Vinyl has been Greenlit!!!

[Zeph Fagergren]

Hey guys! Hope all is well with everyone!

I have some great news! I wanted to congratulate everyone because The Vinyl Game was just Greenlit on Steam!!!!  

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/234675464

Mike and I were going to try and talk tonight about the processing of all the legal LLC and tax documents Steam needs for us to do the first steps. Just wanted to keep everyone updated on the good news!

Congratulations again!

- Zeph

[Jason Kanagaratnam]

Is the plan to charge for this when the same game is on Desura for free?  Is there even a plan at all right now?  Should I just not worry about any of that shit and celebrate?  Is it too soon to give my two weeks?

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[Jason Thummel]

I talked with Mike briefly, I say if we can't go free (which we should if we can) we go for $1.  IT would mean we'd have to pull form Desura, but I personally think that's worth it.

[Zeph Fagergren]

I’m talking with Mike tonight about all the legal paperwork and LLC stuff they need from us so we can keep everyone updated on that stuff later. I’m not against trying to charge $1 and pulling from Desura. I think that would be a good move. Does anyone know if Desura will let us change our game to $1 on their site or are we stuck at free?

[Zeph Fagergren]

I’m pretty sure we can edit our price on Desura if we want to. I found the section on the admin side of Desura if we want to do it.

[Michael Heiberger]

Awesome news. I don't think JJ is in the group email list anymore, so I cc'd him on this.

No plan at the moment, and the Greenlight page says this invitation is valid forever, so we aren't rushed to get this done immediately. Probably don't want to put your two weeks in just yet, but we should all definitely celebrate!

Maybe we could do a meet up this weekend or something? I know a few people are at GDC, but maybe this weekend we could do a Salt Lake meet up for lunch or something (I know we hate meetings, but food???), maybe Skype people who no longer live here (Skypers will probably have to supply their own lunch). We should probably discuss pricing and whatnot. Or if you have no interest whatsoever in any of that crap, no worries. Or you all could just fly to SLC for some partying. 

Anyway, congratulations to all of us! We worked hard on Vinyl, and now we get to say we have an official Steam-released game! (also the first from the grad program? I know MBN beat us to Steam, but they're undergrad).

Also, if you're at GDC, don't forget to brag a little bit.

- Mike

[Brianne Christiansen]

I'm totally bragging!

-Brianne

[Sherly Yunita Hansen]

It took a year but we got it! Wow!!

It might be only me but I remember we said that we need to add achievement or such for Steam. I currently have no idea what kind of adjustment we need to make for Vinyl to be more Steam-y. I am up on making small and necessary adjustment for Vinyl.

Btw, who is coming to the alumni party tonight?

Cody and I will drive north to SF to meet everyone.

Sherly Yunita Hansen (Sherls)

[Jason Kanagaratnam]

I remember thinking we'd have to add Steam API stuff to the game, but I think it might be optional.  I don't think any engineer can legally work on the game other than you at this point Sherls, but we're prolly getting ahead of ourselves.

[Sherly Yunita Hansen]

Cody should be able, too. Cody told me Cryptic encourage their employee to do side project but the employee need to tell Cryptic first (to be sure that they are not making a competitive game). So, I guess he should be fine. ;)

Sherly Yunita Hansen (Sherls)

[Cody Hansen]

I hacked into the vinyl account on steam and got our numbers. They are actually just about where we left them. Steam is just greenlighting more games. The one good note is that we have a higher percentage of yes votes than the top 50.

Here are screenshots from the steam page.

[Michael Heiberger]

I was looking at that data yesterday, and it definitely does seem consistent with where its been (and its not like we've been driving traffic to the Greenlight page).

I know there was a time when Valve had people looking through Greenlight and picking games out they liked, so I wonder if that's still happening, and maybe we got lucky and caught someone's eye? It could also be that with more and more games being Greenlit, the threshold is just lower now. Either way, awesome for us.

[Cody Hansen]

yes, we actually have a good amount of favorites, and a good percentage of yes votes. Our only deficiency is that not many people have looked at our page.

But overall steam is putting a lot more games up. I have been noticing it a lot lately, a lot of smaller games are on steam. And I was just reading this article:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/steam-gauge-measuring-the-most-popular-steam-games-of-2014/

Here is an excerpt from it that pertains to amount of games on steam.

"

When we first unveiled the Steam Gauge project last April, we were tracking just over 2,700 games released on Steam to that point. Since then, the library of games on Steam has ballooned to include more than 4,400 games by our count. That's incredible acceleration for a service that until recently was satisfied to grow slowly. For context, the last 18 months have seen as many new games added to Steam as the service's first 10 years combined.

"

So they are taking more smaller games. And our game actually has a good yes percentage and good favorite percentage.

We do need to implement the Steamworks SDK into our game. It shouldn't be too hard. At a minimum I believe you just need to tell them when the game is started and ended (for hours played tracking). We will see how hard it is to add achievements. I plan to look into it starting this weekend (with Sherly).

[Michael Heiberger]

Interesting. I skimmed that same article earlier with the intent to go back and read it. We do have a pretty nice percentage of yes votes.

Also, as a contract programmer, I am not beholden to any non-compete clauses or the like, so if you need me to help with any of the engineering work once we sort of figure all this stuff out, I'll be happy to help.

Also also, Zeph can't really make this weekend for any sort of get-together (and I suspect neither can Brianne), so that plan is probably pushed back a bit. But if you are interested in discussing how we go forward with this, let me know! We'll figure out a time to do some mad discussion.

Also also also, did you see the announcement for Rock Band 4 today? Man, we led the charge for those music games to make a come back :)

[Sherly Yunita Hansen]

Does anyone remember the Unity version we used? We reinstalled our computers so we don't have any Unity running.

Sherly Yunita Hansen (Sherls)

[Jason Thummel]

I believe we were on 4.2, possibly 4.3.  Now that I have so much experience with 4.6 I wish we'd been working with it instead.  The UI system is SO much nicer.

[Jason Kanagaratnam]

 When I look at the properties on the Unity.exe on my laptop it says version 4.1.5.1944.  I can't run it anymore cause my license expired... I'm not sure how to switch it back to the free one.

Also I'd be interesting in skyping into this meeting if I'm available.  I'm gonna be in New York next weekend though.  Also, I'd prolly be willing to work on it a bit, I don't think I'm contractually allowed, but I doubt anyone would give a shit... since I wouldn't tell anyone.

[Sherly Yunita Hansen]

iJason,

Unity 4.6 is not released when we were working on Vinyl. The latest version that moment was Unity 4.3.

I am not sure how much work needed if we want to use 4.6 now.

bJason,

I won't tell anyone that you work on Vinyl ;) Yeah, I vaguely remember we were using 4.2 or 4.1.

All,

Let's pick a day for Skyping (those outside SLC) and lunch gathering (those in SLC).

PS: Oh... I miss those names: iJason bJason make the Jasons.

Sherly Yunita Hansen (Sherls)

[Brianne Christiansen]

 I love all of you people. I could do Sunday for a Skype chat. Though I'd bet we'll discuss this some in person tonight at the tonga room. I just ran into Zeph on the expo floor too! We'll talk to Bob about getting new licenses, etc.

-Brianne

[Jason Thummel]

Yah, I know 4.6 wasn't out yet, I was just saying.  Also it wouldn't be worth the effort to port the game to 4.6 (It would require a entire remake of the UI to the new system).  I can Skype whenever.

[Alice Owens]

I'm super stoked everyone. I'm here at gdc with Zeph. I'm still involved and happy for our success.
Alice