Chapter 1005: Flooding the Live Streaming Site
Zou Zhuo broke his usual routine today and streamed for four or five hours straight before finally climbing out of the Matrix game pod.
“So freaking awesome! I really didn’t want to come out!” Zou Zhuo exclaimed.
At the start, the story was a bit slow, but after an hour or two, all kinds of epic scenes began to unfold.
Especially the parts related to Trevor. In this first-person soul-transmigration experience, it was absolutely mind-blowing.
Take the mission “Anxious Little Luo,” for example. The player, inhabiting Trevor, first goes to Ammu-Nation to buy a sniper rifle, then climbs up a tall water tower to wait for nightfall. At night, the player uses the sniper to shoot out all the lights at the biker gang’s small airport, allowing Little Luo to sneak in. Then, the player has to take out all the bikers standing guard with the sniper rifle.
For Zou Zhuo, using a sniper rifle for the first time was tough but incredibly thrilling. The feeling of taking someone’s life from hundreds of meters away was similar to *PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds*, but the sniper battles in GTA were easier and more satisfying. Plus, since the next-gen VR controls were completely different, Zou Zhuo felt like he was using a real sniper rifle. Whether it was manually pulling the bolt or dealing with the strong recoil, it gave him a much better sense of what it’s like to be a sharpshooter.
Next, Old Trevor directly took an AK-47 and massacred the entire small airport. After activating his special ability, Old Trevor was practically invincible, ignoring all bullets and charging straight through like a lawnmower in a hack-and-slash game.
After that, Old Trevor lay on the wing of a plane, frantically unloading bullets to take down the endless waves of enemies.
Finally, Trevor jumped onto another plane on the runway and flew it back with Little Luo. During this flight, the player also had to perform special maneuvers like flipping the wings, dropping cargo, flying under bridges, and landing the plane smoothly on the runway.
The final part of flying the plane nearly made Zou Zhuo cry. Even though the game had simplified the controls and automated many actions, Zou Zhuo found he couldn’t even handle the control stick properly. Often, during a turn, the plane would nosedive straight into the ground and go boom.
Landing on the runway was also ridiculously hard. Zou Zhuo died at least seven or eight times before finally parking the plane in the hangar, and he almost knocked off the wings in the process.
Even though flying the plane was frustrating, the moment he successfully landed was incredibly satisfying.
Now Zou Zhuo could go out and brag to people. Bro, I’ve flown—oh wait, no, I’ve piloted a plane!
“This game is just too freaking awesome! Seriously, I think even if it weren’t in the Matrix game pod, even if it were a traditional PC game or on the Switch with a controller, this game would still be a classic! And now it’s next-gen VR—you can shoot guns, drive cars, and fly planes inside. This is an absolute steal!”
“Think about it—getting a driver’s license costs like three thousand bucks… You could totally use this game to practice for your road test!”
Zou Zhuo couldn’t contain his excitement and kept bragging to the chat.
The viewers in the chat, however, were all opposing his sales pitch for GTA.
“You’re trying to trick me into spending money again! Tell me, how much did Chen Mo pay you? I’ll give you double from Dichaohu Entertainment!”
“Dichaohu Entertainment? Step aside, little bro. You really can’t afford it. They’re not even in the same league as Thunderbolt Entertainment anymore.”
“Haha, look at this chubby guy talking. Am I the kind of person who’s short on three thousand bucks? No, I’m short on the three hundred thousand for the game pod!”
“Exactly. Am I the kind of person who’s short on three thousand bucks? Well, actually, I am…”
“Shedding tears of poverty… When will Chen Mo release a cheaper version? If the price dropped tenfold, I might consider it…”
“You can practice driving in here, but will the traffic cops recognize a license earned in this game…”
Everyone was being very honest. Yeah, we know it’s a great game, but we can’t afford it…
Zou Zhuo glanced at the Moyu streaming platform and was shocked to find that almost all the top streamers on the front page were streaming GTA!
Especially the gaming streamers—whether they usually played *League of Legends*, *PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds*, or other games—almost all of them were grinding away in GTA, abandoning their usual games. A few streamers were still playing other games, but their viewer counts were noticeably low, much less than usual.
The entire audience on the Moyu platform was basically concentrated in a few big streamers’ rooms, watching them play GTA.
“Whoa, is it really this crazy?” Zou Zhuo was startled himself. He checked his own viewer count. It had been over 1.8 million, but within ten minutes of him leaving the game pod, it plummeted to 1.3 million. No doubt, those people saw he wasn’t streaming GTA anymore and jumped to other streamers’ rooms.
In fact, every time Chen Mo released a new game, it could create a new batch of streamers. When *PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds* first blew up, streamers like Old P, Zou Zhuo, and Qin An all saw their popularity skyrocket thanks to that game. So it wasn’t just small streamers keeping an eye on Chen Mo’s new games; even many big streamers were afraid of falling behind and losing their audience.
For a game like *Detroit: Become Human*, there wasn’t much difference between streamers, so small streamers had little chance to overtake the big ones. But GTA was different. The game’s freedom was so high that it gave streamers a huge amount of room to show off.
Zou Zhuo scrolled down a bit and saw several popular streams, each with its own unique flavor.
There were dedicated shooting enthusiasts, racers, and even helicopter and airplane pilots. Their streaming gimmicks were straightforward: showing off marksmanship or driving skills!
These shooting enthusiasts were already good shots in real life, so in the game, they specifically took on gunfight missions, landing headshots every time, which thrilled the viewers. The racers went all out showing off drifting techniques, explaining the real-life actions needed to drift through the game, attracting a lot of viewers. As for the helicopter and airplane pilots, they were rare gems. Just doing a few aerial stunts in the sky would instantly flood the chat with “666” and a torrent of gifts.
As for others, there were people teaching fighting in GTA, teaching sailing, sightseeing, visiting amusement parks, driving taxis for fares… One streamer even showed viewers how to drive strictly according to traffic rules in Los Santos. Viewers commented, “This streamer really knows how to have fun,” and then closed the stream.
Streamers quickly discovered that GTA was a game rich enough in content that everyone could play it differently.
As open-world games, GTA and *The Legend of Zelda* were two completely different styles, and in some ways, GTA even did better.
The story was great, the city was well-constructed, there were plenty of activities, and it even offered a bit of social commentary.
Maybe the only thing it lacked compared to *The Legend of Zelda* was that it wasn’t suitable for kids to play…