

“Whatever!” Lincoln waved his hand, “Next up is the combat system.”

Since they decided to let Fred take on this project as much as possible, they couldn’t restrict his performance too much and needed to give him ample creative freedom and space.

Besides, Lincoln was also looking forward to what kind of tricks Fred could come up with..

Anyway, as long as he absolutely restricts players from taking off their pants, and Fred’s design doesn’t have nudity, it doesn’t violate the rating rules, so there shouldn’t be any problems.

“About the combat system, we can basically follow the framework of ‘Assassins’ Alliance’, but the core needs to be changed, [Assassin Bloodline] needs to be deleted and changed to [Combat Sensing], and [Curved Shot] also needs to be deleted and changed to [Gunfighting Technique].”

“If we delete [Assassin Bloodline], should the increase in physical fitness brought about by level advancement be reduced?” Someone worriedly asked, “Will players complain?”

“No need to reduce it.” Lincoln shook his head, “When not activating [Assassin Bloodline], players’ physical fitness is less than twice that of normal people, far from Superman level, and it doesn’t affect the bigger picture.”

“As for [Combat Sensing], it mainly relies on the suggestion of nerve signals, allowing players to have more sensitive combat intuition, sensing the direction of danger, seizing opportunities, and even dodging bullets in advance.”

Lincoln thought about it and gave an easy-to-understand example: “You can think of it as the QTE function in virtual reality games.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” The employees suddenly understood, making a series of rooster-crowing sounds.

“So, what about [Gunfighting Technique]?” Randall asked on behalf of everyone, “I saw in the movie that the protagonist performs specific moves, and the bullets can’t hit him. What’s the logic behind that?”

What logic?

Lincoln thought about it. In “Speed Chase,” he only changed some combat expressions to make the protagonist’s fights more magnificent and cool, but he didn’t bring the logic over as well.

However, since someone asked, there was no harm in explaining.

“Gunfighting Technique is a skill that integrates physical techniques, gun techniques, sword techniques, and more. It precisely calculates actions, initiating an attack with the least amount of self-harm while inflicting the most considerable damage. It can shoot at any blind spot around you, increasing bullet power by 20%. It’s a shooting technique that can be used for both attack and defense.”

After hearing this, the employees were a bit confused.

Only Randall nodded with understanding, feeling a sense of familiarity.

This kind of serious nonsense that somehow sounded reasonable was not the first time Lincoln had done it.

“So how do we implement it? With a buff effect? Or with QTE?”

“Neither.” Lincoln waved his hand, “Just understand the meaning, no need to follow the standard step by step. You can think of it as an alternative [Dodge] skill.

“[Dodge] skill?”

Everyone immediately felt that the [Gunfighting Technique] skill had completely lost its cool factor.

“Of course, what else can we do? We can’t let the players dance while shooting, can we? Or should they dance before the fight for a buff? This isn’t an ancient

African theme.”

“And there’s one crucial point to making gunfighting techniques look cool – the actions have to be cool. To make the players feel that the actions are cool, the starting pose and ending pose must be stylish and eye-catching!”

“As for the actions in between, there are too many things for the player to do, like shooting, running, and using the environment. Giving a general idea is enough; players won’t care too much.”

“In other words…” Fred summarized, “Strike a cool pose before fighting, then rush into the enemies and go wild. After all the enemies are down, strike another cool pose on the spot.”

“Right on!” Lincoln praised him.

After Lincoln’s explanation of the essence and Fred’s simple summary of the presentation form, everyone had a clearer understanding of the new game’s combat mode.

When they began the actual development later, they would have direction and not be lost in confusion.

At this point, Randall raised a new question: “Do we need to add more foreshadowing to ‘Assassins’ Alliance’?”.

Lincoln nodded, “Yes, we do. In my imagination, when the protagonist of

‘Speed Chase’ smashes the floor and retrieves the buried weapons and coins, if there’s a save file in ‘Assassins’ Alliance,’ they will inherit the [Assassin’s Gold] and most-used sidearms. If they haven’t played ‘Assassins’ Alliance,’ they’ll only have basic gold and weapons.”

“Before that, we can design some tasks in the Continental Hotel in ‘Assassins’ Alliance,’ revealing some of John Wick’s deeds and character features. Don’t go overboard, but try to leave some impressions on the players.”

“We can release tasks according to the game’s development progress, at appropriate times,” Randall immediately thought, “Let players indirectly understand John Wick’s legendary exploits. When the game is about to be released, we can launch another task, letting players know that the legendary killer John Wick has retired for unknown reasons.”

“That’s perfect! Completely doable!”

“So, what about the publicity milestones? Do we need to prepare them in advance?” asked an employee in charge of operations.

“You guys don’t have to worry about that for now; I already have an idea.” Lincoln was considering: Should he release a dog growth documentary first?