Content Licensing: How To License Games

For game licensing, head over to the Your Games page: or From there click on the “Content Store” tab and you’ll see all the games available for licensing. ​On the left side you can either use the filters by clicking on them (green is selected, white is not selected). Or you can search by entering the name or part of the name in the top field and then pressing Enter on the keyboard.​ When you hover over a game, you will be given two options, the first, “Visit Page” will take you to the game page on games.synthesisvr.com in a new tab which will give you details about the game, including info on pricing, system requirements, etc. Clicking on License will open up a new portion on the same screen on the right side. On that new tab, the first thing you have to do is ti check the box next to the “I understand that, once subscribed, Licensing affects all stations in the arcade regardless if the game is installed via third party.” Once. you’ve agreed to this, then the License Now button becomes available. Once you’re ready, click on that button to license the game. Once you’ve licensed the game, you will be presented with one of 2 options. If the game is delivered through Steam, you will be presented with the following choice for installation: ​ Click on the stations you want the game installed on and click on “Install”. The game should then be licensed and downloaded on the selected stations. ​ On the stations you are installing the game to, you would need to do one more step. When the install is initiated, you will need to click on the Next button on this screen: ​ Accept any agreements that pop up after and installation should begin after that. If, for some reason, the game doesn’t install, please check your library and locate the game and see if it’s stuck on “Installing”. If that’s the case (and it doesn’t show up in the Steam Downloads section, you will need to cancel the install by right clicking and choosing Cancel and then exiting Steam. Once you restart, you can attempt to initiating the install again remotely or find the game again in your library, right clicking and then choosing install and you should see the prompt above. If there are still issues, please send us an email with details to info@synthesisvr.com. If the game is delivered through our CDN, the popup will show all stations detected as online and allows you to choose per station where to install the game both in terms of which station as well as what drive (if you have multiple drives installed on your system): ​ Once you’ve chosen the stations and drive locations, you can click the “Install” button below all the stations and the game will begin to install on those stations. ​ If you check your Access Point app and click on the Content Events button, you should see the game being installed: ​ If that is not the case, please refresh your Access Point app via the Refresh button and you should see the Content Events button and the game in there. You can start it manually if it hasn’t started.  The need to do this manually is rare, but is more reliable than Steam installs. Once a game is installed (via the auto methods above), you will then be prompted to add to a category. Select the categories you want and click on the “Add [GAME} to [X] Categories” button at the bottom. ​ If you’ve only installed the game on some, but not all, stations and want to go back and install remotely, then find the game again using the search feature and click on “License” when you hover over the game icon. You’ll now see a button that says “Install [GAME} and when you click on it, you will be presented with the same choices as above for installing on stations. ​ If you want to change a game from Usage to FIxed Fee, then find the game again using the search feature and click on “License” when you hover over the game and you will be presented with choosing between Usage and Fixed Fee. ​ Click on the Fixed Fee and you will be asked how many licenses you need for that. Choose the number of licenses and then click on Add To Cart. Remember, this is a floating license so you man not need as many fixed fee licenses as you have stations unless you expect the game to be played a lot on all your stations at the same time. ​ Once you’ve added the right number to your cart, the cart option will appear above the game and you can click on “Checkout” if all seems correct. Your card will be charged the amount shown on the screen. This amount will be a prorated amount for the remainder of the month. If we’re close to the end of the month, you will see the prorated amount as well as the upcoming month added together. ​ If the game is already installed, nothing more needs to be done. If it’s not installed, then the process is exactly the same as described above.

Game Categories – Organize Your Content

Synthesis VR game categories allow you to choose which games are available for customers to choose from. They also can act as filters as you will see below. By default SynthesisVR will include all downloaded games as available game options during sessions. Once a game category is setup and assigned, only those games will be available. To create a game category navigate to Administration>> Business Setup >> Games, Categories, Licenses. Followed by clicking on the Categories tab: To create a new category, click on the large New Category button. This will bring up a new game category window. To add games to the Game Category, you can either double click on the games displayed in the left column or drag them from the left column to the right space. Note that the list on the left can be searched using the search field at the top (and additionally, this list only displays games discovered to be installed on your stations). If you are building a Game Category of all your games, you can simply click on the “Assign all your installed games”: To organize the order your games displayed in you simply need to click and drag the games within the right hand list. Alternatively, if you want them in alphabetical order you can click on the “Sort Alphabetically” button. Once done, click on the Save button at the bottom. At this time, you have only created a game category and it is not connected to anything else. To have it shown to customers, you need to assign the Game Category to one or more of your Work Rules. You can refer to this article for Work Rules within Operation Settings: https://synthesisvr.com/knowledge-base/work-rules-by-duration/ Note that you can also reach the Work Rule by clicking on it where it shows it is Assigned in the Categories section: When you are in the Work Rule, head to the Games tab and simply click on the Assign Game Categories + button to add more Game Categories or click on the red x to remove game Categories. Using the drop down on each Game Category allows you to choose which one will show. Note that the order the Game Categories show in this section is the order they will display for the customer in the headset. Enforced vs Optional If you create an Available Games – Enforced Game Category, then when you assign the Game Category will show in every session that the Game Category is assigned to. If you create a Restricted Access – Enforced Game Category, then when you assign this Game Category to a Work Rule, all games in this Game Category will be hidden in any other Game Categories are assigned to that Work Rule. This is most helpful if you want to create different Work Rules with the same Game Categories as your other Work Rules, but don’t want to go through and create different Game Categories to remove individual games and you can just add this Restricted Game Category to the Work Rule. If you create an Available Games – Optional Game Category and assign it to a Work Rule, than you are able, on a station by station basis, decide to include that category or not in the session. Note that at the start of a session, the Available Games – Optional categories will be selected by default and must be UNCHECKED to have them not show. If you create a Restricted Access – Optional Game Category and assign it to a Work Rule then you are able, again on a station by station basis, decide to essentially hide the games in this Game Category from a specific station. Note that at the start of a session, the Restricted Access – Optional categories will be unselected by default and must be CHECKED to hide games in this category. In the below image, the “Easy” Game Category is set to Available Games – Optional and the Medium is set to Restricted Access – Optional. Again, each station can have different options chosen at the start of a session. You can also assign games directly from the game itself. From the Your Games tab in the Games, Categories, Licenses section click on any game and go to the Categories tab: From there you can Enable or Disable a Game Category that a game is assigned to. Once finished, click on the Save button at the bottom. Note that a Game Category must have at least one game assigned to it prior to using this method. You can use the drop down number on the right of an Enabled Game Category to assign where in the list the game should show up.

Per Station Arguments (with Rec Room example)

Per Station Arguments (with Rec Room as an Example) Head over to Administration >> Arcade Setup >> VR Stations Click on the edit for the station you want to enter: In the “Settings”tab of the VR Station, click on the Own Station Parameters+ button and a new line item will show up. On the left, you’ll enter the name of the parameter you want to add and on the right will be what that parameter will be. As an example, for Rec Room you might want to assign a profile name for each station. Note that this could be a portion of a final parameter if you want. Click on Save when done. Head over to Administration >> Business Setup (tab) >> Games, Categories, Licenses Locate the game you want to edit the launch arguments for and click on it. Be sure you are in the Settings tab and find the Game Arguments section,you’ll be inputting launch arguments in there. In this example, we want In the arguments, for the items you want to change, you will insert svr:<parameter name># (removing the < and >). So, here are some examples of what we might see: When you’re done, click save. In the examples above, the portion in that starts with “svr:” and ends in “#” will be replaced by the corresponding information from the VR Stations section. If the parameter does not exist, then the whole item, including the “svr:” and “#” parts will be passed to the game. If you wanted, you could also create a game variation to launch with different parameters, for example different rooms in Rec Room. To do that, click on the Game Variation button and edit any information you want changed, with the minimum being changing the name of the Variation. (note that in the above, we have added a room name for Rec Room, but you will have had to have created this room and named it in advance before you can use it in an argument). Click on Save when done. To add this new Variation to your game categories, head over to Administration >> Games, Categories, Licenses >> Categories Either edit or create a new Game Category and at the top of the list of games in the search field, type in the name of the new Variation you created. From there you can add it by double clicking it on the left. Save the category by clicking on the Save button when done. Once the Game Category is attached to your Work Rules, you and your customers will be able to launch that game using the parameters you set.

Adding an External Game to SynthesisVR Game Menus

Currently, SynthesisVR has 25 “spots” for external games, using the following code numbers: Each code above would represent a single game/executable. To set up an external game/experience, please follow these steps: (please keep in mind this has to be done on each gaming station running SynthesisVR Access Point app) On your Taskbar Right Click on SynthesisVR Icon – Click Content Overview On the pop up Click Local Content – Click Select and select the path to the exe file and then Click Save as shown below: You will now see these “Random” games in the “Your Games” section through the Administration page. From there, you can click on the game and edit the image, the description, the trailer url, etc. One last point, once a game has been assigned to a specific ID, it needs to be the same ID across all stations.