Why I'm a PC gamer

With the new round of consoles coming up (or recently released) I've been thinking about what happened to me.  I used to be big into console gaming.  I never really played computer games with a few exceptions, like Daggerfall.

Backwards Compatibility

Hearing that the PS4 and the XBox One aren't going to be backwards compatible, well, that didn't bother me.  I don't have a PS3, and I don't have any games for my 360.  Backwards compatibility did affect me years ago though.  When the PS2 and XBox and Gamecube were fighting it out I had a hard time deciding what I was going to do.  I had a N64 and a PS1, got a lot of usage from those systems.  So when I heard that I could still play my PS1 games on the PS2, that made my decision.

Used Game Sales

Used game sales on the PC never were pretty big.  Most places wouldn't take used PC games because most of the time people could just copy the game to another disc and play that.  It's become even more accepted to not sell your PC games back with content providers like Steam.  Now we hear that the XBox One won't accept used games.  That actually bothers me.  And it bothers me that it bothers me.  I don't have a ton of money, so I will usually get used console games.  Since they start out at $60 I feel I don't have too much of a choice.  They're just too expensive.  So I want to be cheap.  But that bothers me.  I know that my purchase is only going towards Gamestop and isn't being used to help out the people that originally made the game.  That's one of the reasons that I really like digital games, I know that my money is going to the people that it should.

Sales

But even with that said, I don't see a lot of sales on console games.  At least, no where near the scale of sales that I see on Steam, Amazon, Humble Bundle, etc.  Popping by CheapShark.com shows that there are always sales going on for PC games.  I'm talking deals around 75-90% off.  And the games usually go down in price after they've been released.  Skyrim started at $60, but now it's $30.  You know what the result of all these sales are?  I have a TON of PC games.  Most of which I haven't even tried yet.  While on the other hand, I would only get one console game at a time.  And that money for console games didn't go back to the developers or anyone.  I love my Vita, but the sales aren't worth talking about.  Once a week they update the store, and one single game for the Vita goes on sale, usually 50% off but never more than that.  So that makes me think, 'Okay, I'll just hold out until next week.  Maybe one of the games I actually want will go on sale.  If there were sales more often, I would buy more games.  If they were good deals I would buy them even if I didn't have time to play them right away (Steam is proof of that).  It's not like they need to worry about running out of things to sell.

Little Time

When I was younger, the thought of a 80 hour RPG would have me very very excited.  Now, the thought of an 80 hour RPG just makes me put off actually playing it.  I've had Rogue Galaxy for about a year and a half and just started playing it last week.  Last night I spent all my gaming time watching a series of cutscenes.  I actually pulled out my laptop to read some articles.  The point is, I don't have a lot of time to sit down and play games anymore.  Spending hundreds of dollars on a system just to play games, then spending $60 per game just seems like a dumb idea to me when I already have a PC for work and internet and Netflix and all those other things that Microsoft wants me to pay a fee to be able to use on their box.  I already own a Netflix membership.  I can watch it on my laptop and my Vita.  Why would I pay an extra subscription just so I could use it on my XBox?


Sorry if I went off on a little rant or blathered for a bit.  Just had been thinking about the console situation and wanted to get this all off my chest.


-Califer

Demo Update

I KNEW it was a good idea to have it email me when the game crashed.  See, it crashed when someone played it on a computer with a culture that uses Portuguese as the main language (I'm guessing Brazil).  It ran into this problem because they do their numbers differently, and the number converter looked at the numbers in the cutscenes and levels and would find something that it didn't recognize as a real number, so it would crash.  I basically ended up telling it to always assume an English culture so that it would read the levels correctly.

Thing is, I would have never known about this error if I hadn't made it report to me.

On that topic, new demo is out now on IndieDB and CaliferGames.com.  Give it a try if you haven't yet and let us know what you think!



-Califer

The Alpha Demo is Live!

Sorry for the wait!  It's now live and ready to be played.  Currently it's only a Windows build.  Pop by the forums to let us know what you liked and what you didn't.

I've been pushing hard to get another version of the demo out.  It will still be a while, since it's going to include the level editor.  It's also going to have a redesign in how the levels are saved out, so that's going to be a big change.  Hopefully I'll have something to post about it soon.

-Califer

New Forum Style

Before sharing our Siphon Spirit demo, we need a place to talk about it. I didn't expect it to take so long, but I spent the last week figuring out how to tweak color settings on our new phpBB forum. This will go up with the demo. It isn't a big change from the default (mostly color changes) but it was a good chunk of work anyways.

My other plan is to have a game trailer made to release with it. Sorry to say these things have pushed back the demo release, but we promise, we are working hard to get everything ready.

The forum is not live yet, will be soon. It will be accessed from www.califergames.com under the forum tab.

I expect we will have the demo and forum up early next week.

-Peter

Little More Testing

Well, we got some good feedback from the private demo.  I've been pretty busy cleaning up things and making a number of changes to make the current demo better.  For instance, I've added Alt+Enter functionality so that you can change whether you're using fullscreen or windowed mode at any time.  I've fixed a few bugs associated with clicking a different window when you were playing, and I've added an option to take screenshots by pressing the PrtSc button.  I've got those being saved in your documents folder along with the save files.  I think those are the major changes that I've done, but there are a few more incoming before we make the alpha demo public.  Hoping to get it out there in the next few days.

Thank you for your patience!

-Califer