Chapter 800: Chapter 759: The Secretly Activated Invitation Letter
After watching the promotional material, Lincoln immediately understood Wild Island’s plan.
It had to be said that it was a very clever approach.
It indeed seemed very risky, but if nothing went wrong, the hope of a turnaround was substantial.
After all, there was nothing like this on the market before.
Although VR games could exercise the body in the past, that was just an additional effect of the games.
When giants like NetDragon, Flying Fox, and Wild Island developed games, their focus was mostly on the game content itself and not on the exercise factor.
At most, developers would pay attention to players’ movements to avoid muscle strains during gameplay – which did happen in the early days.
Other than that, their focus was on adjusting game plot content and distributing players’ energy reasonably to prolong game time as much as possible.
There had never been a game whose development goal was for players to “get the best exercise effect from their bodies.”
So Wild Island’s move essentially filled a gap in the market.
Lincoln immediately thought of the motion-sensing games from his previous life, which had a considerable influence on gamers worldwide.
If nothing went wrong, Wild Island might indeed find a way out.
Lincoln even thought of their follow-up development strategies:
First: After removing the helmet, continue to streamline the equipment and further reduce the production cost of the Fourth Generation equipment so that the price could be pushed down as low as possible, ideally close to Mirage 2.0’s price, lowering the entry barrier for players.
Second: Invest in publicity, promoting the concepts of “healthy gaming” and “healthy living.”
Third: Hold competitive events to further activate the social features of “Iron Fist.”
Fourth: Launch more fitness and sports games with strong interaction and social connections.
If “Iron Fist” has excellent quality and good luck, Wild Island could not only make a turnaround but might also take off on the spot!
After all, they have the most powerful “social” games.
“So, shall we give them a surprise?” Lincoln suddenly thought maliciously, “bring out the fitness ring?”
“No, no, no, that’s too small-minded!”
“The readymade [Eight Sides] helm can completely cover the technology needed for motion-sensing games!”
For Cloud Dream, developing motion-sensing games is not difficult at all.
Even the technical teams of [Journey Prosthetics] can accomplish this without Cloud Dream Headquarters getting involved.
The technology they uncovered in the field of [Mixed Reality·Pathfinding] is enough for sports games.
As long as various magical creatures can guide the users along the path, a yoga master can naturally demonstrate standard yoga moves to the user face-to-face.
However, thinking of Cloud Dream’s packed development schedule and the looming release dates of new games, Lincoln’s maliciousness subsided…
As for letting [Journey Prosthetics] make games just to crush Wild Island, it’s like asking for trouble.
Their relationship with Wild Island is not hostile.
On the other hand, Wild Island being alive is more advantageous for Cloud Dream than dead.
They could even try to buy Wild Island!
Or half of it?
“Anyway, I wish them good luck!”
Having had enough entertainment, Lincoln threw off the blanket and got up.
It wasn’t that he was done being lazy, but he was hungry.
“Master, you forgot something!” Mavis, who hadn’t gotten up, sat on the bed and called out to Lincoln.
‘?’ Lincoln turned to Mavis, thought for a moment, and decisively bent down to pick her up.
The headband provided him with sensory feedback as realistic as the real thing, allowing him to feel Mavis’s warm, soft body when he held her.
Mavis giggled happily but shook her head and said, “Not that!”
“Not that?” Lincoln was a bit confused.
He thought Mavis was just being cute and asking for a hug, but that wasn’t the case.
“So, what is it?”
“It’s an invitation letter!” Mavis swayed her little legs happily and answered.
“An invitation to ‘Chang’an’? Let’s talk about it later.”
In the end, a significant number of players in [Giant Dragon Invasion] gave up their actual game benefits and made a wish to enter ‘Chang’an’ early.
So, invitation letters were sent out like this.
But the problem was: there were just too many invitations sent out!
If it were only a few hundred, there would be no problem letting those players get a sneak peek after signing a confidentiality agreement.
But now it’s hundreds of thousands of people!
Letting them in would create chaos…
So these invitations had to be frozen for a while, allowing the development team more time to prepare.
Lincoln didn’t want to think about work during his time off, but Mavis kept bringing it up, so he threw her up in the air and caught her to scare her as punishment.
“Ah! Haha~” Mavis exclaimed in surprise, then clung tightly to Lincoln to avoid being thrown again.
She didn’t dare keep him guessing anymore and hurriedly revealed the answer: “It’s not an invitation to ‘Chang’an’, but to ‘Pokémon’!”
“Ah?” Lincoln recalled a few seconds later, the invitation that came with the small dinosaur when players achieved the Dinosaur Island [Ancestors’ Glory] series.
When ‘Pokémon’ development was on track, Lincoln had mentioned activating the invitation on New Year’s Day for some early marketing and pre-launch publicity.
It was a necessary thing to do; otherwise, a surprise attack without a sound would be fun, but the players wouldn’t have the [Eight Sides] Helm, making the game unplayable…
——Mirage can’t play ‘Pokémon’.
“Well, according to the plan, activate it.”
While talking, Lincoln had already carried Mavis out of the bedroom and put her on the bathroom counter as they started brushing their teeth together.
*
At the same time, all players who have achieved [Ancestors’ Glory] found that the pure black[mysterious invitation letter]at their homes silently turned into the cartoonish[‘Pokémon’ invitation letter], which flashed a few times and then became quiet again.
The whole process didn’t give players any hints.
So no one discovered this for the entire morning.
It wasn’t until lunchtime that people started posting online about seeing strange creatures.
The most viewed post was from a blind girl with the ID[Joyce is happy every day].
At first, the content of her account was mostly about daily life encounters of a blind person and happy moments. But since the [Eight Sides] went on sale, Joyce regained her sight, and her account content changed dramatically.
Without any hesitation, she quickly married her boyfriend.
From then on, Seventy percent of her account content became videos of their sweet married life, twenty percent was due to her being happy and excited about things she couldn’t see before, and the remaining ten percent were her thank you messages for Lincoln.
But today, she only posted a picture without a video, and the caption was also interesting——
[Today, I saw a strange unicorn-like creature eating pansies in the flower bed of my apartment complex. It startled me! But for some reason, I couldn’t take a picture of it with my phone, and my husband couldn’t see it either. It’s so strange. Does anyone know what that is?]
There were no “unicorn-like strange creatures” in the picture – just an empty flower bed and ordinary pansies.
At first, her fans thought it was a joke:
“Don’t call him your boyfriend, call him your husband!”
“Is this some kind of ‘only smart people can see it, but idiots can’t’ game?”
“You can see it, but your phone and others can’t… do you have the legendary Yin-Yang Eye?”
“Could this be some kind of omen? You should check if you’re pregnant.”
…
Such jokes continued for quite a while.
It wasn’t until more and more similar posts sprung up like bamboo shoots after a rain that people finally realized: this wasn’t a joke, and something important was really happening.
What had happened?
Players whose curiosity had been piqued transformed into detectives and quickly identified the common point among these posters——
When they saw the magical creatures, they were all wearing the [Eight Sides] Helm!