Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 348: 343: Astringency is the Primary Productive Force

Chapter 348: 343: Astringency is the Primary Productive Force

Translator: 549690339

Lincoln stared in disbelief.

But he wasn’t the only one left speechless!

The entire live broadcast room had gone dumbfounded!

Just a moment ago, people were disappointed, saying things like the legend was shattered and that the Goddess of Luck was just an ordinary player.

But in the blink of an eye–

A massive 30 million prize hit them right in the face!

Could you still call this an “ordinary player”?!

Undoubtedly, the comments in the live broadcast room exploded:

“Is this the level of an ordinary player? I’m in love.”

“Sorry, I was wrong!”

“Who the hell was the one badmouthing my goddess just now! Stand up! If I don’t kill you today, I’ll take your last name!”

“Don’t talk to me about any logic or probability anymore. Hesitating for even a second is a stain on my faith!”

“Loyalty isn’t absolute if it isn’t unconditional! Whoever dares to slander my goddess again will be punished no matter how far away they are!”

The comments were obviously very excited, with people passionately expressing their unwavering faith and loyalty to the goddess.

Of course, many people were also amazed at the astonishing amount of the prize.

“30 million! I saw many people working all day and didn’t even make 100,000!”

“The NPCs in this game are so stingy, 30 million is an absolute fortune, instant riches.”

“It’s just a shame that it’s a closed beta! It’ll only last two days, and then the data will be reset once the beta ends.”

“Such a waste! Or it’d be enough to have fun in Night City for several months!”

Lincoln had no words and even subconsciously began to reflect on the memory of “another bottle.”

Did he remember it wrong?

Could it be that the one who never won any prizes was actually him?

Mavis had already taken the huge check-shaped sign and ceremoniously took a photo with it, even leaving a personal signature.

The manager asked if Mavis would like to have her photo displayed on the casino’s wall of honor for distinguished guests.

After Mavis nodded in agreement, she was even given an extra membership card that could be used to stay in the Presidential Suite of the Paradise Hotel for free.

Yes, the casino did have a hotel above it, and the rooms were very luxuriously decorated.

Mavis happily accepted the membership card.

Although she didn’t understand why someone would log into a game and stay in a hotel instead of playing…

But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that she was happy to get the reward!

Though they had plenty of money to spend now, they decided to go play something else.

How could they stay in a casino all the time when Night City was so big?

As they left the casino, the gigantic check sign slowly disappeared in a sparkle, and a long line of zeros appeared on Mavis’s info panel.

She quickly split half of it with Lincoln.

In the beginning, Lincoln had given her all his chips as starting capital for Mavis to play at the casino tables.

So splitting it in half made sense to Mavis!

She couldn’t let her little brother down!

Outside the game, on the small sofa in the Spaceship, Lincoln rubbed Mavis’s pink head with confusion and called Fred without bothering about the time off work.

“Did you increase the probability to test the prize realization effect?”

He wasn’t wrong to ask this. To control the money supply in Night City, their entire design philosophy had become stingy.

Assassin’s Gold, which was related to combat, was generously given, allowing players to upgrade their weapons and armor without any pressure.

However, for various unrelated tasks and events, virtual currency was given sparingly.

All the designers unanimously agreed that there must be a hidden jackpot at the casino – it’s part of the game design aesthetic.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fitting for such a huge casino.

In the end, the prize money was reduced from an initial 100 million to 30 million to achieve balance.

The probability was also pushed down to one in 30 million, making the chances of winning incredibly low.

So when Mavis reminded him, Lincoln immediately called Fred to ask if they had increased the probability for the closed beta.

However, Fred was also confused: “Wasn’t it you who increased it?”

He thought it was Lincoln who had raised the probability.

“Alright, maybe it really is luck.”

Lincoln hung up the phone, still feeling incredulous and even began to suspect that it was a prank played by Mavis.

He looked at Mavis uncertainly: “Mavis, you really didn’t change it?”

“No way! Mavis didn’t even touch it! Humph!” Mavis crossed her arms over her chest, frowning as she answered unhappily.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ve wronged Mavis.” Lincoln hurriedly apologized, playfully rubbing Mavis’s head and giving her a shoulder massage.

In a short while, Mavis couldn’t help but smile and snuggled in Lincoln’s arms, acting coquettish.

“Lincoln’s Malice,” “Great Anchor Seeking Cheating Master,” “Chaotic Random Streets,” “Mysterious Unrecordable Places To Stick Close With Little Sisters,” “Virtual World Goddess of Luck Appears In Casino”…

The first day of the “Speedy Chase” closed beta passed amidst these interesting and absurd discussions, with the whole player community as lively as the New Year.

The excitement didn’t wane on the next day but instead grew even more intense.

As Lincoln was eating, Mavis played with the spoon in her hand and told him it was particularly lively online early this morning.

Lincoln thought it was because of the new batch of [Mirage 2.0] consoles being put up, after all, he really put up as many as 25 million units at once.

It’s already an unprecedented scale, and under the premise of not increasing any more cooperative factories, this is already the limit of production capacity.

Even the production lines couldn’t be added anymore, as the factories had already used up their expansion space.

“So, did they sell really fast?”

Mavis shook her head, “Everyone’s not talking about the console topic!”

“Huh? Then what are they talking about?” Lincoln asked curiously.

“It’s about the overseas players!” Mavis didn’t beat around the bush and revealed the answer: “They’re almost going crazy.”

“Overseas players? Haven’t they been anxious for more than a day or two? Why are they suddenly so anxious now?”

Without saying much, Mavis pulled out a row of overseas players’ social media posts and showed them to Lincoln one by one.

“I can’t wait another year, another month, or even another day! More precisely, I can’t wait another minute or second! I want the Mirage console today! I want to go to Night City today!”

“Didn’t our country’s game company reach a cooperation with Cloud Dream? Where’s the console? Where’s the game?!”

“It’s been so long, and there’s been no progress at all?! The person in charge should commit ritual suicide out of shame!”

“I’ve been looking at the player community of Daxia for a whole day! Why are the girls in the Saucy Storefronts all from Izumo and Europa? What, do you look down on us Baekje people?”

Upon seeing this, Lincoln immediately leaned back in a tactical manner.

“What’s that?”

Isn’t the place where you Baekje people’s self-esteem appears a little strange?

The setting of the “customs store” is actually based on Izumo’s style.

The girls who join are all from countries with relevant social customs and even legal industries, so they are basically from Izumo, some small Southeast Asian countries, and some Europa countries.

There won’t be any girls from countries that prohibit related industries.

And the reason why the style leans towards Izumo is that Izumo’s kind of industry has some subtlety and ambiguity.

Europa’s style, on the other hand, is too blatant and too crude and simple that it would make some players feel uncomfortable.

The simplest example is that Izumo-style customs stores won’t generally put words like “sex” in the open, and their signs are more subtle.

But those legalized countries in Europa are extremely outrageous and direct, not caring at all about putting related words on the sign.

They even change dining terms like “All you can eat” to signs like “All you can fuck,” and hang them out in the open…

How could you put this into a game?

Not only the players from Izumo and Baekje are anxious.

In fact, players from Europa and America are much more eager than those from Izumo and Baekje!

At least the players from Izumo and Baekje have seen the news of their country’s companies cooperating with Cloud Dream, so they now have hopes.

At this time, their eagerness is just to urge their country’s companies to hurry up.

But the Western players are in a state of “eagerly awaiting Cloud Dream” and “when will Lincoln come to us”…

It’s like they don’t even have a glimmer of hope.

“When will Cloud Dream start doing business here?”

This has already become a daily topic among Western player circles, with people asking several times a day.

“So why are they so anxious this time?” Lincoln asked Mavis.

“Hehe~” Mavis grinned slyly: “It’s because of the saucy stuff!”

Mavis “hee-ho hee-ho” scooted the foreign social media screenshots to one side and pulled out a timeline.

It can be clearly seen that when the closed beta just started, the overseas players’ posts were still the usual envious and jealous topics, just a little more than usual, and there was no significant difference from the past.

However, when the posts under the #noblesse oblige# topic increased and were subsequently translated and carried over to the overseas player forums, there was a sudden and huge surge in the popularity of related topics!

And as time went on, the increase in popularity became more and more exaggerated!

It seemed that all of a sudden, all the overseas players had an unprecedented, explosive sense of urgency!

In just one day, the topic of players from all over the world calling for Cloud Dream to open branch offices topped the popularity trend charts in 22 countries around the world!

As a result, the number of registered players of Cloud Dream also showed explosive growth, with an additional 15 million registered users from around the world in just one day.

What’s even more outrageous is that among them, more than 3 million accounts actually showed real consumption behavior!

This is definitely a money-giving behavior!

Seeing the timeline that Mavis sorted out, Lincoln was speechless for a moment.

As expected, sauciness is the primary productive force!

Perhaps he should consider speeding up the pace of overseas expansion?

Lincoln asked Mavis to help him add this to his schedule and planned to discuss this with Randall and Jerome next week.

In the school, Shuihua, who was attending a makeup class, suddenly received a text message from Lance.

“Someone contacted me, hoping to buy the virtual currency you won in the [Paradise Casino], offering 100,000 yuan. What do you think, do you want to sell?”

“Ah? But won’t this money be deleted and cleared tomorrow?” Shuihua didn’t understand.

“Yeah, maybe someone doesn’t care about the money and just wants to have a good time these two days, so doesn’t mind this.”

“Sell! Sell, sell, sell!” Shuihua still didn’t understand this mentality, but it didn’t stop her from selling it first!

“I’ll give you the money when I go home at noon!”

“Ok, then you concentrate on your studies, and I’ll see if I can sell it for a better price.”

“It’s good that someone is willing to buy it!” Shuihua wasn’t greedy.

She put down her phone, opened the textbook on her desk again, but Shuihua found it hard to concentrate.

She had the same confusion for the third time:

“Is making money… really that easy?”