Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

What’s even more outrageous is that after Lincoln said that, none of the many people in the meeting room had the reaction he expected—

They were clearly somewhat puzzled, but after a brief moment of confusion, they all accepted this outrageous statement with a resigned expression.

Jason blinked and looked at Fred not far away, suddenly understanding what Fred had said a few days ago—

“Geniuses have unusual thought processes, and they sometimes say and do things that are unpredictable. We may not be able to keep up with them, but it’s normal not to be too bothered by it.”

Jason couldn’t help but lament internally: ‘Who can keep up with this!’

But Lincoln didn’t explain, urging everyone to mind their own business while saying “let’s get back to work.”

And just like that, the meeting ended.

Jason was surprised to see that the new colleagues really dispersed and went back to their individual tasks.

—Everyone was busy after all, it was Monday, and they had to quickly handle the tasks accumulated over the weekend, so they all looked rather hurried.

Only Quentina pulled Jason aside and asked him to first log off and complete the onboarding process.

Jason could only follow her, still feeling puzzled.

*

After the meeting, Lincoln didn’t rush to do other things but first pulled aside Randall.

He needed to discuss a rather awkward yet important topic with Randall first.

Instead of staying in the virtual office, Lincoln brought him to a café in the Metropolis.

It was the very one where they had been when Dream Cloud Studio had only the four of them.

Of course, now they were using a separate mirror instead of the public map.

Otherwise, they would undoubtedly be surrounded by onlookers.

As of now, only 100,000 people have the qualification to permanently reside in the Metropolis on the public map.

However, with the acceleration of Cloud Dream’s development, the Assassin’s Alliance operation team has gradually opened up access to the Metropolis Public Map.

By last week, the conditions have been relaxed to allow anyone who has cleared the game’s main quest to enter Metropolis freely.

Of course, it is only the “entry” and “tour” qualification, and no permanent residency rights.—

In other words, virtual real estate cannot be directly embedded, and the [Invitation Letter] and [Independent Testing Qualification] exclusive treatments for permanent residents won’t be available either.

Considering the personal nature of the topic they were about to discuss, Lincoln naturally chose to create a separate mirror to avoid being disturbed.

As Randall picked up the coffee that the waiter brought over, he had a sip out of politeness and asked curiously, “What’s up? What is it that we need to talk about in this place?”

Lincoln thought about his wording and decided to be tactful: “What’s your view on limiting open sexual behavior in the virtual world?”

“Cough, cough!” Randall coughed awkwardly, obviously not expecting Lincoln to bring up such a topic.

But, despite the surprise, he didn’t hesitate for long and quickly expressed his agreement: “It should be… a good thing, right?”

“Yes, I also think it’s a good thing,” Lincoln nodded affirmatively. “But there’s a problem now that’s hard to solve.”

“What’s the problem? Is the review difficult?” Randall guessed.

“No, it’s about sensory data. As you can see, I’m a man…”

“Cough, cough, cough…” This time, Randall choked on his coffee.

Lincoln didn’t pause, continuing: “As you know, simply writing sensory code through conventional methods requires an immense amount of data, and even after a lot of effort, the realism of the senses can only reach 95%. After that, every 1% increase requires a huge amount of work, and pushing it to 100% is extremely difficult. The more abstract and difficult the feelings are to describe, the harder it is.”

Randall nodded in deep agreement.

Originally, Fred wanted to create a realistic night scene atmosphere, but the actual coding for sensory data took a lot of effort and became more difficult after passing a certain threshold.

In the end, they had to ask Lincoln for help.

As a result, after Lincoln became a trending topic for visiting a bar one night, the sensory database had an extra set of night scene data the next day.

Every Cloud Dream employee involved in the project had looked up to Lincoln like an immortal since then.

Everyone was curious about how Lincoln managed to pull it off.

It couldn’t have been done just by typing, could it?

With that amount of code, ten fingers, or even ten pairs of hands, wouldn’t be enough!

“I have a special method that can directly translate our [physical sensations] into [sensory data],”‘ Lincoln explained to Randall. “But this method has very limited usage and cannot be propagated.”

“What do you mean?” Randall vaguely understood what Lincoln meant.

“Uh…” Lincoln felt awkward again, “Do you think Sister Tung might be… willing to volunteer?”

“I won’t involve her privacy at all! I promise! It’s just a simple collection of sensory data,” Lincoln quickly assured him.

Randall also felt awkward, but in the end, he nodded and said, “I need to talk to her and ask her opinion first.”

“Of course, of course, it’s only right,” Lincoln nodded repeatedly. “I’ll wait here for you?”

Randall nodded wordlessly, then quickly opened a teleportation gate and left.