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Games On Demand Service For Mac
Torrey Clark writes "MyMacGames is preparing to launch a new 'games on demand' service for Mac users ($8-20 per month) in the third quarter of 2007 that will feature roughly 100 games at launch. They are currently offering a free beta."
MyMacGames is preparing to launch a new 'games on demand' service for Mac users ($8-20 per month) in the third quarter of 2007 that will feature roughly 100 games at launch.
I've heard about this. Photoshop's a game, right?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
That's not the most promising of starts..
Apple have this little habit of having these fun little idea's that turn into unstoppable revolutions. Were it not for the enormous braking force of Microsoft ripping their idea's constantly they'd be much further ahead then they are now.
Apple don't have a great record of games on their platform, but is that so terrible? They weren't really aiming at the gamer until relatively recently. After all, they'd never had a portable music player till the iPod, and that seems to have gone well.
Yeah that's what I thought when I first saw this... are there more than 5 decent games for Mac OS X that don't require me booting into either Boot Camp or Parallels?...
Wasn't Aspyr launching something similar to this called the 'Gamerhood'? Originally supposed to launch in Fall of 2006, I don't think it ever made it past the press release stage of it's life. In fact, searching Aspyr's site doesn't return anything even mentioning the Gamerhood.
I'm sceptical of a site which asks for your email address without providing any information. I was also intrigued by the title 'remember when you used to buy games?' Actually, I do. I bought Diablo II, and I still play it occasionally. I bought Escape Velocity Nova three years ago, and it's a lot of fun from time to time. The most recent game I bought was Railroad Tycoon 3, which didn't get much play time because it required the CD in the drive to work, which is not good for me, because my laptop and the CD are frequently not in the same place. The games I have played the most recently, however, have been free. I have enjoyed online browser-based games, such as Urban Dead and Tribal Wars. I spent a while solving all of the puzzles in Blob Wars (GPL) and I'm now spending a lot of my free time playing Oolite (CC). $8-22 per month seems a lot to pay, since the hobbyist community seems to have been doing a much better job of entertaining me than the big game development companies recently.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Have there been 100 Mac games worth paying for since the Lisa?
Hey, there are thousands of good games you can play on your Mac. You just have to install Boot Camp first.
Seriously, there is actually a pretty healthy Mac games market. I'm just not sure it's one that appeals to the average Slashdot reader. If you want the latest and whizziest FPS--or if you spend enough time gaming that you need a new epic game every few days--then yeah, you need to run Windows.
But for a more casual gamer, the Mac is a perfectly good option, even without Boot Camp. Many of the most popular Windows games eventually get ported to the Mac--the Sims, Doom III, Jedi Outcast, etc, etc, etc, are all available on a Mac. Then there are companies like Ambrosia Software, Pangea, and Freeverse that make games primarily or exclusively for the Macintosh. The smaller Mac market means that these games will sell fewer copies, and they therefore tend to have smaller development staffs. On the one hand, this means Mac-exclusive games often don't have the vast scope of original PC games. On the other hand, it means there's more room for quirky, off-beat stuff.
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
Have there been 100 Mac games worth paying for since the Lisa?
Yes, there are. Here's a list I made in about 10 minutes off the top of my head. There are hundreds more.
Age of Empires, Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology, Alice, Alien Vs. Predator, Alien Vs. Predator 2, Alpha Centauri, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Carmageddon, Carmageddon 2, Civilization, Civilization 2, Civilization 3, Civilization 4, Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer Generals, Descent, Deus Ex, Diablo, Diablo II, Doom, Doom II, Doom III, Duke Nukem 3D, Escape from Monkey Island, Escape Velocity, Escape Velocity Nova, Fallout, Fallout 2, Freedom Force, Full Throttle, Giants Citizen Kabuto, Halo, Heavy Metal FAKK 2, Heroes of Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Icewind Dale, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Lode Runner, Majesty, Marathon, Marathon 2, Marathon Infinity, Master of Orion, Master of Orion 2, MDK, Medal of Honor:Allied Assault, Myst, Myst 2, Myth, Myth 2, Neverwinter Nights, No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2, Oni, Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia 2, Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake IV, Railroad Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon 2, Railroad Tycoon 3, Rainbow Six, Rainbow Six 2, Rainbow Six 3, Red Faction, Rise of Nations, Rune, Sacrifice, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Splinter Cell, Star Wars Dark Forces, Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Wars Jedi Academy, Star Wars Jedi Knight 2, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars X-Wing, StarCraft, Stronghold, Summoner, The 7th Guest, Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider 3, Tropico, Tropico 2, Undying, Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, Vampire: The Masquerade, WarCraft, Warcraft 2, WarCraft 3, World of Warcraft
Yes, there's 100 here. I tried to do an ordered list, but Slashdot gave me an error.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Some good, some bad. One, well, terrible... starting with the worst:
The Mighty Mouse is at least 3 times as useful as those "wheel-mouse" abominations.
It would be, if it had two real buttons. I'd rather use a plain old 3 button mouse (like Xerox had in the '70s) than Apple's passive-aggressive "you don't really need two buttons, honest" Mighty Mouse. I use Microsoft's plain optical wheel mouse by preference... and I wish it came in Bluetooth.
I wish they had a maximize button as well as an "optimize" one, for the apps like iTunes that do something weird on "optimize"... but, yes, maximizing to the limit of the content is good.
The Finder had a hierarchical view even before NeXTstep. And I wish they had kept the NeXT file browser separate from Finder, and let us pick which one we wanted to use primarily... I hate the "finder-like" aspects of OSX's finder, and the people who prefer Finder tend to dislike the NeXT Browser features.
I'm mixed aboutthe Dock, some days I like it, some days I abominate it.
You forgot SimStapler!
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
A Classic!
and Mr. Relaxer. don't forget Mr. Relaxer
But I have an intel mac ;)
BzFlag
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
One word... Bolo. It was such a cool game that I went out and bought a Mac so I could play it.
Zoid.com
The mac-users finally get the games they've been demanding? Or, are they simply making a new game about the "Demand Service"?
This is great, thanks so much for posting this link!
I've been searching for some fun PWOT games for the last 3-4 weeks, and this'll fill the void perfectly!
For those of you that keep saying there's no mac games, I think I know why:
I read the lists of "top 10 games of 2006" and "top 10 indy games" and all those things hoping for some good games: they all sucked.
They're full of fantastical role-playing games, not the kind of game where you can't just open it and play, but instead all these long, drawn out stories: absolutely not what I'm looking for. I want a fun game, not a soap opera or 2 month-long drama. You guys just want a different type of game.
I DID just install BootCamp for a game, in fact. 1/2 year ago, I tried SimCity (in Parallels/Windows), then deleted it. I Tried Halo then deleted it. This time I installed Windows solely for WORMS ARMAGEDDON, the best game ever invented (short of the Mario games)! (Pissed that I have to use BootCamp, it used to work great in VirtualPC, meaning I didn't have to shut down my servers just to play a game! Parallels doesn't do "DirectDraw" or some crap, so I gotta fully restart into Windoze)
So the games I've found are great. Ambrosia Software has Great Mac games (tho I wish they'd update some old one's out of Classic). I even found a new version of CrystalQuest for Mac OS X (in 3D!). That game absolutely kicks ass, the first game ever to really use the mouse as a totally new type of input device.
Also, NES and SNES emulators absolutely rule. Back before insane 3D graphics, people were forced to sell games on gameplay Only. Hey, I'm only 24 and I'm this into retro games, so it's not just nostalgia!
How is having an intel mac where most mac games have to be run under rosetta i.e. in a virtual environment offtopic?
I received an (unexpected) email from MyMacGames last Saturday:
Subject: MyMacGames and [my company name deleted]
Hey,
I'm Mark Howson, and I'm a marketing manager for MyMacGames.com. MyMacGames is a forthcoming service set to change the world of mac gaming for ever, and we're so impressed by your product, we'd love you to come on board.
Your paid games show a great level of dedication and hard work, that needs rewarding.
MyMacGames wants to bring the excitement of your games, and hundreds of others to mac games throughout the world. Before you stop reading, we're not asking to buy your game, we're not asking to remove the amazing creativity that controls it. We're just offering you another way to distribute it.
Games don't last forever, and every game is not right for every person, so the MyMacGames system follows 3 central strategies to provide a new way of buying games for the mac platform, and a new 'rental' strategy to mac gaming around the world.
These 3 pillars are:
Choice
Anti Theft
Fair Pay
Firstly, choice. We feel the consumer deserves a choice as how they play games, how long they keep them for, and which games they play. We charge between $8.00 and $30.00 to the consumer per month, for them to experience a number of exciting mac games (between 8 and 35 simultaneously).
The consumer can change the game in each slot every 14 days. This is on a slot by slot basis, so if a consumer adds a game to one slot on the 1st, they could change it on the 15th. Another slot, with a game added on the 3rd, could be changed on the 17th. The user has 24 hours to change the game. If they play the game during this 24 hour window, we assume they wish to keep the game.
Our system will email users to tell them when a slot is available to switch, and will warn them if playing the game will mean they forfeit the opportunity to 'swap' the game out for another game. These methods make the user feel in control, while giving you greater earning potential.
Of course, you're not going to earn money if we just give users unlocked dmgs, so we're going to be sure to protect your intellectual property. Which brings us on to our second 'pillar', anti theft.
We know that your work is your most valuable asset, and we really do care for your property, and the time you've spent. The idea of providing us with an unlocked dmg sounds stupid, but it's not.
Games are spliced with code that means they live in our application, can only be played via our application, and are encrypted with the AES method. The AES (or Advanced Encryption Standard) is an encryption standard involving unique keys. It is the standard encryption method of the US government, and is one of the most secure methods around. But for your game, that's just not enough.
All downloads will also be watermarked, so if encryption is broken, we'll know exactly who broke our encryption, disable the version where possible, send out a whole load of intellectual property notices, and disable the account. Of course, this won't happen, but we'll be equipped with this, and other, secondary safeguards just so we sleep well at night.
Which leaves us with the final pillar, fair pay. We feel this is the most important pillar, and one that will be crucial to our business with you. For every game slot you fill, we'll pay you 10 cents/week. This money will be provided monthly by your choice of method, we will support:
Wire Transfer
PayPal
You will have a control panel, where you can hold payments, check payment data (updated daily) and find out how your game is doing. If your game is in our top 10, or less than 1 month old, then 2 slots are required to play the game, and we will, of course, pay you twice as much money.
Here's some examples of quite how much that is
Normal game 1000 players weekly (average)
One of the things I like about OS X is that it works so well with disk images -- try creating one from your Railroad Tycoon CD, mounting it, and seeing if the game lets you play then. It works for me with Ghost Recon and Age of Empires 2 anyway...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
That trick works with tons of games (Civ 3, Blizzard games, etc), but sadly not RailRoad Tycoon 3. A few months after I got the game my CD drive died. :(
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/digital_eel/weird_wor lds/1.htm
Diablo II in 45 minutes
"If you ain't got a camel, you ain't Shiite."
I've had it! I'm switching to Linux... there are just too many games for OS X already...
Prince of Persia? Railroad Tycoon? You do realize you're talking about games from 1990 (17 years ago), do you not? (apparently not)
Amusingly, some don't even use the data on the disk - they just check for the presence of a volume with the right name. I had a 3MB empty disk image (or whatever the minimum limit was) that was simply called "Civilisation III" and it worked fine. However it's the prevalence of these kinds of tips on sites that lead to the physical disk check - the game companies don't want their games pirated.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
A lot of Macheads I talk to are still addicted to games they played 10 or 20 years ago. Stuff like Dark Castle, Marathon, and Risk were fun stuff back in the day. I'll have to RTFA and check out the link to see if they have some oldies but goodies.
None of which involve right clicking.... So that leaves what? Minesweeper? Nope, right clicking in that... Hmmm... I guess you only need 1 button to play whack-a-mole.
You do realize you're talking about games from 1990 (17 years ago), do you not?
You do realize he asked about games since Lisa, do you not?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This should help increase the number of gamers that buy a Mac.
I have used mac's for years for everything BUT gaming. There just isn't that much of a desire to port games to mac. If there were more games then think about it mac might just sell some more. The fact that most macs are considered underpowered by todays massive x86 processors in a windows machine, its no wonder there hasent been a better following. The specs to play most of the games out now cpu and gpu speeds way pout flank what most mac users have.
"Better to be an open sinner than a false saint"
Was someone just biding their time for mod points to come back days later and mod this down? Especially considering I actually checked to see if someone had made the joke before doing so...