"No, I can't play anymore!"
The Valiant Sniper jumped off the omnidirectional treadmill, panting as he chugged a large glass of water.
But his fans kept urging him to play another round.
…
Half an hour later, the Valiant Sniper took off his haptic gloves and VR headset, and downed another glass of water.
"No way, no way, this time I really can't anymore."
The fans still disagreed:
"How can a real man say he can't?!"
"It's getting good, don't blue-ball us like this!"
"One more round, just one more! I'll gift you a plane!"
…
Under the fans' persistent persuasion, the Valiant Sniper had no choice but to turn on the computer…
He kept saying he couldn't, but in reality, he went from the omnidirectional treadmill to the haptic gloves, and from the haptic gloves to the computer, round after round.
The Valiant Sniper played until dawn.
It wasn't until the moderator said, "A'ji, what time is your flight again?"
That the Valiant Sniper snapped out of the war-torn battlefield and switched out of the game to check the time—
[06:20]
"Holy crap!" he exclaimed, "My flight is at 7:30!"
The pace of the [War Zone] mode was too fast. He got caught up in it and forgot the time.
"Gotta go, gotta go, I need to quickly wash up and catch my flight. See you all at the competition tonight!"
The Valiant Sniper hastily ended the stream and rushed to wash up and catch his flight.
—He was flying to Ningzhou to participate in the entertainment match tonight and the exhibition match tomorrow.
He had to attend a platform event yesterday, which delayed him until the last day.
When he was carrying his suitcase onto the plane, the thought of moving crossed his mind again.
He was a person who cherished the past and had never considered moving before, but after two trips to Ningzhou, he couldn't suppress the idea of moving.
Because many of Dream Building's small actions often didn't reach the internet.
Only locals, or even people living nearby, would know.
The last time he went to the experience center to stream the Dream Building's [Frost and Snow Project] team battle against the [War Zone] project team, using the outcome to decide the layout of the Dream Building experience center's lobby, he saw something completely unexpected—
Pure white full-body haptic suits and silver-white force feedback haptic gloves.
There was absolutely no news about these things online, but local players said:
Dream Building has been displaying them for a long time!
Even after the competition ended that day, Xu Meng presented the winning [Frost and Snow Project] team members with a special prize—
A pair of custom-made haptic gloves called [Dragon Scale].
The bronze flowing flame design style was extremely eye-catching!
The Valiant Sniper couldn't help but run over and ask Xu Meng: Why doesn't Dream Building put these gloves on the market?
They definitely wouldn't have to worry about sales!
But Xu Meng replied: "These were hand-crafted by the [Neural Roaming] engineers, and the craftsmanship is relatively complex, so there are no mass production plans for the time being."
"So… you designed brand new custom hardware, but you don't plan to sell it, just let your employees play with it??" The Valiant Sniper couldn't understand.
"It's not like that." Xu Meng shook his head, "The experience center will hold small competitions on weekends, and sometimes a few pairs will be given away."
—No wonder there's no news online!
The English Sniper quickly realized: The local players were afraid of leaking the news, and that netizens would come and compete with them!
He was speechless.
At the same time, he also got another important piece of information: Dream Building is cultivating an offline player community.
He didn't understand why Dream Building was doing this.
You already have tens of millions of users online worldwide, what's the point of having a few thousand people offline?
But that didn't stop him from wanting to join.
Since then, he had the idea of moving, but after all, he cherished the past and had not been able to make up his mind.
This time was the same. After getting on the plane, he quickly caught up on sleep, and temporarily put the matter behind him.
…
On the other side, Huo Dao in front of the computer was also startled by his wife's hand on his shoulder.
"What's wrong?" He was a little dazed, "Did I disturb your sleep?"
His wife shook her head, "Wash up a bit, eat breakfast first, then play."
Huo Dao's wife never minded him playing games.
Because his wife knew very well: Huo Dao's profession was inseparable from games.
"Breakfast?" Huo Dao looked out the window and realized that it was already bright outside.
"Crap!"
"What's wrong?" His wife didn't understand.
Of course, the manuscript was going to be late!
He had been charging and killing in [Hell on Earth] all night with the commander Longcheng Feijiang—and the rapidly formed fixed team—and had completely forgotten about the manuscript.
Just as he was thinking about this, the phone on the table buzzed, and a message from the editor-in-chief, Gu Chen, arrived—
"Thanks for your hard work, how's the manuscript coming along?"
Huo Dao hesitated for a moment and replied: "I just got off the battlefield."
The editor-in-chief immediately sent a series of question marks.
"You played games all night?"
"I gathered material all night!" Huo Dao quickly retorted.
"So what's the result of your gathering material??"
"…" Huo Dao was silent, "Okay, I played games all night."
After speaking, he couldn't help but add: "Dream Building is awesome!"
The editor-in-chief was silent for two seconds, then suddenly sent several loud voice messages in a row—
The ⊥ newest ⊥ novel ⊥ is ⊥ at ⊥ six ⊥ 9 ⊥ ⊥ book ⊥ ⊥ bar ⊥ ⊥ first ⊥ release!
"Do I need you to tell me that Dream Building is awesome?!"
"[War Zone] has already sold like crazy, and third-party institutions predict that it has sold more than 3 million copies on Vapour alone! Not to mention the consoles, Dream Building's own platform is probably selling even more!"
"And this is only the first day!"
"No, today is only a quarter over, their first-day sales data must be amazing!"
"Amazing." Huo Dao was excited, "Looks like it's going to create a new record for Xia Country's buyout games?"
"So! Where's your manuscript?!" The editor-in-chief asked.
"I'll write it now!" Huo Dao guaranteed, patting his chest, "Don't worry, it'll be quick!"
"How quick?" The editor-in-chief asked suspiciously.
"I wrote two manuscripts half a month ago, one for when it sells well and one for when it doesn't." Huo Dao said with a smile, "Now the game not only sells well, but the quality is also top-notch! I just need to modify it a bit."
"Today is Saturday, and the players haven't gotten out of bed yet."
"Give me two hours, and it'll be done by the time the players get up!"
"Okay, okay, then hurry up." The editor-in-chief didn't waste his time and quickly hung up the phone.
Huo Dao then got up, washed his face, quickly stuffed the breakfast his wife had prepared into his stomach, and returned to the computer to open the folder on the desktop.
There were only two manuscripts in the folder:
[War Zone: A Great Counterattack of the Losers!]
[Respect the Dream Chasers Who Never Stop! War Zone is a Glorious Failure!]
Huo Dao opened the first one without hesitation and began to modify the original draft and fill in the details.
…
…
The sky was getting brighter and brighter.
The success of [War Zone] was becoming more and more certain—
Sales steadily occupied the top spot on the Vapour China chart and third in the global region.
More than 80,000 comments were added to the Vapour product page overnight, with an overall positive rating of 91%! Very positive!
The number of real-time online players was also an amazing 580,000.
And this is just the data from one platform, Vapour!
As for how well Dream Building's home base—the Dream Building game platform—is selling, you won't doubt its popularity if you just take a look at the public opinion on domestic social networks and major player communities.
In a word:
[War Zone]'s first day of launch was off to a great start!
As a result, game media and self-media sent "congratulatory messages" one after another—
[War Zone Tops Vapour Sales Chart, Creating a Sales Miracle!]
[Breaking Records! A New Record for Xia Country's Buyout Games is About to Be Born!]
[The Flagship-Level VR Game That the World Has Been Waiting for is Finally Born!]
[Rave Reviews! Dream Building's New Work, War Zone, Achieves Both Critical Acclaim and Sales Success!]
…
The [War Zone] project team was also like celebrating the New Year. Early in the morning, people kept forwarding these blog posts, dynamics, and short videos to the work group to share their joy with everyone.
Xu Meng, who went to bed very late, was also awakened by the vibration of his phone.
The first thing he did after waking up was to check whether the [Game Life] system task had been completed.
What confused him was—
The task was still not completed.
Not only was it not "over-completed", but even the basic "complete the task" was not!
"What's going on?" Xu Meng couldn't understand.
"[War Zone] was only developed for four months, the development team has more than 100 people, and four months of wages are less than 30 million, plus distribution costs, technical costs, server costs…"
"Deducting the various tax incentives and support policies given by the Ningzhou government, it adds up to about 100 million, right?"
After not lacking money, Xu Meng no longer calculated carefully. Xiao Meng helped to keep an eye on the company's financial situation, and he looked at it about once a month, so he wasn't very clear about the exact numbers.
But no matter what—
"Now that [War Zone] has sold million copies, and sales are going to 1 billion, it's definitely made a lot of money!"
But why hasn't the task goal: [Develop and launch Dream Building's second game and achieve profitability] been completed?
"Could it be waiting for the return of funds?"
Or is it—
A terrible thought arose in Xu Meng's mind:
"This retarded system wouldn't have included the production cost of the Illusion Game Kit in the game's promotion, would it?!"
Asking for monthly tickets.
