Game Overview

The Game Overview page is designed to help you:

• Perform your initial game set up.
• Carry out any routine game management tasks throughout the life of your game.

From Game Overview, you can:

• Log out from the portal and manage your GameSparks account.
• Switch between dark and light UI themes.
• Quickly open another game you've created on the portal, add a game, or open the game Recycle Bin.
• Check daily log summaries for both the Preview and Live stages of your game.
• View and edit the top-level information and settings of your game.
• Upgrade your game's Pricing Tier from Development to Standard.
• Create and manage versions of your game configurations as Snapshots.
• Publish Snapshots of your game to the live servers.
• Inspect access secrets for your game connection types.
• Perform User Management and create Collaborators for your game and configure their security settings through Groups.
• Change the Game Owner.

FAQs? You can review Frequently Asked Questions about game management tasks.

Logging Out and Managing your GameSparks Account

You can use the drop-down Account menu at top-right:

The Game Owner's e-mail address is shown.

You can use the following options:

• Dark/Light Theme - Click to change the UI theme.
• Manage Account - Click to manage your GameSparks account.
• Change Password - Click to change your GameSparks account password.
• Log Out - Click to log out of the platform.

Posting an Avatar

If you want to post an avatar for your GameSparks account, go to https://en.gravatar.com/

Using the Games Menu

You can use the drop-down Games menu at top-right:

• Open Game - Select another game from your list of games and switch over to that game.
• Add New Game - Click to add a new game. Note that a limit of 10 games maximum is imposed on each user account.
• Recycle Bin - Click to open the game Recycle Bin. When you delete a game, it's sent to the Recycle Bin but you can restore deleted games from here.

Main Options

You can use two main options at the top-right of the page:

• - Edit your game's details - see below.
• - Delete your game and send it to the Recycle Bin:
  • Note that you can use the Games menu to access the Recycle Bin and restore games you've deleted.
  • If you inadvertently delete a game and send it to the recycle bin, then your game will not run at all and no players will be able to connect to it.

Recycle Bin - Game Retrieval Grace Period? Games you've deleted are held in the Recycle Bin for 10 days before being automatically removed. At this point they become PERMANENTLY DELETED and can no longer be retrieved.

Upgrading Pricing Tier

From the Game Overview page, you can upgrade your game's Pricing Tier from Development to Standard:

1. On the Help panel, click Upgrade:

You are taken to the Billing Information page.

• You can click the blue question mark to expand the Help panel if you don't see the Upgrade button.

2. Enter the Billing Information you want us to use to invoice you for Standard Pricing Tier charges.

• For details of what's included for the different Pricing Tiers, please see our Pricing webpage.
• If you think your game might exceed the Standard Pricing Tier usage limits, please contact us to discuss upgrading to Enterprise Pricing Tier.
• You will be billed after the first full calendar month of GameSparks usage on the Standard Pricing Tier.

Upgraded by Mistake? If you've upgraded your game's Pricing Tier to Standard by mistake, you won't be able to downgrade the game to Development. Please raise a support ticket to contact Customer Support.

Checking Game Log Summaries

The Notifications panel contains daily log summaries for both the Preview and Live stages of your game:

If you want to view the log summaries for all your games, click View Logs. The Logs page opens with the current game's log summary expanded. The daily log summary is shown but you can change the range of the log summary using a date range drop-down:

To return to the current game's Overview page, click Game Overview:

Viewing and Copying Game API Key and Secrets

You can view and copy your game's API Key and API Secret:

• Your game's API Key is shown and you can Copy this when required:

• Your game's API Secret is hidden when the page first opens, but you can Show the secret:

• And then Copy when required:

Checking Security Credentials

If you need to check the security Credentials for your game, you can click All Credentials to go directly to the Credentials page:

Editing Top-Level Game Information

When you click to Edit your game's top-level details, you'll see three tabs:

• Game Details
• Features & Integrations
• Geographical Setup

Editing Game Details

To edit your game's details, click . The page adjusts for editing the game and the Game Details tab is selected:

On this tab, you can edit the following:

• Name - The name of your game, used to identify the game in the portal if you have several games.
• Description - A description of the game.
• Currencies - Configure the default Currencies and Signup Bonuses for your game:
• Game Settings - Set an End Player Session Timeout.

Configuring Game Currencies

Under Currencies you can configure:

• Hiding/Showing Currencies - If you clear the checkbox for a currency, it's hidden in the portal. Note that this capability doesn't disable the currency in your game but simply hides it across the portal interface - for example, you will not see the currency when you Create/Edit a Virtual Good.
• Currency Signup Bonuses - The amount of each Currency to award a new player when a new account is created.
• Currency Segmentation - If you want to segment your Currencies at the game-level, click Segment at top-right:

• For more details on segmenting in the portal, see Segments.

Additional Currencies? You can create and configure additional currencies at Configurator>Currencies. For details, see here.

Setting End Player Session Timeout

Currently, player sessions are only timed if an EndSessionRequest is sent when a player disconnects. If you don’t set things up so that an End Session Request is sent when a player disconnects, their session will not be properly timed. Therefore, your Analytics data will be distorted due to these unended sessions.

Under Game Settings you can select to automatically end a player session after a player disconnects from your game:

• Select the Automatically end player sessions check box and enter the period in minutes that you want to elapse before this happens:

Selecting Features and Integrations

To select the platform features and integrations you want to use for your game, select the Features & Integrations tab:

• On the this tab, you can select check boxes for:
  • Platform Features - The GameSparks features you want to enable.
  • Integrations - The 3rd party providers you want to integrate your game with.

Note: You cannot disable Currencies or Game Data Indexes under Platform Features.

Configuring Geographical Setup

To select which geographical regions you want to allow access to your game, click the Geographical Setup tab:

• On this tab, you can configure for the geographical distribution of your game:
  • Primary Region - Select the geographical region where your game will be published.
    • Note that you won't be able to edit your game's Primary Region if your game has already been published to the Live stage. Even if you have unpublished a previously published Snapshot and your game currently has no Live Snapshot, the Region you selected when you first published your game will persist.
  • Geo Restrictions - Select the countries that you want to allow access to your game:
    • By default, all countries are selected under Access Allowed.
    • To deny access to users in a specific country, select the country to move it across to the Access Denied box.
    • You can use the double arrows at the top of each box to move all in one box to the other.
    • If all countries are set for Access Denied, no connections to your game will be allowed - including from the Test Harness - and a warning message will appear to remind you of this consequence.
  • Geo Restrictions Additional Options - There are two additional options for denying access to your game:
    • Anonymous Proxy - Denies access to users who attempt to connect using a proxy server and thereby hide their location.
    • Satellite Provider - Denies access to users who attempt to connect through a satellite provider.

Snapshots

Click Create to create a new Snapshot for the current configuration of your game.

You can use icon button options in the Snapshots panel:

• - Preview this Snapshot.
• - Copy this Snapshot to another game.
• - Delete this Snapshot.
• - Publish this Snapshot to the live servers.
• - Revert the portal to the version contained in the Snapshot.
• - Unpublish this Snapshot from the live servers.

Click here for more information about Snapshots, Versioning, and Publishing.

IMPORTANT! If your game is Development Pricing Tier, you won't be able to publish a Snapshot to Live - you must first upgrade to Standard Pricing Tier to be able to do this. See above for how to do this.

User Management

You can use the User Management panel to create Groups and Collaborators for your game:

• Groups - When you create a Group for your game, you define a Read/Write permissions set for Collaborators to control which parts of the portal users assigned to that Group will have access. You can create multiple Groups and then assign others to become Collaborators on your game and assign them to one or more of these permissions Groups.
• Collaborators - Collaborators are people that can log in with their user credentials and view/edit your game - just what a Collaborator can see and do when logged into your game depends on the permissions you have given them by assigning them to one or more permissions Groups.

An in-depth tutorial explaining how to create and configure Groups and assign them to your game Collaborators can be found here.

Changing the Game Owner

As the game owner, you can change the ownership of your game by selecting one of the game's Collaborators as the new game owner:

• When you do this, the Collaborator acquires full ownership permissions for the game, regardless of the permissions they had under the Groups assigned to them as a game Collaborator.
• The Collaborator you give game ownership to remains as a Collaborator on the game.
• If you're the game owner and also a Collaborator on the game when you change the ownership, you'll remain logged into the game and assume the permissions assigned to you as a Collaborator.
• If you're the game owner but you're not a Collaborator on the game when you change the ownership:
  • You'll be switched to the another one of your games.
  • If you don't have any other games, you'll be taken to Step 1 of the Add New Game wizard.

Game Collaborators can also change the ownership of a game, but they must have the Change Game Owner permission under the Groups they've been assigned:

• If you're logged into a game as a Collaborator with Change Game Owner permission, you can change the game ownership to yourself:
  • You'll assume all game ownership permissions for the game and you will remain as a Collaborator on the game.

Billing Information! If you are the original owner of a game that you have upgraded to a paying Pricing Tier and you change the game's ownership, then the billing information for the game remains the same, which means you might remain liable for charges for a game that you no longer own - see our Pricing webpage.

Reverting to Snapshots after change of ownership? If you were made the game owner after a game configuration Snapshot was created by a previous game owner, then when you revert to that Snapshot you will remain as the game owner.

To change a game's owner:

1. Go to the Game Overview page, and on the User Management panel, click Change:

• The Change button will appear only if you have added at least one Collaborator to your game.
• In this example, we are logged in as the game owner and the game owner hasn't also been made a Collaborator on the game.

The Change Owner page opens.

2. Select the Collaborator you want to change game ownership to from the drop-down and click Change Owner:

A confirmation dialog appears warning you that the Change Owner action cannot be undone:

3. If you want to continue, click Change Owner:

• In this example, because we logged in as the game owner at the outset we remain logged in as that user. Because that user no longer has access to the game - they were not listed as a Collaborator on the game - they are switched to another one of their games or, if that was their last game, they are taken to the Add New Game wizard.

4. Log in as the Collaborator that was given ownership of the game and open the game. In User Management on the Game Overview page, this user will now show as the game owner and remain as a Collaborator on the game:

This product includes GeoLite data created by MaxMind, available from http://www.maxmind.com.