Why Game Developers Should Support OS X and Linux

kevind23 writes "Although Mac OS X and Linux have a small (but growing) market share, Jeff from Wolfire Games argues that supporting non-Windows platforms can lead to a huge increase in game sales. Using their popular game Lugaru as an example, he shows how less-popular platforms, or more specifically, their userbase can be a powerful advertising force. This can lead to a dramatic increase in popularity and exposure, which usually means a large boost in overall sales. The short article is an interesting read, especially for those working in game development and sales."

Comments

Mac users spend more money

[Senes]

I remember it being drilled into my head over and over... develop for new hardware instead of old hardware, do everything for the expensive crowd because people who don't spend money on their hardware are less likely to spend money on software. This might be an outdated school of thought, but I'd say it goes double for Mac users. They're really expensive, and especially nowadays they're taking on this image as a trendy status symbol instead of a tool to do work with. Another things Mac devs have going for them, there is a lot less competition. If you would say that Macs don't have enough games out for them, then that translates into a niche to fill for aspiring businessmen.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[Anonymous Coward]

Another things Mac devs have going for them, there is a lot less competition. If you would say that Macs don't have enough games out for them, then that translates into a niche to fill for aspiring businessmen.

You clearly have no idea about game marketing. The people who hold the money in gaming are all about avoiding risk by stampeding to the same place as everyone else. Most of the last 15 years, I've been working on games that were just like whatever was popular the year before.

It's like a nature documentary I saw last week that showed zebras crossing a river in Africa. They all mill around for ages, until one finally crosses alone. If that one doesn't get eaten by the crocodiles, they all pour across in exactly the same place.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[SanityInAnarchy]

The problem here is, it also translates into a culture of shareware. Things which are freeware on Windows, and open source everywhere else, are shareware on a Mac.

Maybe it's just me, but that's what I've seen. You could argue that it's because the Mac version is so different, unique, and so much better than the free alternatives that it deserves to be paid for. I think it's because of exactly what you've said -- someone who just paid $1k for a dev machine is unlikely to gripe about $50 for TextMate.

(I'm lazy, so those numbers are almost certainly wrong, but they're close to right.)

As a user, that is one thing I really hate about the Mac. It's not that I don't believe in paying for software, just that I don't think every little file management tool or MP3 player needs to ask $20. Put up a donation page and be grateful someone hasn't replaced you already.

But hey, if you're going for that angle, target Mac users because they spend more money and are grateful for any decent games, and target Linux users because they might buy one just to up the Linux stats.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[SanityInAnarchy]

The people who hold the money in gaming are all about avoiding risk by stampeding to the same place as everyone else.

Except in 2008, apparently. We got Mirror's Edge, Spore, and Dead Space, all from EA.

And don't forget, Portal came from Valve. Shows how if you really want to test an idea without too much risk, build a smaller game and use digital distribution.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[rvw]

If you look a little further, you'll find a freeware or open source alternative for OSX, although it may not be the same program as on Windows or Linux. Textmate may not be free, so try jEdit or Textwrangler.

I don't know what programs you miss. Most of what I use is freeware or open source: OpenOffice, AdiumX, Keepass, Cyberduck, etc...

Re:Mac users spend more money

[mrchaotica]

I've noticed that too. I find it helps to search for Mac Free Software rather than merely "freeware" -- there's a lot more of the former than the latter, and if you look for the latter you end up finding shareware (crippleware or nagware) instead.

But hey, if you're going for that angle, target Mac users because they spend more money and are grateful for any decent games, and target Linux users because they might buy one just to up the Linux stats.

The way I see it, you should target Mac users because they'll pay for software, and target Linux users because you might as well since you already made your software cross-platform to get the Mac users! Games do not need to have different code between the Mac and Linux versions; they can standard stuff like OpenGL, SDL, and POSIX. (Don't try it with applications though, since Mac users won't tolerate non-native UIs!)

Re:Mac users spend more money

[rm999]

Mirror's Edge was a big monetary loss for EA, and Spore was received far less enthusiastically than expected. The game that made EA the most money last year? Madden - one of the least innovative series in the industry. And Portal may have helped sell Orange Box, but it never would have stood on its own as a serious revenue generator for Valve.

Sadly, game companies don't always feel the need to innovate because people are finicky and games cost millions to make. After all, they are businesses, usually with stock holders to answer to.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[Zephiris]

Spore and Dead Space are both fairly conventional when broken down. Dead Space gives a fairly interesting UI, but by-the-numbers story, standard-but-laggier-than-usual graphics, uninspired audio. Spore is a few minigames that have no real depth, and even the developers admit they're just like stripped down, simplistic versions of other EA/Maxis classics. Also, both heavily pirated as far as the news goes.
And Mirror's Edge isn't out yet for PC. We're talking about PCs on a Windows/Mac/Linux story, yes? :b I hope Mirror's Edge is good, but you can reasonably guarantee now that if it's an EA game (Mercenaries 2 also sadly comes to mind), it's surprisingly conventional no matter how much hype is applied, expensive, and DRM-laden.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[0100010001010011]

It's mainly because Mac users don't tolerate crap. When I'm trying to find a free/cheap piece of W32 software I have to wade through 90 clones all which have GUI bugs and or just look like crap in general. (Some gung-ho developer tried to reinvent Windows widgets).

Most all of the freeware and software I've found for Mac (and use daily) is very consistent. Not only that it all integrates rather well. Almost every client/server connects to each other over Bonjour. Almost everything has the auto-updater library so it checks for updates. Everything uses Growl for notification.

I don't know how far you're looking back, but TextMate (IMHO) beats BBEdit hands down and has been available for at least 4 years. Cyberduck is an awesome SFTP/FTP/S3/WebDAV client. And as long as something still works, I don't see a need to update or fix it. I remember when I first got involved screen hadn't had an update in over a year, but it worked and was near bullet-proof.

And Notepad++ is an awesome free W32 text editor.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[Fulg]

[...] I have to wade through 90 clones all which have GUI bugs and or just look like crap in general. (Some gung-ho developer tried to reinvent Windows widgets). [Emphasis mine]

I get what you're saying, but a big pet peeve of mine on OSX is that I see the exact opposite. Sure, almost all of Mac software looks great, but many don't follow consistent usability guidelines and many program options are hidden away. The fact that most dialog boxes cannot be controlled by the keyboard on OSX (by default anyway) is another big issue for me.

For example, it took me months to find the "Play Song Preview" in iTMS/iTunes because it's not in any app menu or even the right-click context menu; you just have to know to doubleclick the song. In every other Windows app that's not a problem, the bold menu entry is what will happen when you doubleclick; I don't know why this "standard" doesn't apply to OSX.

Another example, I needed a tool to just crop an image on OSX (splitting a desktop wallpaper in two for spaning multiple monitors). I found ImageWell, which worked fine but has a weird workflow and a non-resizeable interface that forces you to work in a very small preview version of your image!

Now don't get me wrong, I totally accept that I'm not used to OSX so any difference from W32 annoys me, but I think the point stands anyway.

Anyway, getting back on topic, developers target the platforms they use. Less marketshare means less developers means less variety. I only use OSX occasionally, so I don't bother developing much for it (I only use the Mac for iPhone development now).

Re:Mac users spend more money

[Creepy]

First off, I believe FIFA 08 made EA more money than Madden, but maybe you mean in the US.

Innovation is a high risk, high reward can bring profits - look at the Wii console - the least technically complex, the worst graphics of the major consoles, and the last to market - not to mention it isn't even the cheapest anymore (the XBox 360 cheapest model is under $200), but it dominates the sales charts. Meanwhile, Sony is bleeding money and laying off (and Microsoft is laying off to protect their bottom line).

However, innovation only sells some of the time - Assassin's Creed was one of the top sellers on PS3 and XBox 360 and had a fair degree of innovation and a fair degree of evolution. Call of Duty 4 was also a top seller on those platforms and was mostly evolution. Why does CoD4 sell? First off, as far as shooters go, it is fairly simple to learn and play. Second, people are familiar with the game and controls from the previous games and there is less learning curve. Finally, the plot/fun factor of the game has been good enough that players don't have burnout (like the Tomb Raider franchise). Sports games benefit from having a head start, which is why they sell well - the buyers are nearly always fans that know the rules from watching sports. FIFA 08 isn't as popular as Madden in the US because the US is much more rabid fans of Football than Soccer, while the world audience is just the opposite. NHL games are probably very popular in Canada and the US, but I bet you could sell more copies of Kangaroo Hunter (yes, I made that up) in Australia than NHL games, even if KH used a 6 year old engine and played like crap).

What do many Wii games and Portal have in common? They are deceptively simple - easy to learn, but difficult to master. Wii's dumbing down of the controller to 2 buttons means non-hardcore gamers have a basic learning curve of minutes, not hours or days. And they're mostly fun, or at least the few I've played were. Most of the time I'm fighting with the controls with games on the XBox 360 and PS3 and play against people that have used them for years and it tends to be more an exercise in frustration.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[immcintosh]

This may be beside your point, but I would love to be able to pay $50 for TextMate in Linux. It's the only Mac-only app I'm jealous of. Even better, make something with the UI and feature set of TextMate that understands VI commands. I'd be sold.

Re:Mac users spend more money

[aliquis]

We got Mirror's Edge, Spore, and Dead Space, all from EA.

Thanks to Transgaming creating Cider Windows emulator which EA use to make the games run on macs. It's not real ports, and it's more or less a no brainer for them. Why not release it if someone will buy it even though the resulting product is inferior*?

* From but running on an emulated layer and because OS X graphics performance probably isn't up to Windows speeds to begin with (and third because macs always tend to come with somewhat mediocre graphics even though you pay premium prices.)

Re:Mac users spend more money

[KDR_11k]

And? Just because a part of the game has been done before doesn't mean it's not new. Brain training has been limited to boring work-like programs before, sports games consisted of hitting buttons (or adjusting dials if we go really far back) rather than the actual motions and exercise vids are again work-like and not interactive. You can always find a weak relationship to something existing for any new idea (someone jokingly said GTA is like Pac Man except the dots are people). I don't think there's any indie game that couldn't be claimed to be just a clone if you just looked at it with enough abstraction.

Cached Copy

[rsmith-mac]

It seems that the poor blog has been Slashdotted, so here's the Google cache entry for it complete with graphics.

Who'd have thought it?

[kazade84]

Targeting a larger audience results in more sales. Who'd have guessed? :p

Re:Who'd have thought it?

[Daengbo]

Really, his point was that targeting platforms with small market share give you a lot more exposure and increases sales in other, more popular platforms due to that exposure.

I don't think you would have guessed that.

Re:Who'd have thought it?

[Computershack]

Probably because it's bullshit.

Fill in the numbers:

[krischik]

Targeting a 5 .. 10% larger audience lead to ~122% more sales.

Now, I would still have guessed (including the leverage) it but that does not go for everybody.

Blizzard

[incripshin]

Why, this is the perfect place to advertise the Linux Installers for Blizzard Products Petition! I believe that if Blizzard supported Linux for its upcoming titles, it would change Linux gaming forever.

Re:Blizzard

[Kalriath]

Why? No one takes online petitions seriously, it's just a waste of time. Besides, it aint "only fair" that Linux be supported - what's that shit about?

For now, the games work fine under WINE (which is more than can be said for anything EA), isn't that enough for now? If you want to see game companies developing natively for *nix, get more people using it. The developers will follow, seriously.

OGL vs DirectX

[im_thatoneguy]

I think it's pretty simple.

Developers like DirectX.

Developers who develop DirectX Products don't always feel the desire to maintain a DirectX and OGL render pipeline.

Apple 3D Card selection have been historically pretty worthless. Linux is infamous for its 3D Card support.

So not only do developers need an openGL renderer but they also have to develop for a less refined driver base.

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[kazade84]

DirectX forms a very small part of any well designed game. Everything would be abstracted for portability, you think the PS3 supports DX?

Let's just go through the thought process of porting a game that supports Windows to Linux MacOSX, starting from a DX only codebase.

It would be trivial to support OpenGL as a 2nd renderer as well as D3D because, as I said, games are designed for portability, but as you pointed out that's more maintenance.

But then why keep D3D? OpenGL is portable and runs on Linux, Windows and OSX so the logical decision would be to ONLY support OpenGL, suddenly the game becomes more portable.

Then there are the other things that DirectX does that need to be duplicated for other platforms, for example input, sound etc. The logical choice would be to use, I dunno, some libraries that already took care of the work, like SDL (windowing, input and events) and OpenAL (sound).

But wait. If you use SDL + OpenAL then suddenly the game runs on all platforms... then what's the point of a DX version?

The point I'm getting at is if a game developer wanted to support the 3 main PC platforms they could do with the same amount of development work. The reasons they don't are:

1. They already have a whole DX tool chain built on Windows and with the blessing of Microsoft. It is a risk for them to change their whole process, what if it doesn't pay off?

2. There WILL be more testing required. Chances are things would work the same as all platforms but they'd still have to test that.

There are of course some advantages to writing for more platforms:

1. Compiling your code with more than one compiler is good practice because it flags up bad code that your original compiler allowed erroneously

2. Parts of the code that aren't abstract enough will be flagged up pretty quickly.

Anyway I'm waffling. The point is, the studios won't change until the increase in market share makes up for the change in their development processes.

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[Daengbo]

I was looking for a coding rant I read in the summer about SDL and audio insufficiencies so that I could point you to it, but you'll have to settle for what I found instead. Take a look at this ... and I found what I was looking for. Make sure to read the comments on Braid for the real info. A Loki programmer even says SDL isinadequate for audio.

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[SanityInAnarchy]

Developers like DirectX.

Not all developers. In fact, historically, there's the classic Carmack attack on DirectX. There was certainly a period of time for which OpenGL was faster.

Apple 3D Card selection have been historically pretty worthless. Linux is infamous for its 3D Card support.

Neither of which matters -- if your game only runs on the very latest, $500 worth of SLI goodness, with more RAM on the video card than a computer had two years ago, you're targeting a much smaller audience than Linux or OS X users.

Your pipeline should be able to scale, both up and down, especially if you intend to use that engine for other games in the future. And, looking up, this is another point in favor of OpenGL -- DirectX 10 currently runs on exactly one platform (Vista), which is perhaps the most universally hated platform since Windows ME, maybe even Microsoft Bob. Even if you're only going to be targeting older versions of Windows, with OpenGL, it's up to the manufacturers, and they tend to keep at least 2K and XP up to date with GL support.

The other funny part of this is that Linux video support actually has more working than OS X, as far as I can tell -- SLI on nvidia, for example.

So not only do developers need an openGL renderer but they also have to develop for a less refined driver base.

Once they've got an OpenGL renderer, I'll argue that they don't need a DirectX one. And you need a less refined driver base anyway, unless you force everyone to upgrade to Vista + SLI/Crossfire + OMGULTRABBQ 3000 PCI-EXPRESS.

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[kazade84]

Both those articles don't relate to what I said..

1. SDL doesn't have text functions, but in that discussion they are talking about using SDL without OpenGL. 3D games wouldn't be using the 2D blitting abilities of SDL so the point is irrelevant when OpenGL is being used. Now you could point out that DX on Windows has outline fonts and bitmap fonts, but then there are plenty of FreeType based OpenGL font libraries out there.

2. As I said, use OpenAL for sound, I never suggested SDL for audio, AT ALL. I don't even think it supports 3D positional sound.

Re:OGL vs DirectX

[TheRaven64]

first as far as i can tell mac only supports openal 1.0. when ever other platform including the xbox supports at least 1.1 and most likely 1.2.

OS X has supported OpenAL 1.2 since OS X 10.4.

Why game developers should support standards

[Thanshin]

The alternative of simply programming over a common standard environment is still there.

Part of all that power currently spent on better and better graphics could be spent on passing through a common interface.

As an extra bonus, it would allow the creation of computer-like machines that would only run that standard gaming environment, without all the other functions of a computer.

Unless someone translated the rest of the usual computer functions to that common gaming environent.

Re:Summary of TFA

[Hecatonchires]

Your reasoned commentary singles you out from the herd. Stupid zebra, you're crocodile bait now.

Maybe there's more to it

[sleeponthemic]

But I thought that article trivialised the whole affair and offered very little evidence for the point, bar a spectacularly presented pie chart. One publisher made money from a game. Not quite the smoking gun.

One thing that is true is that there is a lot of respect and word of mouth thrown the way of a good game with native linux client. That would of course diminish if there weren't so few quality games supporting it, of course.

I also find myself wondering whether this game Lugaru is an opengl game, keeping migration costs down.

Re:Maybe there's more to it

[Yvanhoe]

The article is its own proof : Because of its linux port, it got an article on Slashdot frontpage for a game that would otherwise go totally unnoticed !

Re:Blizzard (and CCP)

[splutty]

For now, the games work fine under WINE (which is more than can be said for anything EA), isn't that enough for now? If you want to see game companies developing natively for *nix, get more people using it. The developers will follow, seriously.

One of the main reasons things like WoW work in WINE is because Blizzard actually makes a decent effort to have their games run properly in OpenGL. You can run a WoW client in Windows in OpenGL as well, which in some cases actually solves some DirectX problems on some cards/computers.

Another example is CCP, the producers of Eve Online. They have a MAC and Linux client, respectively on Cedega on the MAC (IIRC) and a specific Wine on Linux, and that seems to work quite well from what I've heard.

If software companies would work closer with the people that write these sort of 'emulators' (they're not really emulators in most cases, except for some specific routines), I think that would start to make a serious difference.

The other option is to go the Quake route, and just write your engine in such a way that it can run natively on other platforms, but that requires development effort from the start, something that up until recently wasn't exactly worth it for most companies.

We'll see what happens in the near future, but I'm afraid that the Winblows/DirectSux combination will be prevalent for a while longer yet.

TINSTAAFL

[Serious Callers Only]

As a user, that is one thing I really hate about the Mac. It's not that I don't believe in paying for software, just that I don't think every little file management tool or MP3 player needs to ask $20. Put up a donation page and be grateful someone hasn't replaced you already.

As a user, that's one thing I hate about other computer users - they expect people to do lots of work for them for free, and feel entitled to it somehow. You should be grateful many people are producing software for you, not coming out with bullshit like 'and be grateful someone hasn't replaced you already'.

Your attitude leads directly to plentiful releases of low-quality, just-good-enough software, many with bundled advertising and malware, much like the Windows software scene in fact. TINSTAAFL.

There is plenty of free open-source software on OS X if that's what you're looking for, it isn't magically turned into shareware - there's tons of Unix software available for free via macports for example, there's also GUI apps like Cyberduck, Audacity, Handbreak, GIMP, etc etc. Then OS X itself bundles tons of open-source software (apache, gcc, etc).

There is also some quality software (like TextMate, or BBEdit) which should continue to charge for development, because development takes time, effort and money.

Re:TINSTAAFL

[Anonymous Coward]

its not bullshit, your obviously a mac user that isnt aware of the array of high quality freeware available on pc that isnt available to you...
overall mac is between 2-3% of all the computers on the face of the planet. the rest are windows machines. if your writing software, where do you want it to go? 97-87% of market? or 2-3%?

also - linux cant replace windows. Im a musician and a gamer. linux is useless for both. if I could replace windows with linux id do it in a second without thinking about it...

Re:TINSTAAFL

[Just Some Guy]

There is plenty of free open-source software on OS X if that's what you're looking for, it isn't magically turned into shareware

Actually, it is. Take Memtest86+, the de facto standard RAM tester. Now Google for "memtest os x" and you'll find this jerk who sells a compiled version but doesn't make the source available to it. To rub salt in the wound, he's too lazy to make his own website graphics and uses the default "Joomla! ...because open source matters".

Sure, you can get Memtest for free if you know how. It's just irksome that the source-deprived shareware version is the one most Mac users will know about. So one program isn't the end of the world, but it seems par for the course for OS X.

OT: How to lay out a CD for Linux, Mac vs Win?

[daniel23]

strange question, shouldnt I know the answer myself since I've been using all three OSen for ages myself? (Typing this on an Ubuntu desktop)

But it's been quite some years now that I last mastered a win/mac CD (it still had OS9) and I never did one for Linux before.
On the other hand my own computer usage has so much shifted to a net focus that I hardly ever install and run a CD myself anymore. And if I do this at all, it's always on win.

So, win is easy, there will be an autorun.inf with a link to an icon and a link to some autorun.exe or whatever.

On Mac, I'd expect the CD to appear with a large friendly icon, a window opening on double click with more large friendly icons that make it very clear what to do (i.e. drag the application onto the application folder alias). No autorun here.

On Linux? I have no idea. From my own usage pattern I don't expect the stuff to be on a CDrom in the first place, it's either in the repositories of my distribution or in a .deb/.rpm dnl'ed from some url or I got a tarball and have to do the ./configure / make / make install - dance. I don't think I ever opened a "commercial" CD intended to be used from Linux (with the exception of install discs). Autorun? - Gott bewahre! Rather a README, may be an install.pl ...

Now there should be sites discussing that question, design guides, style guides, best practices. No way that I'm the first one pondering about how to make a CD look just right on all three OSen - but google drowns me in a bazillion of unrelated pages. Which is why I turn up here with my question, hoping that some of you keep a link or two in their bookmarks to help me find my way.

You lazy bastard

[mstroeck]

OK, so you don't want to pay for TextMate...

How about just using XCode, Textwrangler, jEdit, Eclipse or Smultron?

Or how about using ANY FUCKING UNIX/LINUX EDITOR EVER WRITTEN IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND, either straight in an X11 window, or via the special OS X build that is available for most?

semi-OT: Lugaru isn't working on current distros

[bersl2]

The game and modern versions of SDL don't like each other.

As with many great Linux ports, icculus maintains the Linux version.

Older bug report
New bug report

OSX should do more to support game developers

[SpazmodeusG]

Seriously Apple doesn't do as much to support game developers as Microsoft does.
The Microsoft DirectX SDK has demo applications, a bunch of sounds, models and textures that can be used for non-commercial purposes etc.
Apple has no specific game development library and they don't do anything to support the open source game libraries that fill that void - SDL for example.
The most they have is a small area on their developers website that has a handful of tutorials. It just doesn't cut it compared to what Microsoft does to encourage all types of game developers.
Every game platform i know of has a game development toolkit that helps programmers out. From all the consoles through to the various versions of Windows. Apple has yet to release anything of the sort.

more reasons

[Tom]

There are many more reasons, in fact. The most important one is that cross-platform development usually results in higher-quality products.

The most obvious reason is that bugs tend to show up faster if you test on more than one platform. Developers hate that, it appears to make development more difficult, but the truth is that it simply exposes the lousy work that most developers deliver.

The other reason is that you can take advantage of - or start thinking about - the platform features. For example, the old Loki port of Civ3 had additional features that the windos version didn't have, simply because the platform required them. One example: On the windos platform, there was automatically one profile for all users, because the game saved everything in the game directory. On Linux, due to stricter permissions, that was simply not possible, so the game saved everything it had to save into the user directory and every user had his own profile. You can do that in windos, too, but a lot of windos developers never think about it.

Simple solution.

[LWATCDR]

Get out XCode and write your own. Problem solved.
I hear this all the time but it is at best rude. It takes a lot of work to write a good text editor, file management tool, or mp3 player. Some people want to do it for free and put it out under GPL. That is great. I have released GPL code myself. Some people want to get paid for their hard work. I am also all for that. If you like their product pay for it.
If you don't like their product enough to pay them what they ask then DON"T USE IT AND DON"T COMPLAIN.
There is a lot of Free as in beer and Free as in speech software for the Mac. The reason that you probably see more shareware for the Mac may be that Mac users are more willing to support those that write for their machine. Maybe Mac users don't think of programmers as slaves that should produce free software and be grateful that we are willing to use the fruit of their labors.

Planning with 'gut feeligns'

[jythie]

I've never understood software houses that insist on releasing games on a single platform with propriatry APIs rather then starting development with a cross platform engine and then porting to other platforms.
 
In any other industry, if I went up to a manager and said 'hey, this API will get us an extra 10-15% market share for similar development costs' and they will go 'wow! let's go with that! more money for us!'
 
yet in software there seems to be this almost psychotic attachment to 'we must support only Windows because that is all people use'.

Re:semi-OT: Lugaru isn't working on current distro

[twowoot4u]

The game and modern versions of SDL don't like each other.

As with many great Linux ports, icculus maintains the Linux version.

Older bug report New bug report

*yawn* I almost got my hopes up: open /dev/[sound/]dsp: Device or resource busy open /dev/[sound/]dsp: Device or resource busy open /dev/[sound/]dsp: Device or resource busy Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed)

Macs need to have better video card / hardware and

[Joe The Dragon]

Macs need to have better video card / hardware and a $2300 tower with a lower mid-range card as the base will not do it. A $130 cost of the base card + $150 for a 8800GT makeing it $280 for a 8800gt does not help.

Putting 9400m in the mini and macbook helps make them better but the mini needs to have a faster cpu + 256 - 512 of video ram that is not part of system ram and maybe a faster 3.5 hd. Also put in a 9500 / 9600 in the higher end systems. The imac needs to have system better video card and not a small video card bump that also comes with a bigger screen that makes you trun down the screen size to run games at good settings.

Where is the mac tower? maybe a $1200 - $1500+ base core i7 system with SLI / crossfire on the higher end? With a $2700+ 2 cpu core i7 mac pro. The Dual core i7 systems will likely cost more then to days dual Exon's and a mac pro tower staring at $2700+ will look bad next to a $600 - $900 mini with a slow cpu + 9400 video useing system ram with a 2.5 laptop hd. Other system at $800 - $900 have pci-e slots and or video cards with there own ram.

Also the $2000 mac book pro is lacking in video power next to other laptops that have 9700 / 9800 cards in them some even have sli at the same price or lower and they have 4gb of ram some even have a faster cpu as well.

Apple will have to deal with better EFiX and Psystar system and if the new mini comes with no firewire, mini DP need apple wants you to pay $30 - $100 more for the Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter or the Mini DisplayPort to DVIDL Adapter, 9400m video that uses system ram.

1 more thing there better not be a intel atom based mini at $500+ as that will be slower then to days mini even if they put 9400m video on it and that will just say to Psystar we can't beat you in hardware but we can try in court.

A former game developer's perspective

[OppositeLock]

(apologies if this is a re-post, my previous comment seems to be missing) Releasing a game for Windows, Mac and Linux sounds all well and good, and the adoption rates on the smaller platforms may be higher as a percentage of the OS install base, but it doesn't make financial sense for most companies to spend the effort to write games for the mac, or especially Linux. I'm a former game developer who has written games for Windows, OS X, Linux, and all the consoles, so I know the market and development challenges pretty well. Windows, for the time being, is still the prime software development platform for games, the rest just don't have the necessary tools and third party software. It's pretty much certain that all of your game data will be processed on a windows machine, so windows will have de-facto support as long as this is the case. If the game is written with portability in mind, and quite a few nowadays are, then it may be ported to the mac. The mac's development tools aren't as good as those available on windows, but between XCode, Shark, dtrace, and the OpenGL profiler, you can get some real work done. The problem is that even if your install rate on the mac is double that on windows, you're still talking about numbers off in the noise. Windows will probably be about 90% of your users, mac would be less than 10%, but it takes more than 10% additional effort to ship the game on the mac, so most companies won't bother. Now, Slashdot is a very pro-linux crowd, so I'm bound to get a lot of disagreement on this next point. Linux will never be a games platform. No game company will ever devote the resources to support linux as a primary platform. The reason is that "Linux" isn't really a platform, the platforms are Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, and stuff we don't care about. If anyone claims that you can write the code once and run on all three, you've never tried to do so for a large project. What happens in practice is that you can get your game running pretty well, with random crashes in X and OpenGL that then take a huge amount of effort to track down, per platform. These platforms differ subtly in their API's and libraries for things like OpenGL, libc, and audio so you are guaranteed that you will never ship a single linux binary. If I was writing a game from scratch right now, I would still consider windows my primary platform and I'd probably port it to the mac, but Linux would not be worth the cost and then resulting support burden.

Oops, bad formatting

[OppositeLock]

Releasing a game for Windows, Mac and Linux sounds all well and good, and the adoption rates on the smaller platforms may be higher as a percentage of the OS install base, but it doesn't make financial sense for most companies to spend the effort to write games for the mac, or especially Linux.

I'm a former game developer who has written games for Windows, OS X, Linux, and all the consoles, so I know the market and development challenges pretty well.

Windows, for the time being, is still the prime software development platform for games, the rest just don't have the necessary tools and third party software. It's pretty much certain that all of your game data will be processed on a windows machine, so windows will have de-facto support as long as this is the case.

If the game is written with portability in mind, and quite a few nowadays are, then it may be ported to the mac. The mac's development tools aren't as good as those available on windows, but between XCode, Shark, dtrace, and the OpenGL profiler, you can get some real work done. The problem is that even if your install rate on the mac is double that on windows, you're still talking about numbers off in the noise. Windows will probably be about 90% of your users, mac would be less than 10%, but it takes more than 10% additional effort to ship the game on the mac, so most companies won't bother.

Now, Slashdot is a very pro-linux crowd, so I'm bound to get a lot of disagreement on this next point. Linux will never be a games platform. No game company will ever devote the resources to support linux as a primary platform. The reason is that "Linux" isn't really a platform, the platforms are Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, and stuff we don't care about. If anyone claims that you can write the code once and run on all three, you've never tried to do so for a large project. What happens in practice is that you can get your game running pretty well, with random crashes in X and OpenGL that then take a huge amount of effort to track down, per platform. These platforms differ subtly in their API's and libraries for things like OpenGL, libc, and audio so you are guaranteed that you will never ship a single linux binary.

If I was writing a game from scratch right now, I would still consider windows my primary platform and I'd probably port it to the mac, but Linux would not be worth the cost and then resulting support burden.

Completely UNTRUE

[cybrthng]

Consoles prove my point entirely. Ports of games that are on all consoles tend to suck because there is no polish. Work that could have been spent on the game; making it better, faster, fancier or simply more playable is spent on the process of porting - to platforms in which bugs may not be reproducible at all. A variety of OS's, hardware configurations, kernel schedulers, drivers and whatnot doesn't make a game better. Just means more people, increased costs, more delays and less features.

Network effects, especially.

[seebs]

When my spouse and I wanted to take up an MMO, we had an obvious requirement: It had to run on a Mac, because my spouse is a Mac user. So, we got WoW. (There weren't many competitors at the time who did Mac; even now, the most obvious is Eve which is of anti-value to me because I don't, ever, under any circumstances, want PvP.)

So far, that's two copies sold. But wait. My brother-in-law now plays with us. My sister-in-law now plays with us, because her husband plays with us. A friend of mine from some message boards who'd given up got back into the game because I was playing it. So I can name five people (and more than five monthly subscriptions) that came from that sale. Only one of whom plays primarily on Mac.

For games that are played with other people, the effect isn't just the actual sales to Mac users; it's the sales to people who want to play with Mac users, and the moment anyone provides an option for the Mac market, a lot of other users will end up being drawn to that product by preference.