Ages ago I blogged about how I used a kill-a-watt gadget to measure my PC power usage. I was recently motivated to check on the usage of my newer PC. Read the old post, and you’ll see it was a Dual Core 6600 Intel PC with 2 gig RAM and vista. The bootup power usage was 160 watts.

I have since upgraded, and am typing this on an Intel 8 core i7 chip, running at 2.80GHZ. There is now 8 gigs of RAM running on 64 bit windows 7, rather than vista. The PC has an ATI Radeon HD 5700 video card. The measurement was abse unit only, no monitors.

Do you think the 8 core 5700 combo uses more or less power?

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The readings are as follows:

• On boot-up, after windows has just loaded and no apps are running 133 Watts (less than the old PC)
  
• After a while to let everythibng settle down, and stuff liek steam had all been turned off to minimsie network traffic. (I couldnt get the hard disk to totally shut down though)  107 Watts (less than the old PC)
• Running Gratuitous Space Battles with an average battle in a window at 1680 x1050 res, all options set to maximum 143 Watts.
• Running Gratuitous Space Battles fullscreen at 1920 x1200 res, all options set to maximum 141 Watts
• Re-compiling the game, using Visual studio, maxxing out all 8 cores, and no doubt some fair amount of disk-thrashing 192 Watts.

What surprises me is that GSB, as a mostly single-threaded single-core game, uses 73% of the power of a maxxed out CPU-thrash. Could all that power really be going on fans and hard drive gubbins? and maybe powering the other chips on the motherboard, the video card etc.

In any event, 132 watts for a PC that is theoretically doing sod all is in some ways a LOT, and other ways nothing. The UK price for power is 11.5p per unit which is 1 killowatt hour. That means my PC, when on, is costing me (132/1000) * 11.5 = 1.51 pence per hour, or at 10 hours a day 330 days a year, roughly £50, or $75. Peanuts really.

But given that my electricity usage is £39 a month, that rates it as 10% of my power usage. That’s without the router, printer,scanner or two monitors. Obviously this is only electricity, not heating.

In comparison, assume I boil a kettle 6 times a day, it uses 2000 watts for 2 minutes each time. So thats roughly £16 a year, or 3.4% of my power usage.

I suspect the biggest power usage is the PC and laptops, and everything else just makes up a multitude of tiny power draws around the house. Bah.

For top-secret reasons, I’ve recently been looking at a bunch of indie game websites. Some are great, most are not. Some are laughable.  I’ve had an indie games site since 1997, and obsess over it’s performance. Here’s some things I think newcomers to indie game selling should take note of.

1) Show me a game. NOW.

I’ve arrived at your site. well done, that’s 99% of the effort done. But if you want me to skip a flash intro or hunt the screen for a button that says ‘games’ then I may well get bored. Check your webpage stats for people who arrive at the site but bounced out before even seeing a game name. That was money you just set fire to.

2) Show me a screenshot. NOW.

I know, I know. Your game isn’t about graphics, it’s about the fun! You need to engage the user in the fascinating story of your protaginist ‘klaude’ and his awesome backstory about when he was a small boy…<click> That’s another bored visitor. You need a screenshot, because that’s how people make an immediate editing choice about continuing further. I can tell your game is a high quality and colorful side scrolling 2D platformer within 2 seconds of seeing your screenshot. Quicker than I can even read ‘high quality and colorful side scrolling 2D platformer’. Screenshots are what get people to hang around and read about the game. You need them. Preferably lots.

3) Give me a demo and a buy button.

Preferably two of them. One at the top, so I can immediately skip to the demo if I like. One at the bottom, so when I’ve finished reading the blurb, I am right next to one. Use a big clear font, make it obvious it’s clickable.

4) If the game warrants it, add a video

Watching a 30 second youtube video tells me tons about what your game will be like as a player, at least initially. Video is often better than static screens, but it depends on the game. Kudos looks crap on video, so does democracy. Gratuitous Space Battles looks way way better. While we are on the topic, use youtube. Youtube works for everyone, and hosting is free. having some fancy java video player embedded in the site will go wrong for a non trivial percentage of visitors. Make sure you have a good reason not to use youtube.

5) Study your web traffic.

Which gets more downloads. This

or This?

I don’t know yet, but I will do in a weeks time. Yes, this sort of testing does make a difference.

6) Optimise

Go to googles homepage, look at the source. Holy lack of whitespace batman. That’s getting really anal, and I don’t bother much with the text, but try to be sensible with screenshots. Jpgs can very very often be reduced in quality and nobody but a computer can tell. Not everyone has fast broadband, and some are sharing it with other people streaming video or surfing other sites. Assume the worst, and make sure the filesizes are as small as possible. It takes just minutes to do this.

7) Don’t make it too short.

Is your game worthy of my time? If you can’t write two decent length paragraphs about the game, then I guess not. I guess you knocked it up in 10 minutes and have nothing to say on the topic. The screenshots get people to stay, but the text is what justifies to people that you should get their money. People making an adventure game have it easy here. By all means have some backstory, some concept art sketches and so on. If your game is a casual game, you are screwed on the PC selling direct anwyay, so assuming it’s a relatively hardcore PC game, there should be LOTs to say. make it look like your game is worth buying.

I know, some of the games on my site break these rules. But not the big ones. Not the ones that I promote, and that sell.