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Whither Mac gaming?
Peter Cohen, Macworld's 'Game guy,' has penned an article wondering if in a world full of next gen consoles (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the Wii) the Mac has any relevance as a gaming platform. Not too surprisingly, since he is probably the most recognized of all Mac gaming columnists, Peter thinks that the Mac still has a lot to offer in the gaming arena.Peter points to games that have a social networking aspect as the place where the Mac shines. These games, at least the ones he mentions, are online games which can be played on either Mac or PCs so lumping these in as 'Mac games' seems a little disingenuous to me (though they can be played on a Mac).Peter expounds on the benefits of computer gaming as compared to console gaming, but I think he falls short of crafting an argument for the Mac as a gaming platform.Are there many Mac gamers out there? None of my Macs have any games installed on them, but perhaps I am in the minority.
Molyneux - "Apple needs to get behind games"
Last week I carried out an interview with Peter Molyneux (the founder of Lionhead Studios which has games like Black & White, Fable and The Movies to its name) over at TUAW sister site Joystiq. I made sure to ask him a question or two about the state of Mac gaming because one, I *used* to be a relatively hardcore Mac gamer and two, Lionhead has a track record of bringing all of its games to the Mac. That isn't changing with Microsoft's recent acquisition of the company (haven't we heard all this before?!).The relevant part of the interview:"There's this Catch 22 situation where not many people play games on the Mac and therefore developers don't want to make games for the Mac. Exactly. I think it would need Apple to get behind games. There's nothing in their operating system that panders to games at all and I take my hats off to Microsoft. I think they've realized that games are important."Macworld's Peter Cohen suggested that Molyneux was referring to Apple's lack of a unified application programming interface that would make the jobs of game programmers much easier. I think this suggestion is spot on, but not the only thing that Molyneux was referring to. One passive improvement could include getting Apple to kick its recent integrated graphics habit (Molyneux called my MacBook "a perfect thing" in the interview - pity it can't play games). Sure, we'd all like an iTunes Games Store, a mid-range upgradeable Mac with a decent graphics card and an Apple that publishes games, but it ain't gonna happen while you-know-who is still around.Unless Apple gets off its arse and gives game developers more than the bare minimum of support, Mac gaming is going to disappear thanks to the rapid emergence of easy access to Windows games via Boot Camp or GPU virtualization (when it finally appears). Only then will we see articles on Apple.com about how awesome Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter looks on the Mac, instead of long features about how the GRAW music was composed using a PowerMac G5.
Joystiq interviews Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios
Yesterday at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Jennie and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the founder of Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux. We chatted about the issue of hype, frustrations surrounding PC gaming and Peter's early days in the industry, amongst other topics.Fable was pretty much portrayed as one of the most open games of all time, but in terms of hype, it failed to meet the high expectations that you gave the game. There was even a forum post where you apologized about this: why did it get to that level?Well, it started with this fatal line that I made and that was that I wanted to make Fable the greatest role playing game of all time. I kinda still defend that because I honestly don't see the point in making a game that you don't honestly believe has a chance of being the greatest game of all time. I meet the press quite a lot, every 6-8 weeks there's some sort of press interview. The way I work then is to get a system in, play around with it, polish it, make it better. Sometimes I leave it as it is and sometimes I throw it away.
Wingnuts 2, an original Mac game, takes off
Freeverse has announced that Wingnuts 2, a top-down aerial arcade shooter game, is now available for online purchase and download. The title benefits from being an original and exclusive Mac game, developed and playable exclusively on the Mac. Freeverse co-founder Colin Lynch Smith mentions the advantages of developing games solely for the Mac over on Inside Mac Games:"This is the biggest game to be written specifically for the Mac in years. Targeting just the Mac means no performance compromises (and lower system requirements)-- and we can design in cool OS X specific technologies like CoreImage and iSight integration."It's about time that game developers woke up to the benefits of creating games specifically for the Mac platform. Hopefully this will be the first title of many in a resurgence of big name Mac-exclusive titles.You can grab a demo of the game at this link and a video of the game (complete with an example of the fancy CoreImage effects) is available here. A DVD boxset of the game will ship in early July, but if you can't wait that long the game is available as a whopping 550MB download for $29.95 over on the Wingnuts 2 site.[Via Joystiq]
GameRanger to drop OS 9 support, eventually
Inside Mac Games reports that GameRanger, the online Mac gaming service, will stop supporting booting GameRanger client in OS 9 at some point this year. This should surprise no one since OS 9 hasn't been commercially available for years. Now, for you game crazy OS 9 holdouts, fear not. The client will still run in Classic (which itself isn't supported on newer Macs, but lucky there are solutions for that).I'm curious, how many TUAW readers are still using OS 9? Do you have plans to upgrade any time soon?
Pointing out the obvious regarding the MacBook and gaming
The MacBook will play many of your really old games at an acceptable level, but you can forget about playing any recently released intensive 3D games (i.e. the ones you want to play). That's the conclusion MacWorld has reached in its first look at the MacBook as a gaming machine. The article suggests maxing out the RAM in the machine if you want to play games: the writer saw a 50fps increase in Quake 3 Arena when he upgraded the machine from 512MB to 2GB. A nice finding for owners of MacBooks interested in a bit of retro gaming.However, lets get something straight here, the MacBook is not a gaming machine. It has an integrated graphics card. No computing hardware that lacks a dedicated graphics card should be even mentioned in the same sentence as "gaming." We understand that some Mac owners may need to be persuaded to overlook this machine's blatant Achilles heel but it isn't MacWorld's job to do this. The site is doing a disservice to its readers by pointing to the poor gaming performance of the MacBook and then suggesting that people "understand [the MacBook's] limitations" and go "buy an XBox360 or Playstation2 for [their] gaming needs." It's this sort of advice that gives Apple free reign to charge $149 for a paint job (um, can I have a graphics card instead?) and allows the mainstream media to say things like "Mac users aren't into games."[Via TUAW]
"Mac users aren't really into games"
This Business Week article laments the lack of games available for Mac, and asks "why doesn't Apple try its hand at building good games for the Mac on its own?". Given Apple's support for Windows as its gaming solution of choice, along with hardware that's not appealing to gamers, we wonder why Apple would bother.Given that the article proposes a novel idea -- PC gamers playing with Mac gamers! -- and also claims that "Mac users aren't really into games" (most of the Joystiq staff would disagree), we're not quite sure that it entirely addresses the current state of Mac gaming. However, it's true that one game does not always make a system a decent gaming platform, and the message is clear -- if Apple wants to get its game on, then perhaps it should set the example.
Wingnuts 2 is almost done!
I'm dreading the release of Wingnuts 2 -- its predecessor was so addictive that it hooked my dad, my uncle and numerous friends. The phrase "can you help me get past this level?" has never been so annoying. On Freeverse's blog, they've announced that the game is nearing Gold Master status (the final stage before distribution) so make sure you've got a clear schedule for the next few days weeks months *ahem* years. While you're waiting for the game to be released, check out the latest screenshots of the game over at Games4Mac.Read - Wingnuts 2 nearing Gold MasterView - Latest Wingnuts 2 screenshots
Mac game devs cautiously optimistic about Boot Camp
Mac gaming website Inside Mac Games has posted a selection of Mac game developers reaction's to Apple's Boot Camp software. The overall feeling from the developers is one of cautious optimism: any loss in interest for OS X specific games could be offset by an increase in overall Mac market share from casual Windows gamers flooding to the platform. Andrew Welch, the founder of Ambrosia Software (creators of classics like the Escape Velocity series of games), doesn't "view it as a threat at all... but then again, we're not in the porting business". Aspyr's Glenda Adams and Brad Oliver are in the porting business. Fortunately they also publish and port games for other platforms. According to Brad "if Mac sales tank, we've got enough revenue coming in from PC and console ports that it probably won't hurt the company too much and we'd just focus on the other platforms." Mac game sales will only tank if people stop buying Mac games and instead play their games in Windows but as Andrew says, "people will get sick of dual-booting, and would prefer to run native games, just like Linux users prefer native games". Ian Lynch Smith of Freeverse points out that this may be only the first step: "Apple is pushing the intel roll out very aggressively, and now aggressively pushing dual boot (and virtualization eventually from someone)". Hopefully in the next 6 months we'll see effective virtualization of Windows games from within OS X. That's the most desirable outcome for both Mac users and developers.[Via TUAW]
TUAW Interview: Jesse Simko of Sawblade Software
Sawblade Software is the parent company of Power Game Factory, a game development environment for Mac OS X that even non-programmers can use (C.K. took a look at Power Game Factory earlier this summer). With it, you can make great, stand alone, side-scrolling games with complex levels, Quicktime cut scenes, custom sprites...on and on. The best part of all: You don't need to write a lick of code and you can distribute your creation royalty free. Sound good? It is.I've been using it for a couple of months now, and I've found that making games is actually more fun than playing them. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Jesse Simko, the company's founder. We chatted about his inspiration for creating a development environment for non-developers, his experiences so far and his future plans. You can read the interview after the jump.
