Chapter 995: Inside Scoop
Moreover, Chen Mo could very cleverly bypass these food and beverage brands entirely.
Take a certain fast-food chain, for example. If they demanded he stop selling their brand of food in the Matrix Shopping Center, no problem—he could cancel it immediately. But then he could just rebrand and keep selling the same stuff.
He could give the fast-food joint a new name. They sell burgers; he sells burgers too, but his burgers aren’t called the same thing. They sell fried chicken, drinks, and desserts; he sells those too, but each item is slightly different from theirs. Even something like fried chicken wings—there are probably hundreds of millions of people in the world who know how to fry them. If he sells them, what can they do about it?
Not only would he sell them, but he could also tweak the taste so that everyone thinks his chicken wings taste better than theirs. How infuriating would that be?
As for Happy Fat Guy Soda, he wouldn’t call it cola. He’d call it Happy Fat Guy Soda, change the packaging entirely, and as for the recipe, he could simply claim that their production methods are completely different. Their cola has its own formula—totally fine. But his is a flavor crafted using black technology from an AI system and neural connection. How could they prove his cola is related to theirs?
Keep in mind, there are at least a dozen domestic cola brands in the country. They’re not very tasty, haven’t captured the market, and most are barely surviving. But if Chen Mo wanted to use one, it wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Chen Mo could easily say: Our Happy Fat Guy Soda is based on a domestic cola brand, collecting its taste profile, then directly adjusting the players’ taste perception at the code level to create a virtual cola. It has nothing to do with Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola.
Happy Fat Guy Soda does have many patents, like the bottle shape and trademark logo, but its core competitive edge actually lies in the relatively intangible thing called “taste.”
But the key is that people are very loyal to that “taste.” Even when the recipe changes, consumers will collectively boycott it.
Whether it’s marketing or psychological effect, many people genuinely believe they can distinguish the authentic taste of Happy Fat Guy Soda and will staunchly defend it.
However, in the face of black technology like brain-neural connection tech, “taste” suddenly loses its mystery.
Because no matter how complex a flavor is, it can be captured and analyzed through specific data. Chen Mo might not know the exact recipe for Happy Fat Guy Soda, but he can obtain the sensation people have when drinking it. Then he can turn that sensation into code and, when players drink that dark, bubbly liquid, inject that feeling directly into their brains.
This kind of dimensionality reduction attack using black technology is practically impossible to defend against…
So Chen Mo wasn’t worried about any of this. Even if some very specific foods couldn’t be sold in the Matrix Shopping Center, so what? The vast majority of real-world cuisines and drinks could be sold, and that was enough.
It could be said that the arrival of the Matrix Game Pod shattered many traditional industry structures, inevitably turning into a clash of multiple interests. But Chen Mo wasn’t concerned, because no matter how you looked at it, the thigh he was clinging to was still thicker.
With the emergence of the Matrix Shopping Center, needless to say, the game pods sold like hotcakes again.
It wasn’t that rich people had nothing better to do than spend 300,000 to enter a virtual world to eat fried chicken and drink Happy Fat Guy Soda. They bought it more to experience this unprecedented sensation and get a head start on adapting to life as a brain in a vat.
For some hardcore food enthusiasts, the Matrix Shopping Center became a holy land—a place gathering cuisines from all over the world where you could eat without gaining weight. How incredible was that?
And that nameless little shop became a hot topic everyone loved to discuss. Every single item of food there had been carefully fine-tuned by Thunderbolt Interactive’s staff. It could even be guaranteed that even a salted duck egg there tasted better than most real-world foods. This kind of cheating—directly tampering with players’ perceptions at the highest level—made many food lovers flock to it.
…
Before the buzz around the Matrix Shopping Center had even died down, another piece of news sparked heated discussion among players.
A famous game developer from the Lighthouse Country, Global Technology—the company behind *Earth Online*—had once hoped to collaborate with Thunderbolt Interactive on a next-gen VR version of *Earth Online*. But for some unknown reason, the collaboration ultimately fell through.
This was just an inside scoop, its authenticity unverifiable, but it still triggered a lot of player debate.
Many players doubted the truth of this news, but that didn’t stop everyone from discussing it fervently. Some players even expressed genuine regret, because *Earth Online* was indeed a very good game and had a sizable player base in the country.
In many players’ eyes, the failure of this collaboration was a “lose-lose” situation, because they felt that combining *Earth Online* with the Matrix Game Pod would have created a fantastic chemical reaction.
“Why didn’t Chen Mo agree to collaborate with *Earth Online*? What a shame. I think it would have been a great opportunity to promote the Matrix Game Pod!”
“Not sure. Probably some dirty backroom deal where they couldn’t split the spoils?”
“Yeah, if *Earth Online* got a next-gen VR makeover, just thinking about it gets me excited!”
“This is fake news, right? Let’s all pray it’s fake news. Maybe in a few months, we’ll see news of Chen Mo teaming up with Global Technology. Don’t be so pessimistic!”
“Although I’m not sure if this inside scoop is accurate, I think everyone above clearly doesn’t know Serent at all. When have you ever seen him rely on other games to promote a new product? The only time he collaborates with other game developers is to recruit indie designers to enrich the Thunderbolt Game Platform, and those designers are always subordinate to him. When have you ever seen him co-develop a game with another company?”
“I think so too… Even if Chen Mo is cooking up another big move after *Detroit: Become Human*, it’ll definitely be his own work. For a giant like *Earth Online*, Chen Mo definitely wouldn’t want them involved. I think this news is probably true. Everyone knows how picky Chen Mo is about games.”
“So… we probably won’t be able to play *Earth Online* in the Matrix Game Pod, right? That’s really sad…”
“No, I think given Serent’s personality, he’d probably just make his own version… Maybe it’ll be even more fun than *Earth Online*…”
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