Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 8: Wind Traveler

The game Lincoln had in mind was —— "Traveler of the Wind".

When Lincoln played "Traveler of the Wind" for the first time in his past life, his understanding of games was completely overturned.

The strong yet gentle artistic style, using only a limited number of elements, created astonishing screens and awe-inspiring grand scenes.

There were no weapons and item systems, no leveling up, killing monsters, or making money.

All the actions were moving, jumping, and triggering mechanisms, all you had to do, was to move forward, move toward snow mountain as your final destination, and witness everything in your journey.

Without a line of dialogue, only through the scene changes from the sand sea, underground, high tower to the snow mountain, along with some ruins and remains, a grand and fluctuating storyline was successfully created, bringing intense emotional impacts.

There are innumerable highlights in the game: simple but infinitely fun flapping cloak flight, progressive stages, destined encounters with other players, guidance and rendering of players' emotions, epic background music... and so on.

It had a small size and a short process, but it could let the players completely immerse in the flow it created, experiencing loneliness, zen, meeting, and parting.

Whether they were casual players, hardcore players, or even people playing games for the first time, they could easily enjoy the fun and beauty of the game.

Such a work would allow Lincoln to play to his strengths and avoid weaknesses, avoiding a large amount of cumbersome designs, and magnifying the "scenic experience" and "travel sensation" tenfold or even a hundredfold.

Controlling a little character sliding on the sand within the display with a controller could bring such pure joy, if the players could experience it for themselves, they would be overjoyed!

He even began to look forward to it himself.

However, before he could start working, he had to reply to NetDragon first.

Life Hack: Before slapping someone, try to raise your hand back as much as possible, so you can use your full strength when you slap.

Anyway, it won't take up much time.

"Mavis, help me post on Spiritual Rhinoceros."

"Mavis is here! Ready! What does the master want to post?"

"Even though your words do not match your hearts, and your blessings are insincere, I kindly accepted them. I hope you won't cry too hard a few days from now."

A display and a keyboard appeared in front of Mavis, and she started to type.

In fact, all Mavis had to do was control the mobile phone to enter the content directly, and then post it. There was no need for such a live typing scene.

To some extent, this scene is equivalent to a loading screen, which is completely unnecessary, the kind that purely wastes computing power...

Lincoln sighed helplessly again: "Forget it, as long as you're happy."

"Mavis is done! Does the master want Mavis to read the comments to you?"

"Please don't!" Lincoln can imagine without looking at it what kind of cruel comments there are now, and he doesn't want to upset himself.

He does not intend to look at internet comments before the new device is released.

The reality and his speculation are the same.

This confident response made countless netizens very dissatisfied.

In their feelings, Lincoln, a college student, had some red flags. He provocatively challenged and humiliated netizens, scammed big companies. Now that big companies have responded, the contrast is so huge, the outcome is very clear.

But he just refuses to admit defeat.

And what cyber mobs love the most is to force people to admit their mistakes.

So, as expected, the comment section once again fell into chaos.

"Such a thick face you have, accepting blessings, do you think you're worthy?"

"Hello, my family runs a locksmith shop, do you need keys? How many do you need?"

"This round, this round is what you call 'not knowing the sharpness of an axe till it hits you', not realizing the severity of things until they're at their worst."

"If you ask me, why bother with all this? Just sue them directly for damaging the business reputation, settle it in court."

"The person above is right; I've seen plenty of this kind of attention-seeking, they'll back down the moment they see a court summons."

"@Spiritual Rhinoceros official, why haven't you banned this person yet? Are you waiting till the New Year?"

Of course, Spiritual Rhinoceros won't ban Lincoln. A large corporation could easily see the nature of NetDragon hiring trolls and paying big influencers to lead the narrative; they've always lacked integrity.

Moreover, to a social media platform, right and wrong aren't essential, only the traffic counts.

They watch as the battle between NetDragon and Lincoln becomes fiercer, traffic surging, wishing they could give Lincoln a two-year membership as a token of appreciation.

Ban him? Impossible!

Lincoln didn't bother with all this anymore; he started working on the "Traveler of the Wind" with Mavis.

The first step was quite simple, with Mavis' help, they slightly increased the strength of the neural signals, stimulated specific memory neural areas, copied and stored all memories about "Traveler of the Wind". Mavis then replicated the scenes, setting up the initial framework.

Then, they moderately stretched the spatial range. Judging by the original gameplay of two to three hours, it might seem well-paced when played on a display, but it would feel slightly compact in real life.

After all, if you see the next goal from a high view, arrive in three minutes, and then set the next target five minutes away, and the next one four minutes away...

The game might become a tedious traveling game, continuously advancing towards the next goal, neglecting the distant scenery, losing the artistic conception and fun.

So they had to adjust the distance, fine-tune the distribution of runes and murals, guide the players but not too precisely, allowing the players to tour and explore, immersing them in the world.

After all, "Journey" is the meaning of everything.

After finishing this step, Lincoln needed to adjust the background music according to the changes in the spatial range to fit the spatial changes and set the atmosphere right.

Once the game world was set up, the hard work had just begun.

Because, at this time, the world was still hollow, the sun had no temperature, the sand didn't flow, the wind didn't blow the clothes; it was still a world without a soul.

The next step was the most crucial one: the injection of sensation.

Mavis found the most fitting parts from Lincoln's sensory memories and injected them into the game scenes.

Standing there, Lincoln felt the sun began to heat, the desert became dry, the fine sand began to flow, and the hot wind mixed with coarse sand grit blew through his hair...

"Wait, Mavis, reduce the heat by one third, and the sand blown by the wind to one tenth. Also, make sure the desert is clean, no sand should get into the clothes and shoes, clothes can get dirty, but not sandy. Ensure the players' physical comfort"

After all, they invited players to play the game, to "play," not to practice asceticism; ascetics had been excluded.

"Sure! Mavis is changing it!"

The softness of the sand, the depth of quicksand, the height of jumping and gliding, the change in speed and wind force at different heights, the mode of movement and the intensity of vibration after each mechanism interaction, everything had to be carefully adjusted.

Otherwise, if one detail was ignored, there might be problems.

For example, while Lincoln was testing the long scarf glide, he got his arm and leg entangled in the scarf in mid-air, and he had set the glide mechanism to be activated by flapping his arms.

As a result, he plunged headfirst from a height of more than twenty meters, screaming and flapping his arms in vain, scared half to death.