Game Update
I spent the bulk of this week hunting down some of the business side of thing that need to get done. Due to my decision to change my business from Texas to Florida it changed my EIN which created a problem with everything I had in place to this point. I had to get a new bank account, a new EIN, and a new Steam Account. Right now if the game is delayed past the Feb 22 date it will be due to not having a Steam account in place to host the game. I suppose I could always do a release on my website. Maybe I should talk to Humble Bundle about options. I just thought about that while I was writing this.
I also need to get on putting this trailer for the game together as well. I ran into a ton of technical issues when trying to get the footage done, or moved, or edited. It feels like forever since I have had any new footage posted to my YouTube channel. I did manage to set up my Twitch again and I let my son stream Terraria today which seemed to go well. Maybe I’ll take a break and see if I can do a game stream sometime, or ask my oldest to do that to promote the game.
I did everything I could to get the ball rolling on the Steam account. The issue seems to be that they cannot find my new EIN. I have been told that it won’t show up in the system for 30 days. I sent them all the paperwork to show that I am legit but I haven’t heard anything back yet.
I got some of the first concepts from my artist this week, and so I sent a lengthy feedback to her to get some more focus. I’m happy that she has agreed to do the logo for Lancer Entertainment and her first pass on it has been very promising for me. Her artwork for Six Aspects has a lot of good points but ultimately it looked very cyberpunk futuristic and not really medieval. Hoping my feedback will help her zero in on exactly what we are going for. It’s also difficult to get the text to show up at such a small scale which was another noted issue although I liked what she tried to do with the lettering. She stacked “Aspects” over “Six” which created a cool effect that wasn’t readable enough at small scale.
Personal Update
Still finding time on the phone with my girlfriend. We went exclusive recently and will be seeing each other again close to the Valentines Day holiday next month. That’s also really close to when I want to release and so I’d like to have as much done as possible so that I can focus all my attention on her when she visits me here. She’s been very supportive of me.
I carved some time out to go to my church’s “first steps” class tonight and it was very enjoyable. I really feel good about making this place my church home. I felt called to join the praise and worship team and so I have been auditioning and working on some of their music. I bumped into the worship leader today and he will be sending me some more music to work on soon. I let him know it wasn’t any rush due to my video game release. It’s interesting to think about this now as when I started getting serious about game development I distinctly felt that God had told me to work in the children’s ministry and move away from the praise and worship team when I lived in San Antonio. Now it would seem that God wants me to go back to it so many years later now that the project is moving into its first major release phase.
I spoke with a friend in marketing tonight. We are buddies from a self development group we used to be a part of together. It was interesting hearing his perspective on what I am going through right now with this release. One of the big take aways I had from the conversation was when he told me that Jeff Bezos had said, “there are 2 kinds of decisions, ones you can reverse and ones you can’t.” It really struck a chord with me as even after release if there are problems with the game they can be fixed later. That said I have done my best to make sure the product is a cut above the standard “early access” game on Steam. I have said all along that I will be building out the rest of the levels, adding more troops, more spells, more content in general after release. The game is good enough as it has a beginning middle and end, and very few bugs none of which are completely game breaking.
I guess the main thing on my mind right now is getting this trailer done and getting my new Steam account set up to sell the game. Hoping I can get it moving along very soon.