Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 151 - 151: 149: Unreasonable Negative Reviews

Limiting gaming time is essential.

— It’s not about preventing addiction, everybody is an adult, and how they want to live their lives is their own business, others have no right to interfere.

As for minors, they follow Daxia’s current protection measures.

However, Daxia is currently supporting the third industry, and the restrictions are actually not strict, with very detailed addiction prevention standards set for ages 8, 12, 14, 16, and 18.

Basically, after 16, restrictions are very minimal, mainly on in-game spending.

Lincoln limits game time purely for the health of gamers.

Playing a game in a virtual environment feels a bit like a dreamscape, which can easily create an illusion that playing games equals sleep.

Actually, this is completely wrong. They are two separate things. Playing virtual reality games consumes mental energy, just like any other game.

However, with other types of games, after playing for a long time, your body will send you a warning: feeling back pain, muscle cramps in wrists and fingers, and teary eyes.

These symptoms would force you to stop and rest.

But with virtual reality games, your body is lying comfortably, with no complaints.

At most, you may feel a little stiff after exiting the game, and a few movements can resolve the problem.

This can easily give you the illusion that “I’m not tired, I can keep fighting until dawn.”

But in fact, your mind is constantly being consumed, only mental fatigue isn’t as fast or as obvious as physical fatigue.

This kind of fatigue is fine for a day or two, but if it occurs frequently in a week or two, or even months, it becomes a big issue!

So, Lincoln took advantage of this Mirage update to add restrictions as a precaution.

Moreover, it’s not rigidly kicking a player offline after a 16 -hour game, but based on players’ mental state.

If a player rests properly and relaxes their nerves, they can be online for more than 20 hours a day.

However, if they don’t rest and keep grinding, 16 hours is pretty much their limit.

What Lincoln didn’t expect was that 16 hours of game time a day should be more than enough and should have little impact on gamers.

However, he underestimated hardcore gamers’ liver and kidney functions, which led to the current lively situation on the internet.

— But it’s still harmless.

[08:00]

Lincoln’s phone alarm rang, and the sound today was a water sound carefully selected by Mavis.

Asleep, Lincoln woke up in an inexplicable urge to pee, looked at the phone with running water sound, and realized it was Mavis playing a prank. “Awake, awake, turn off the alarm clock.”

“Ok!” Mavis turned off the alarm, and then told Lincoln the news he had missed: “Many people in the studio group are looking for you because many players cannot enter the game and are protesting our anti-addiction measures.”

“Oh.” Lincoln turned the camera on his bedside table towards the wall and started to get dressed and get out of bed.

It’s 8 0’clock now, and the players in a hurry to catch up on progress would only make a fuss when they can’t enter the game.

As soon as the time is right, they’ll run off to play the game, and they’ll definitely run faster than one another.

They don’t need to be bothered, as these people will disperse on their own.

After getting dressed, Lincoln went over and straightened the camera.

—He didn’t initially plan to put the camera in his bedroom because it felt strange, and it gave him a sense of insecurity…

But Mavis begged him pitifully for a long time, acting spoiled and cute, and he finally agreed, his heart softened.

At first, he couldn’t sleep well, and Mavis was afraid he would change his mind, so she sang lullabies to him to help him fall asleep.

After sleeping this way for a week, he got used to it.

Lincoln even thought it was nice to chat with Mavis before going to bed, and placed a tablet on the bedside table.

Although Mavis spent most of her time messing around, occasionally she could be seen curling up in the sheets like a kitten, as if she had entered dreamland as well.

Every time this happened, Lincoln found it interesting and stared for a long time.

He even recalled that interesting philosophical question: Do artificial intelligences dream of electric sheep?

However, he never really asked Mavis this question, as the answer would most likely not be interesting at all.

Lincoln habitually asked Mavis about the “daily news” while brushing his teeth.

Mavis also habitually began to broadcast the “news” that Lincoln might be interested in: “On the RANK-Popular Game Rating list, ‘Assassins’ Alliance’ has basically stabilized at 8.2 points after a day of ups and downs.”

“8.2? Where did they lose points mainly?”

“Let Mavis see!” And with that, Mavis started to read out highly upvoted negative reviews one by one.

‘The police arrive too quickly, thumbs down.’

‘Why do the gangs have more firepower than the police? Is that scientific!’

‘I also protest the issue of the gangs having too much firepower! Driving armored vehicles in the city is totally absurd! But I disagree with the above opinion. In America, it’s common for gangs to have more firepower than the police, right?’

‘I disagree with the above two opinions! If you think the police’s firepower isn’t strong enough, you’re obviously not being wicked enough. Why not try robbing a big bank? Just hold out for 15 minutes without being killed by the bank’s security, and you’ll see what real firepower superiority looks like! So protesting against the police being too powerful!’

‘There’s no channel for topping up, making money is too much trouble!

Strongly suggest opening a channel to purchase in-game currency!’

‘Can’t take off pants, thumbs down!’

‘Strongly suggest upgrading the game rating to “R18” and opening adult features. If Cloud Dream listens carefully to player suggestions, I will immediately change my score to a full 10 points! And I promise to mobilize all my social connections to give the game full marks. Please give serious consideration to my proposal!’

‘It’s clearly my girlfriend, so why can’t we bathe together? Thumbs down.’ ‘It’s clearly my girlfriend, so why is she involved with others? Thumbs down.’

“It’s clear that I’ve forgiven my girlfriend for being involved with others, so why won’t she come back? Thumbs down.’

“Stop, stop, stop! Hold on! Hold on!” Lincoln cried out, “I can understand the complaints in the first few, but what are all these random things in the latter?” “Mavis doesn’t know!” Mavis shook her little head in the tablet.

“Forget it, not a single valuable suggestion,” Lincoln sighed helplessly, “Let the rating be. It’s not that low anyway. What about media scores?”

“The overall average score from the released game media is 9-4. If you remove the blacklisted media ratings, the average score rises to 9-5.”

“Ah, not a big drop,” Lincoln said curiously.

“The game media we blacklisted, ‘Player Tribe’, initially gave us a 4.0 score. But within 20 minutes, more than 6,000 comments from players criticized them, and they deleted it and changed it to 8.0,” Mavis said, while showing Lincoln the screenshot she had specially saved.

“Ah, ‘Player Tribe’, no surprise. They probably haven’t fully accepted reality after receiving the Court’s summons. Don’t worry about them!”

“Also! ‘Game Base’ published an article that is now very popular! It already has over 60,000 likes!”

‘”Game Base’?” Lincoln asked curiously, “What did they write?” “It’s about the Mirage Console!”

“The console? Not the game?” Mavis’s reply surprised Lincoln.

Lincoln thought it was strange that they were writing about the Mirage console when the heat of ‘Assassins’ Alliance’ was at its peak. “Yes!” Mavis confirmed, “And the title is very powerful!”

“How powerful?”

Instead of reading it out, Mavis directly showed Lincoln the article from ‘Game Base’, even kindly enlarging the title several times for him to see.

Lincoln looked closely –

‘The Birth of a King: A Salute!’ “Huh?” Lincoln was dumbfounded..