Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 622: Chapter 590: Expert Mode, Let’s Go!

The next day, Lincoln met up with Xu Chun and took the earliest flight directly to Qixia.

It is worth mentioning that the experts of Cloud Dream [Cold Weapon Combat Research Group] all mobilized collectively, booking their own tickets and cramming into the same flight to go back home with Xu Chun.

When Lincoln saw this group of people at the waiting area, he was quite surprised and instinctively refused:

“Everyone… there’s no need for you all to trouble yourselves to come, we can handle it ourselves.”

He felt that there was no need to mobilize such a large group and make everyone go on a business trip together.

In response, they all gave him a strange look, making Lincoln feel as if he had gotten something wrong.

Finally, it was Lori who explained on behalf of the boss: “Well, we wanted to pay a visit to Senior Xu…”

Seeing Lincoln’s suddenly awkward expression, Lori hurriedly comforted him: “Of course, if there is anything that you need help with, boss, we’ll be more than happy to lend a hand.”

“No…” Lincoln muttered, feeling sheepish, and sat down without saying another word.

Xu Chun looked at these people, speechless, regretting letting slip yesterday that his old dad “might” be a swordsmanship grandmaster.

Now, he was exasperated to see these people persisting on going home with him to “visit uncle”.

But as they were all friends, there was no reason to refuse them, so he unwillingly set off on the journey with them.

*

Even though Lincoln changed his plans at the last minute and took off from Xiajing City, the official business of Cloud Dream wasn’t delayed.

The live stream page for the Terraria Survival Challenge was opened on time, and special invitations were sent out one by one.

——The event was open to all players, everyone could sign up to participate. The special invites for the streamers just added a relay window to the live broadcast page.

At the same time, relying on the [Survival Challenge], a minor event was simultaneously launched – [Survival Challenge Themed Video Collection Activity].

The rules of this event were simple: as long as the players made videos themed after the survival challenge, added the contest label, and posted them on the video-sharing platform, they could participate in the activity.

In the end, the most popular video chosen by the players could also receive a reward.

There were a total of 20 prize spots for this event: one first prize, three second prizes, six third prizes, and ten excellence prizes.

The first prize could also get a “mysterious grand prize”, which was the game cabin.

The rest only got cash rewards and some peripherals.

The cash reward wasn’t high, just slightly more than what an ordinary video website would offer. The first prize was only about 10,000 dollars, and the excellence prize was only 1000 dollars.

But according to Lincoln’s prediction, if they were willing to resell the peripherals, these first-batch peripherals could probably be sold at much higher prices than the cash rewards.

It all depended on whether they were willing to sell or not.

Of course, to Lincoln, these were all minor matters. The real goal was to record the streamers’ dark history, let the netizens watch the fun, increase the sense of participation.

The soon-to-be-pranked streamers were still oblivious to this at the moment.

Only Camille Victoria, who had doubted Lincoln from the start, looked at her invitation after seeing the video collection activity and felt a hint of unease.

After having an early lunch and starting the stream early, while waiting for Terraria to go live, Camille Victoria started thinking about inviting people to join her.

If she played alone, she would indeed feel a little unsure.

But Xiaomei and Queenie were both timid, Shuihua had to attend class and was also underage, so she could only look for others to play with.

Actually, her ideal scenario would be to find a fun-loving person like Yi to play with.

People who like to make jokes can often effectively dilute the terrifying atmosphere.

However, it’s a pity that without Lincoln organizing it, and her own live streaming contract being in place, cross-platform cooperation was still inconvenient.

This made her a bit regretful about the contract she had just switched to three months ago.

This was already the umpteenth time she had regretted it since Cloud Dream launched its live streaming platform…

While Camille Victoria had no choice but to give up on Yi and started selecting people from her fan group, Yi, who was her first choice, was seriously reading a comment——

“It seems that many streamers are all joking around, aren’t any of you scared at all?”

Yi nodded seriously: “Scared! Of course scared! How could it not be!”

“But even if we’re scared, as long as we prepare well in advance, fear shouldn’t stop us from having fun!”

The viewers all sent question marks, while Yi kept talking to himself: “So, the question is, how can we prepare well in advance?”

“Look!”

In the frame, he solemnly held up a package of Wusu Diapers: “Wusu Diapers, a brand trusted for ten years. Convenient, fast, worry-free, with super absorbency. Verified by personal use, no leakage…”

The barrage exploded instantly:

“? ? Are you serious?”

“You prepared diapers in advance?”

“The first thing you do when you start the stream: advertise?”

“”I will never touch diapers in my life””I won’t use it even when I have a baby””If I touch diapers again, I’ll bark like a dog””

“Just talking won’t do, are you wearing it?”

…

Looking at the response in the live chat, Yi’s eyes twitched, and he hesitated for a moment.

But in the end, he said with righteous indignation: “Look down on me, do you? How could I recommend it to you if I hadn’t tried it myself and found it worked well?”

Having said that, he pushed off the ground with both feet, the ergonomic chair slid backwards, and the lower half of his body appeared in front of the camera.

At this moment, he was wearing a diaper!

In fact, he even held up a printed photo, it was a photo of him wearing a diaper, with Lincoln standing next to him also holding a pack of diapers, it’s their group photo.

The black history that once made him so embarrassed that he lost face was now being proudly displayed in front of the whole live-streaming room.

“See that? Even Lincoln says it’s good!”

This round of events caught not only the general audience by surprise but even his old fans –

“Did he just use his dark history to advertise?”

“Blink twice if you’re being held hostage!”

“It seems that this time, they really did spare no expense with the payment…”

“Has the streamer been having some hard times lately? Desperately short on cash?”

“I’ve already bought three big bags, my kid loves them!”

…

Still wearing a diaper, holding a photo in one hand and a diaper in the other, Yi froze for a full five seconds. At the brief moment when his expression was about to go out of control and the corner of his mouth twitched uncontrollably—

He kicked off the network cable, pretending his internet connection was cut.

The next moment, his serious expression completely collapsed. Throwing away the diaper in his hand, he angrily tore the photo into shreds and tossed them into the trash can.

He covered his face with both hands, screaming “ah ah ah” for a long time, then closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, and did a good amount of mental prep before he could control his inner collapse.

It was only after he grudgingly pulled himself together that he reconnected the network cable and said to the lens with a slight smile, “Sorry, my network cable just got unplugged.”

Then he tried to divert the topic, ignoring the screen full of question marks, “Now, let’s officially start today’s live-stream.”

But how could his viewers let it go that fast?

One by one, they were still passionately discussing his outrageous “advertisement time” just now.

With no choice left, Yi had to go back to the original question, which was to start discussing the “afraid or not” question from scratch.

“Some people asked if I’m afraid, honestly, it’s quite hard to be scared.”

“Haven’t we been playing various modules these days? Although I’ve spent more time playing Battlefield and less on other games, I honestly haven’t encountered any frightening modules.”

“Even modules that are said to be bloody and for a niche audience, are actually just that. At most, they give you a bit of physical discomfort, and I don’t find them particularly scary.”

After Yi’s spit-take, he voluntarily explained for the module producers: “Actually, this isn’t the producers’ fault, mainly it’s just that the time is too short. Most of the things are still based on the original ‘My World’ materials, where they use creativity and gameplay to win. There’s not much new content added.”

“But in the whole game of ‘My World’, there isn’t much that scares people, even if you try to engineer it, it’s still unlikely to be scary.”

This isn’t only Yi’s idea, but also the idea of many other streamers and experts.

In their view, since Terraria is based on the gameplay of the module made from ‘My World’, it’s unlikely to be that scary.

Even if Cloud Dream made it out to be a major event and kept promoting and emphasizing it, they still couldn’t be scared.

But in fact, they all underestimated Terraria.

It’s not something that can be summarized by the word ‘module’. It has an abundance of original components, it could totally be viewed as a brand new game.

Even if it is not completely new, it’s at least 90% new!

Lincoln and Xiaomeng are both fully prepared for a large number of players being scared to collapse, completely filling up Spring Meadow.

In Spring Meadow, a huge balloon banner reading [Welcome to Spring Meadow] was flown into the sky by Xiaomeng early on.

She has already made preparations to welcome the players.

*

[14:00]

Terraria officially launches.

Although the impact of the module is less than that of the new game, and the number of players taking time off to play in Daxia diminished considerably, overseas players filled in this part of the gap. The module still welcomed a huge number of users at the first instance.

Yi quickly loaded the module, and after logging in, six options appeared in front of him – –

———-

[Single Player Mode]

[Multiplayer Mode]

[Achievements]

[Creative Workshop]

[Production Staff]

[Exit]

———-

Yi was stunned by the [Creative Workshop] option and even clicked in to take a look – – of course it’s still empty now.

But that couldn’t stop his mind from buzzing: “What does this mean? Cloud Dream added a mod function to a mod?”

“What’s this? A mod within a mod??”

He was completely bewildered.

But time waits for no man, so he had to put this question to the back of his mind and selected Single Player Mode.

Next is the difficulty selection – –

———-

[Normal]

[Difficult]

[Expert]

———-

At Lincoln’s request, these three options actually don’t directly affect the difficulty of exploration and combat.

It only affects the cost of character death – –

Lose money, lose items, or…can’t be revived, die and start over!

Of course, without a second thought, Yi chose the [Expert] difficulty – – because of Lincoln’s [Survival Challenge], it has to be expert mode!

The other modes don’t qualify to participate at all.

But Yi wasn’t bothered in the slightest:

“I’m someone who’s even overthrown the Ender Dragon, could a single module defeat me?”

“Hmph, expert mode, here I come!”