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Claims of Apple Games Just PR Fluff?
GameSetWatch is running an editorial written by Alex Handy, the former editor of Game Developer magazine and a well respected figure in the games journalism business. Today he's discussing the recent show of support from EA and id Software for the Apple platform, essentially saying that he doesn't think much of it because it's all been said before. "We've been here before. I've been here before. Waaaaaaaay back in 1999, id was right there at MacWorld, with Carmack talking about how rad the OS was, and demanding that a multi-button mouse arrive. And this was Mac OS 9! People applauded. Those, like myself, who covered the Macintosh gaming world for a living saw a bright future ahead. EA wasn't there, but Activision was, and Aspyr was bringing Madden to the Mac anyway. MacSoft was bringing Unreal Tournament over, and StarCraft was still on the Mac, and still kicking ass. And then, nothing happened. There was a little while there when Mac game companies were expanding, and the best PC to Mac game porting house, Westlake Interactive, was barely able to keep up with all the demand for its services ... By 2001, the brief flash that was the Mac game boom was gone."
Um, may have missed a memo somewhere, but I thought PC still stood for "Personal Computer". I realize that people keep bastardizing it to mean IBM-Compatible, but still. It means what it means. So technically they are "Gaming Personal Computers", and Mac are still semi-firmly in that category.
If you are gonna go for the clever sarcasm, it helps if you don't sound dumb.
Just my $.02
"To Do Is To Be" - Socrates, "To Be Is To Do" - Sartre, "Do Be Do Be Do" - Sinatra
Well, Macs run World of Warcraft... considering with that alone we've just covered about 90% of the gaming time spent online, are Macs really behind?
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
They demoed it at a MacWorld and everyone oooo'ed and aaaaaahhh'ed about it. The Microsoft just stepped in and ended that whole thing.
It'd be nice to get more native games, but with Parallels getting 3D, I don't think its really needed anymore. Why stretch the resources on already stretched game-teams to throw out yet another platform they have to test and bug-fix...making the game even later. Or do just like everyone else does, call the alpha of the game the beta-test, then release the beta as a final product. Only you have more platforms to do that with now.
I used to run PC games in Linux through WINE without much problems, I don't see why it can't be done for OS X either. Again, it'd be nice to have native games, but I won't hold my breath.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
7600 GT 256mb on my iMac. Sure, not the quickest card, but not bad. Don't know where you're getting your info from.
1920x1200 native resolution. Runs just fine.
I'm just saying...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I used to do Mac game development/ports for several years from 1999 to 2003, including a couple high profile games. I've since moved on to 'real' work - non-port console and PC games. Since leaving Mac development I've managed to find a job in the games industry that has kept me employed longer than 12 months at a time without the company going bust (going on almost 4 years at the same company now).
The real problems with developing Mac games during that time frame:
The work didn't pay well (on the other hand, telecommuting was often a viable option)
The projects were few, and it was a highly competetive market
Support from Apple was effectively nonexistant
Quality assurance procedures were often mediocre - what you'd expect from a shareware company
The market wasn't large enough to make it financially viable to develop an original high quality Mac-only game
The market wasn't large enough to make most ports worthwhile unless the game was a proven hit seller already.
I doubt any of the above issues have changed.
I believe all of the Mac game developers I knew 5-6 years ago have moved on to other work. The 3 most well known Mac game port houses of that time shut down or ceased Mac development years ago.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Perhaps the reason is even though the percentage of macs being purchased is increasing it is still a very small percentage of the overall PC market. Of those mac owners how many play games...probably a very small fraction. So a developer simply says given the small mac market, given the smaller percentage of that who will play games, and then given the even small percentage of those who play games buying my particular game, is the cost worth the potential profit. My guess is right now it is not.
I don't know if it will change anytime soon. No one says I want to play games now so I will buy a mac and hope in 5 years I have a huge selection. The market that does play games wants to now, not in a few years.
As has been said ad nauseam on various forums, you don't need a $5000 computer to play games! I play UT, RtCW, and Flight Sim X on my MacBook Pro just fine. An ATI X1600 is perfectly sufficient to play games. Only the most hardcore of hardcore care about video cards higher end. Yes, the GeForce 8800 Ultra and Radeon HD 2900 are the models that make all the review sites (okay, really just the 8800 Ultra,) but in reality, those will sell less than 5% of each manufacturer's total sales. The mere fact that INTEL sells more graphics chips than ATI and nVidia combined should tell you that the vast majority of computers DON'T have the latest greatest chip. And game developers know this. Most games are written to be at least playable even on Intel integrated graphics. The few games that really 'need' high-end graphics have equivalently small target markets. Just like Toyota. They make a $100,000 car, but they don't expect it to be their highest-selling car by a longshot. They expect their second-cheapest car to be the biggest seller. And so, yes, there are accessories for the high end car, but there are far more for the low-middle end cars.
(A better car example would probably be the Honda Civic vs. the Honda S2000. Yes, you can buy 'tuner' kits for the S2K, but there are far more tuner kits for the Civic.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Even Adobe complains that Apple doesn't help them with speed issues when developing their software. So I can see why gaming on the Mac never really takes off. And Adobe helped Apple stay afloat in the 90's.
:/
However, there's one exception; Macs are now on Intel processors, and OpenGL is still relevant. BUT, most affordable Macs have weak video cards.
ATI 1900 on mine. Except that it gets freaky hot and crashes the computer if you try to push 3D with it, unless you use a third party application to spin the front fan up. A lot of people on the forums have the same problem. Eventually I'll put a third party cooling rig on it but you'd think that dropping 5 grand on a computer that you wouldn't have to do that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...Like the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and moon phases.
The Mac got a popularity boost in 1998 when the iMac was introduced and started selling like hotcakes. Games were made. Fun was had. A community formed. Then people kept using the same outdated iMac long after its gaming ability was rendered obsolete by modern games. Sure, some people upgraded to newer, better Macs and kept up with the games.
But over the last 8 or 9 years, the community has slowly faded, game ports have tapered off, porting houses have been dissolved and bought out, and the Mac once again sucks for gaming. But Macs are becoming popular again. Which means...
Games will be made. Fun will be had. New communities will form, and old ones will rise like the phoenix. Porting houses will be incorporated. Games will once again come to the Mac. And in 3-5 years, most Macs will once again be "behind the times" and "outdated" and "not capable of running modern games" and "unshaven and lounging about in their underwear all day waiting for that new version of solitaire with simians set alight". The market will once again ignore Macs as gaming machines. Analysts will call Apple "beleaguered" once again, just for old times' sake. And the cycle will begin again another 2-3 years after that.
Maybe this cycle won't dip as low as they once did, since the x86 allows for using Winelib (and it's bastard child "Cider"). We can only hope.
Neither is my Compaq nw9440 mobile workstation, but it's still fast enough to run half-life 2 with most options turned up and at the native panel res (1920x1440.)
If you have a mac pro, or a g5 or something, you can upgrade your video card.
I don't think you know what you're talking about.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hey pal, I play video games because I enjoy shooting my friends. If I were to do that IRL I would have many less friends and probably a jail sentence.
That just doesn't work well in my schedule.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think calling them "Craptop" says it all. Not for Windows, but for your level of maturity. You can get work done on all OS's. It really depends on what work you want to get done and what tools/apps you prefer to use. At work, I get more done on various flavors of Linux. But that is because I am testing specific stuff that needs to run on Linux. If I am writing a paper or doing e-mail, I use Windows because that is what a majority of our 9000 employees use and it makes it easier to communicate. At home, I run Windows as well because I enjoy gaming and I can build a great machine much more cheaply than a Mac. We stick my mom on a Mac because that way she can do the least damage to her system. I personally don't do a/v editing and don't really see the attraction of an overpriced PC. If I did do those sort of things, I would probably feel different since I know a lot of people (including my dad) love it for those sort of applications.
But use what makes sense. This overwhelming bias for an OS is stupid.
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I think it might have been smart to distance themselves from the gaming industry in the late 80's. I owned an Amiga, which had the same CPU as the Mac, but it had color and sound (which the Mac did not have), and arguably a better GUI operating system for quite a bit less cost. Back then a lot of people were saying only game machines needed color and graphics, definately not machines that were serious for business. Color = game machine, even. I think this contributed to the failure of the Amiga, even though it was very popular with computer enthusiasists of the time.
The Atari ST also had color and sound as well as the same CPU as the Mac, and it failed as well. The Atari brand name probably doomed it to being a "home computer" at best.
There was still some of that distinction then between a "home computer" and a "work computer", and the home computers ended up failing. I think the price of the Mac also actually helped it avoid the "home computer" label.
"I enjoy shooting my friends. If I were to do that IRL I would have many less friends and probably a jail sentence."
Given the average level of "skill" I see from most online game players, I'd guess that your friends would be in no real danger. Without an aimbot and unlimited ammo, most gamers couldn't hit the side of a barn, from inside.
I would never call a Golden Delicious or a Cameo or a Granny Smith a MacIntosh, becuase while they're Apples they're not a MacIntosh, but a MacIntosh is so far beyond being called an Apple, so sweet and crunchy. My favorite Apple is a Mac. The other Apples, they're just Apples, but a Mac is a Mac.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Premiere game, yes. Would it have brought the masses to the Macintosh? I don't know. Wind the clock back to 1994. Marathon.
The best the PC had going was still Doom. Marathon did everything Doom did and more, actual story, 3D environment (you actually had to aim up at that guy on the high platform,) overlapping map areas, etc. Yet most outside of the Mac world never heard of it until now (perhaps even still,) even with the port of M2 to Windows.
The PC side didn't one-up them until Quake in 1996; characters modeled in 3D, angled platforms...Marathon couldn't do true ramps, but instead stair-stepped such areas. (I only checked the dates for Doom(93), Quake(96), Duke(96), Unreal(98), any I missed?)
umm, *cough* Parallels adding 3D isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. At least, not for a long, long while. Firstly the 3D support is very primitive currently, Second, Gaming in Parallels would have a substantial performance hit, since they don't allow guest SMP, and they're having to virtualize the 3D API. To say nothing of the lack of support for shaders at this stage.
Especially if actually USING the card causes your system to BURST INTO FLAMES. OK it doesn't do that but for a while there it was crashing so much I thought I was using Windows!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Re-read the post you replied to. He didn't say Macs were overpriced, he said that to get a gaming machine you would have to spend more than you do with a PC. That's true because they don't offer a machine for less than $2200 (sans monitor, minimum cpu config, minimum memory, cheapest bundled graphics, smallest hard drive, etc). The next step down is the iMac which ships with a single last generation graphics card.
If you look at what you get with Apple, they're generally at least market competitive. In the case of the Mac Pro, they're actually a price leader for workstation class machines (or were, haven't looked recently). The problem for a lot of people is that particular features are tied to higher base configurations regardless of whether you want or need them. A gaming rig is a good example, since the benefit of dual Xeons is pretty much nil. Laptops are another area. Want a 15" screen? You're talking $2000 minimum for an Apple instead of $800 for a PC with a comparable display. Yes, yes, the Apple configuration at that price includes likes of nice amenities - marginally faster processor, 2GB ram, 120GB drive, dual layer DVD burner, blah blah. That really doesn't matter if you don't need any of that, or if you're on a budget or only have a grand to spend.
That being said, I think the limited product line is actually good business strategy for them, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is cost - less to design, test, warehouse, support, etc. There's also protection of Apple's reputation as a premium brand. By targeting the upper end of each market segment, they foster an image of quality (even in the cases where they fail to live up to it). And of course there's the fact that plenty of people who would have been happy buying an expandable Core Duo machine or a 15" notebook with otherwise iBook specs but ended up buying a Mac Pro or Mac Book because they had no other option to get the feature they actually wanted.
15-30 years ago, I used to play lots of computer games. Adventure, Zork, Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, Seventh Guest. But now it's all real-time stuff needing fancy graphics hardware, and I'm not interested. If what gets ported to the Mac is the sort of thing I see people playing now, I certainly won't be buying it.
Welcome to /. where false information can sadly get you a +5 informative moderation.
WoW has always been multithreaded on both Mac and PC. It was only with the 2.0.1 patch that Multithreaded OpenGL support was added, and then only to the Intel Mac client. There is no Direct3D equivalent, and from this technote, likely no equivalent from DirectX 9.
It is true that the PC version is faster than the Mac version on similar hardware in certain situations. Most of these involve video driver issues; think Vista driver problems but with the video card companies in less of a rush to get better drivers out.
Go here for some more video information by both blues and greens.
Not focus on getting big game companies on board with their cutting edge technology. They need to take the Wii approach to games. Get devs to make casual play games. No way the hardcore crowd will let themselves be subject to vendor lock in on their hardware setups.
No sig for you!!
Samkass, your timeline is incorrect.
In 1999, Bungie announced their next product, Halo, which featured a world-beating physics and AI system. Halo's public unveiling occurred at the Macworld Expo 1999 keynote address by Apple's then-interim-CEO Steve Jobs (after a closed-door screening at E3 in 1999). However, on June 19, 2000, (also known as Black Monday), Microsoft announced that they had acquired Bungie Software and that Bungie would become a part of the Microsoft Game Division (subsequently renamed Microsoft Game Studios) under the name Bungie Studios. As a result, the Mac and PC versions were delayed, and the game was re-purposed for Microsoft's Xbox, on which it became the console's killer app. Bungie's sale to Apple's long-time rival Microsoft was seen as a betrayal to the Mac community at the time. Mac and Windows versions of Halo were eventually released two years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie_Game_Studios
Get it right fanboy: MS specifically targeted Bungie because they were a premiere Mac developer. It didn't take years; the acquisition took place roughly 6-8 months after the 1999 MacWorld. I had nothing to do with Bungie not delivering on schedule.
If you want to lie, do it about something people can't fact check you on, or wait for more folks who were actually alive at the time and paying attention to die.
Even if it's only a small portion of the overall user base, there are still lots of people with the latest and greatest, high-end, pro Macs that are capable of running games well; unfortunately, it appears lots of them just aren't interested in games. A game whose system requirements put it easily within reach of hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of Macs out there in the installed base is still likely to sell only a few thousand copies; there are very very few games in Mac game history that have ever moved more than 10-20k units or so on the platform. IMG's Tuncer Deniz just talked about the realities of the Mac market a few days ago ("I remember one Activision executive yelling at me at E3 a few years back, "We sold 3000 copies of Quake III: Arena and you expect us to continue to make games for the Mac"?").
I think that for games to really flourish on the Mac will require Apple's involvement - not just in schmoozing with developers and providing them with various kinds of support, and of course putting out games-capable hardware, but perhaps actually evangelizing games to its own customers. Perhaps it should bundle more games on new Macs (and not limit bundled games to the "consumer" Macs), give games slightly more prominence in the Apple Stores, etc. Maybe they should set up a program to match ad dollars for publishers willing to put "For PC and Mac" at the end of their TV spots, or put profiles of new Mac games in the main column in the "Hot News" section of their site (or occasionally even link to them from the main page). It'd be cool if Steve Jobs featured games in his Stevenotes more often. Whatever it does, I think Apple should do something to help push games to its user base.
Most first-person shooters don't stand up to time very well. Not because of the graphics, mind you, but because of the hackers. Usually after a few months on the market, the developer pretty much abandons the game and stops issuing patches to stop the latest cheats. Then the game gets overrun by kids playing with aimbots and wall hacks. I still play Halo 1, and a good 75% of the players in ANY game are using the aimbot.
I used to be a hardcore Mac user, but I got tired of the Mac gaming scene (always hoping and waiting and signing petitions for games to get ported). When that rare game does get ported to the Mac, it's usually six months or a year behind the PC version. Which means that if you play online against PC users, the hackers are already taking over, even if you bought the game on the day of release.
Mac gaming sucks, and I say that as a Mac user for over 20 years.
I tend to think that what Apple needs to do is to acquire an A-List, proven game developer, and start cranking out titles in-house. Then they would start getting a lot of internal feedback on how to modify their internal processes and their business model to accomodate the games market. Granted, there's a 75% chance that such a move would kill off said game company, but Apple hasn't known how to court game developers since the Apple ][ days and they need to do something to jumpstart the process.