[blizzard]

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1079117160.html

Discuss!

[Johnny_B]

I rarly pirate any games for Mac, because there are no good games for Mac. It's been very long since Deus Ex and Unreal Tournament ! I've bought Blizzards games, which are great, but they didn't go a good enough job porting WarCraft III to mac. The game is still very slow, even on good macs. And it took forever to get Diablo II to work good on Mac OS X, and it's still slow to be such an old game.

I speak for myself now, but I think I also speak for others. What people want is to have good optimized games for the Mac. Considered todays mac marked, with more alike hardware configurations than on the PC side, making games for Mac should be more like making games for a console.

I think the whole game marked is thinking all wrong. Think about all the good games they could have made if a game engine was used for more than one game. Look at the great game Deus Ex, which used the great engine from Unreal Tournament, the developers could more concentrate on making a good game, rather than a good engine.

There hasn't been a kick ass game for Mac since Quake III, that is a great port. But the game itself sucks though (if you ask me).

[entrox]

After reading the article, I nearly died from non-shock.

Witness the Amiga and Atari ST: piracy has brought down bigger industries in the past, why should it be different with the Mac? Piracy has been there from day 1. If people are incapable of paying for existing games, there will be no future games. Hardly surprising.

[Johnny_B]

There is no reason to pay for them. I usually do as I always has done, download first, to test it (demo's sucks anyway), and then I buy if I like it and throw the pirate version anyway (because it was crap, or because it was bought ). There is a long time since I last bought a game, WarCraft III Expansion it was.

Get the fun back into gaming. And don't count on that everyone uses a dual 2GHz G5, and I am sure that marked for Mac gaming will be big enough.

[Forte]

Originally posted by entrox:
After reading the article, I nearly died from non-shock.

Witness the Amiga and Atari ST: piracy has brought down bigger industries in the past, why should it be different with the Mac? Piracy has been there from day 1. If people are incapable of paying for existing games, there will be no future games. Hardly surprising.

For some reason, that reminds me of this very freaky video, called "Don't Copy That Floppy!" - http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/floppy.php (it's in Windows Media format, BTW).

More on-topic; I wouldn't dream of pirating a game - it's no different to walking into a store and walking out with an un-paid for game. I'll check out a demo if there is one (most demos now are pretty comparable to the final products, IME). If there's not a demo, I'll ask around and see if any friends have it, and check it out on their machine. If there's no demo, AND no-one else has it, I don't buy it. Simple, legal, and doesn't hurt the market.

[Caesar2099]

"To test a game if it's good" is just bull crap. Seriously it's really obvious to tell if a game is good or not without playing it. Here are my rules

1) If it is based a movie, and/or comic then it is bad.
2) If it has the word "blood" in its title, it stinks.
3) If it has "golf" in the title, it absolutely stinks.
4) If it is the 4th in it's series, ignore it.

The fact is, we have like 4 games for the mac, each one has to be ported. Why would the port a really bad game? We are essentially getting the cream of the crop so to speak.

[3.1416]

Using Halo as anecdotal evidence of the overall level of Mac game piracy is silly. Given Halo's history, there are *many* Mac users who won't want to give their money to Bungie/MS as a matter of principle.

[joe]

2 items seem to stand out from the rest in that article:
"Mac gaming industry insiders are warning that the increasing piracy of Mac gaming titles may mean that some popular titles never get ported."
I take that threat seriously. But there are other factors involved ranging from lack of interest in a game (IE yet another sequel) to lack of hardware optimization (no dualie for you - NEXT)! And to paint all downloaders with the same brush is misleading. Some cases of so-called "piracy" are what leads people into buying the game.

And this statement in particular is a non-starter for me:
"— the latest Halo patch now checks the optical drive for a legitimate copy of the CD before game play will begin."
I just now got the hardware to play that game. But I'll be damned if I'm going to fork over the money after that stunt! What's worse, it makes me extremely hesitant to purchase any future game from MacSoft. I simply don't trust them to do right by their legit customers. They need to fix that bug ASAP to restore trust in the eyes of the buying public. Find a better way already! I'm sick and tired of these publishers taking the easy way out and then crying piracy! Tie the software to the hardware, use serial numbers, or at least try to find some way that is more convenient to the paying customer.......joe

[Chimpmaster]

I realise games tend to come out a little later on mac, but I really do disagree strongly with the claim that there are no good games on mac.

Great games in my collection include:

- Baldurs Gate II SOA, and the recently released TOB expansion
- Everquest
- Civilization III
- Medal of Honour Allied Assault and expansion
- Warcraft III and its expansion
- The Sims and all associated expansions

Just go to www.insidemacgames.com and have a look at the many other titles available for mac that are awesome, such as neverwinter nights, jedi academy, halo, Rainbow 6 3, Age of Mythology and Tony Hawks 4.

I personally own an xbox and fo most of my gaming on it (eg jedi academy and halo), but I still play BG II, Civ 3 and MOH:AA on mac and they run really well on my G4 Imac 700mhz.

We missed out on counterstrike, but there are good alternative like MOH & SOFII. Also games are starting to come out much more quickly for mac than they used to.

The best gaming publishers are www.aspyr.com and www.macplay.com, so be sure to check out their sites also.

Also check out the gameranger community - www.gameranger.com - it is quite popular and you can get a game there pretty much 24x7, and its a dedicated mac gaming community (and its free).

[Xidius]

There are veeery few games I would spend a dollar on. (With or without pirating) Therefore the games I pirate are no loss to the developer. Merely a gain to me.

- Xidius

[nobitacu]

Originally posted by Chimpmaster:
I realise games tend to come out a little later on mac, but I really do disagree strongly with the claim that there are no good games on mac.

Great games in my collection include:

- Baldurs Gate II SOA, and the recently released TOB expansion
- Everquest
- Civilization III
- Medal of Honour Allied Assault and expansion
- Warcraft III and its expansion
- The Sims and all associated expansions

Just go to www.insidemacgames.com and have a look at the many other titles available for mac that are awesome, such as neverwinter nights, jedi academy, halo, Rainbow 6 3, Age of Mythology and Tony Hawks 4.

I personally own an xbox and fo most of my gaming on it (eg jedi academy and halo), but I still play BG II, Civ 3 and MOH:AA on mac and they run really well on my G4 Imac 700mhz.

We missed out on counterstrike, but there are good alternative like MOH & SOFII. Also games are starting to come out much more quickly for mac than they used to.

The best gaming publishers are www.aspyr.com and www.macplay.com, so be sure to check out their sites also.

Also check out the gameranger community - www.gameranger.com - it is quite popular and you can get a game there pretty much 24x7, and its a dedicated mac gaming community (and its free).

Thanks, I've been searching for something like game ranger for awhile now. And yea, I for one of the few here I guess that does support the game publishers, so I buy the games. I just don't believe in piracy.

Ming

[Johnny_B]

Originally posted by Xidius:
There are veeery few games I would spend a dollar on. (With or without pirating) Therefore the games I pirate are no loss to the developer. Merely a gain to me.

- Xidius

Totally true. The games that where maybe before was alot better than mostly all today. I remember games like StarCraft, great fun, required little hardware and it was a kick ass game. The same could be said about Unreal Tournament, you could get it to run on everything (I ran the demo okay on a Bondi Blue iMac). And while we are at it, Command and Conquer, Duke Nukem (I could run that on a LC ), WarCraft II (I bought that game a year ago actually ), I am sure I forget alot but that are some of the games I know of that are great fun, and require little hardware. There are good optimized games for OS X too, but not enough ! Quake III and Q3 based games are still kick ass games (Return to Castle Wolfenstein), I still don't like Q3 Arena, but the engine is still kick ass. Max Payne is good optimized to.

[Tulkas]

I'd never pirate a game I would be inclined to buy, and I'd not keep it anyway. I'd also never pirate a game by a mac-only publisher.

If companies really want to cut down on piracy do what Macromedia or Ambrosia have done; its a known fact that pirates barely ever manage to pirate them.

I'm not shocked by piracy. It started with music, more and more people with little scruples saw that they could get bigger and better things through the same channels... what can you expect?

[goMac]

Originally posted by Johnny_B:
I remember games like StarCraft, great fun, required little hardware and it was a kick ass game.

Dude... What era are you from.

I remember Starcraft only ran well at around 200 mhz. Ran great on my parents brand-spanking-new-yet-expensive 6500/250 but ran like crap on my 6100/60. Warcraft II ran like a dream on that however compared to Quadra 605, which had very slow load times.

[redJag]

Originally posted by Tulkas:
If companies really want to cut down on piracy do what Macromedia or Ambrosia have done; its a known fact that pirates barely ever manage to pirate them.

Uh, what? What exactly do you think they do and who knows this "fact" that their software is rarely pirated? I'm just curious because I know it isn't true.

disclaimer: I don't have any games on my mac at all (although I have a few I've purchased for it), it's too slow at 733 Mhz.

[Luca Rescigno]

I have pirated some Mac games, and bought others. When I think about it, I actually have bought a lot of games. Warcraft 3, Frozen Throne, EV: Nova, Deimos Rising, and Fallout 2. There are a few others that I pirated. Of course, if I had bought them I would have been VERY pissed because none of the ones I've pirated run at all well on my Mac (not surprising, it's a dual 450 with a Radeon). So I ditched them. I doubt I did a lot of damage to the game industry by downloading and then removing the games I didn't feel were worth buying.

Of course, I almost always play games on my GameCube rather than my Mac, and I am proud to say I haven't pirated a single GameCube game

PS. I always buy games from Ambrosia Software if I like them. I've bought Escape Velocity, Mars Rising, Ares, Deimos Rising, and EV: Nova from them. That's over $100 I spent on SHAREWARE games, and the original EV didn't even have any restrictions for use without a license (other than a popup at the beginning). Blizzard got some money from me, but I wasn't happy because Warcraft III runs like crap on my computer, and on any other Mac I've tried.

I think Blizzard and Ambrosia both have good strategies for keeping people honest, though. Ambrosia has the shareware system, which lets you try an almost fully functional version of the game for a certain period of time. Their prices are reasonable ($20-$30) and they have some great message boards where you can interact with employees. They are definitely receptive to their customers' needs. And that's why I've always bought license codes for their games, even if I could have easily pirated them - I would have actually felt bad about doing it, unlike some companies. Although I'm mad at Blizzard for doing such an awful job of making Warcraft III run well on Macs, I still think their system of slowing piracy is good - you need a serial number to install the game and play online, and the numbers are checked whenever you go on Battle.net, so if you want online multiplayer, you HAVE to buy the game to get a unique serial number. Same applies to Starcraft.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
I doubt I did a lot of damage to the game industry by downloading and then removing the games I didn't feel were worth buying.

Ohhh but you DID do a lot of damage. Without demos and by manipulating the hardware requirements to get the lower-range crowd, game companies could have suckered you into buying a game that plays like crap. They would be more than happy to take your money...of course, this isn't considered illegal either so...

[Horsepoo!!!]

Anyways...this whole thread is a rehash of last months thread. The article on Ars is a take on a 2 month old article. We've been through it already:

1. They're using Halo as some kind of indicator that all Mac games get pirated. There are no facts that other games are as pirated as Halo.
2. Copy-protections such as requiring a CD to be inserted does not prevent pirating.
3. Nobody knows whether the people that pirated Halo weren't trying take it for a spin to determine how well it would run to then purchase it...for all we know, the people that pirated those copies (apparently equal to actual sales) could have been those same people that actually bought Halo afterwards. Nobody knows for sure so nothing can be concluded.

I almost didn't bother buying Halo...but I felt so sorry for the Mac game companies that I bought it. But it's still a lack-luster port of a game that doesn't interest me much at all. Worst 70 canadian dollars I've spent in a long time.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
They're using Halo as some kind of indicator that all Mac games get pirated. There are no facts that other games are as pirated as Halo.

I've been watching Jedi Academy on a popular BT tracker. Two things are notable:

1. The number of downloads on the tracker went up noticeably the day after the demo was released - from ~60 simultaneous to ~80 simultaneous.

2. In 2 months, the number of successful downloads attributed to the one tracker is almost equal to the number of sold copies. It was within 10% when I stopped counting.

[phillryu]

Does anyone know what to do if my Starcraft CD is scratched It freezes on install! I wanna play brood war so badly!

[redJag]

Borrow a friend's CD and just use your CD key to install it.

[Graymalkin]

I end up buying far more games for my GBA:SP and GameCube than I do for my Powerbook but when there is a Mac game I want I always buy it instead of pirate it. It would have been simple for me to pick up both Neverwinter Nights and Jedi Knight off some P2P network. I was much happier spending the money on the games because it tells publishers people will buy games released for the Mac. Every copy of JK2 or NWN is a vote in favor of further game development for the platform.

I attribute the fact Halo was so widely pirated is due to two factors. The first was how poorly it runs on many systems. UT2003's original release I think spoiled the attitudes of many Mac users due to its initially horrible performance. The patches have since made the game extremely playable. Halo was even more of a resource fiend. The second factor was Microsoft buying Bungie and killing Halo for the Mac. It was running well several years ago on 500MHz PowerMacs. Now it can barely run on 1GHz PowerMacs, let alone all the Macs floating about with processors clocked below 900MHz. I think some people decided to pirate the game simply to snub Microsoft.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by phillryu:
Does anyone know what to do if my Starcraft CD is scratched

Maybe Rob will pipe in if I'm wrong, but I believe if you contact Blizzard, they will replace the CD.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
I've been watching Jedi Academy on a popular BT tracker. Two things are notable:

1. The number of downloads on the tracker went up noticeably the day after the demo was released - from ~60 simultaneous to ~80 simultaneous.

2. In 2 months, the number of successful downloads attributed to the one tracker is almost equal to the number of sold copies. It was within 10% when I stopped counting.

Hmmm...I didn't realize so many people were BitTorrent-savvy.

It kinda is a cruel world...and there's really not much you can do about it. Telling people to stop pirating won't work one bit. It has to be enforced.

Blizzard currently has the best system. People can still pirate Diablo II or Warcraft III, but what good does that do when the real meat of the game is played on the internet with other people. Nobody will pirate WoW.

Putting games on DVDs would be a temporary solution also. Not many have DVD burners, not many can download a full DVD...publishers just have to find creative ways to prevent people from extracting just the game files and packaging it into a smaller image to burn...so people could only make a 4 gig image (or whatever the size of a DVD is.) 'course, if they can start filling DVDs up completely with game-relevant stuff only (instead of preview and trailers of other games, etc.) then it gets much harder to pirate.

[busket68]

I download my games, try them, and if I like them, I buy them. The problem as I see is that most macs have **** video cards, and CANT PLAY THE NEWEST GAMES VERY WELL. Sure, the top of the line G5 probably does, but the rest of the lineup sucks it up.

- Ca$h

[Zoc]

There's something else about the Mac market for games that I haven't seen mentioned, but that I always notice when I see Mac games in the store: Mac games never, ever, go on sale. This is what holds me back from buying many Mac games. Even a game like NOLF, which is several years old, is still full price in every store I've seen it in (around a dozen Mac stores in Toronto and Tokyo). That's 70 dollars CDN, 5950 yen. The PC version? Ten dollars in Canada, 500 yen in Tokyo.

Can I honestly tell you what I did? I bought the PC version and then downloaded the Mac port. I know it was sh*tty of me, and I'm wracked with guilt, but I just couldn't stomach paying the Mac tax in such a brutally unfair way. I may still end paying for the game, just because it was so great, and I know the porting house is a different company from the original developer (although when I think of the job MacPlay did with the NOLF2 port I lean the other way...).

I guess I don't understand the PC or Mac gaming markets too well, but all I know is that when I owned a PC, I bought games far more frequently, because I knew that if I waited a few months I could invariably get them for half-price or less. Gaming is a low priority for me. NOLF was an exception in that it became the better part of my life for a month. Most games I play off and on for a little while and then abandon without finishing, although that's not to say I didn't like them. They provided a solid ten or twenty dollars' worth of entertainment.

In short: it seems like Mac publishers are missing out on the lower end of the market. How many full-price copies of three-year old games can they selling? Wouldn't they rather sell five copies for twenty dollars than one for fifty?

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Zoc:
In short: it seems like Mac publishers are missing out on the lower end of the market. How many full-price copies of three-year old games can they selling? Wouldn't they rather sell five copies for twenty dollars than one for fifty?

This is largely controlled by the publisher. I know Aspyr tends to drop prices on their Mac games with regularity.

Edit: OK, not entirely true. What typically happens is the publisher will notify retailers that the "suggested retail price" has dropped. Retailers almost always follow suit as it means they can move more inventory for titles for which sales have slowed. However, retailers are under no obligation (that I'm aware) to drop the price.

[MacTraderboy]

As a single dad, I just can't afford to pay $40+ dollars for any video game. I either buy it when it gets under $20 used or a friend gives me there copy when they are done playing it.

There is such a HUGE market for PC games. Their are enough kids and teenagers that will waste $45 on the new version of whatever the day it comes out. The average Mac user is smarter and a professional that doesn't have time to play games, much less one that expensive.

I think the marketing is hurting Mac Game developers more than piracy. I go to my Apple Store or Microcenter and the shelf is always full of the high dollar games. The $20 games are the ones they only have a copy or two left. I asked the guy at Microcenter about this the other day and he said it is just because they sell more of the $19.95 games. That they may only sell a few copies of Halo or The Sims a week but the moment they mark any game down to $19.95 they can't keep it in stock.

[joe]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
They would be more than happy to take your money...of course, this isn't considered illegal either so...

Exactly! Shrink Wrap license agreements were made legal a long time ago and are standard on all commercial software. Once you open it, you bought it regardless of what's inside. That nasty bit of legislation has caused me to get burned on more than one occasion. Of course that anti-consumer POS licensing scheme is almost always overlooked in favor of preaching about the evils of "piracy." If I sound a little jaded I'm not entirely unsympathetic either. But it's time developers quit holding downloads over our heads and take a page from Apple's ITMS instead. Success means giving consumers the features WE want to purchase. That's how every other successful business operates. And in my book that means a fully optimized (using SMP when dual cpus are present), fully installable, no hassle, user-friendly game! It's my $50 after all. But with recent events I'm not willing to part with it as easily as in the past........joe

[i am yujin]

Originally posted by Johnny_B:
I rarly pirate any games for Mac, because there are no good games for Mac. It's been very long since Deus Ex and Unreal Tournament ! I've bought Blizzards games, which are great, but they didn't go a good enough job porting WarCraft III to mac. The game is still very slow, even on good macs. And it took forever to get Diablo II to work good on Mac OS X, and it's still slow to be such an old game.

[MilkmanDan]

I'll agree with several other people who have posted so far and say that I download games, but mostly for testing. I'm in college, and I hate spending money on games that don't work, or completely suck. My money is valuable (although I am at 'work' in the library and posting this...) and I'd rather spend my money on WC3 then say Myth III (which sucked and was buggy). I know I'm breaking the law, and feel bad about it (I often cry myself to sleep at night thinking of all the starving software developers out there I'm pushing into poverty) but quite frankly I want a quality product, not some really nasty port of a game that came out three years ago for the PC and only runs half as good on my Mac as it does on the X-Box or Gamecube version they released a long time before they did for my macintosh. Whooo. Yeah. So sad.

Oh a friend of mine once made this statement about bootleging software. He said that "how is it a loss to a company if I was never going to buy it in the first place? Am I really going to pay $1000 for Adobe CS? No. So my bootleg isn't hurting their sale, because it never would have happened." I'm inclined to agree with him most of the time, but then again I did pay for a copy of Synergy and BettterHTML Export in the last month, so I do support those porducts that I use.

Oh, lastly, HALO requiring CDs. Yeah, well, my room-mate just burned a CD or used a disk image, or found a no CD crack. Blah on Microsoft.

[Tulkas]

Originally posted by redJag:
Uh, what? What exactly do you think they do and who knows this "fact" that their software is rarely pirated? I'm just curious because I know it isn't true.

disclaimer: I don't have any games on my mac at all (although I have a few I've purchased for it), it's too slow at 733 Mhz.

Lets just say I know.

Macromedia's software is known as the hardest to pirate because of their registration system. EV Nova is also known as tough. I wouldn't think more than 100 copies have been cracked.

[Vash]

Macromedia's software is not hard to pirate at all.....*cough*

[lenox]

Had Bungie never been bought by Microsoft, Halo wouldn't be the terribly-performing port-of-a-port that it is now. Of course, in the general market, it'd be more of a "niche" game...but in the mac market, which is what we're discussing I guess...we'd each have bought a copy of Halo. I remember buying basically everything Bungie had to sell, including buying the entire marathon trilogy twice (the second time was to get that cool trilogy pack). Things are a bit different now.

I think mac gamers these days are a lot more jaded than your average pc gamer. We are used to being disappointed by games released for the platform in one way or another. It's either nobody's or everybody's fault. I'm not trying to defend piracy, but on the other hand I do not think it's the catalyst that's destroying the mac gaming market. Perhaps it's an indicator of how crappy the market is, but that's all.

On my PC, if some hot new title has just come out, I know there's probably a demo for it to snag. Once I do that, I'm very confident the game will run and perform decently (even though this PC is somewhat old). On the mac, whenever a port of a PC game is announced, I wonder if it will even run at all stably, and if so, will it perform well? Please note that I am not blaming the porters, who do a great job at bringing these big-name titles to mac, one bit; I think it has more to do with the original coders of the game not really considering the mac platform, not to mention the aging G4 architecture.

I think mac gamers prefer to not being treated like second-class citizens when it comes to gaming, and of course they talk with their dollars. This is why Bungie did well, this is why Ambrosia and the like do well today. I'm not suggesting that we just settle with mac-only games and things like that...what I think would be cool if the actual PC game developers considered macs from the get-go, and perhaps hired some mac game programming/porting talent to help them as the game develops.

Then again, I might not have a clue what I am talking about. Would anybody with some porting experience like to comment on the general state of the code when they get it, if there's any consideration for future porters, etc?

[ce242]

Well with the advent of online gaming, and the widespread of broadband, its will soon get to the point where you cant play a game without a valid CD key, and the game will have to be played online.

This may sound a little way off, but in real terms, this will happen in the next five years, which will effectively stamp out piracy. What do you think?

ce242

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by ce242:
Well with the advent of online gaming, and the widespread of broadband, its will soon get to the point where you cant play a game without a valid CD key, and the game will have to be played online.

This may sound a little way off, but in real terms, this will happen in the next five years, which will effectively stamp out piracy. What do you think?

ce242

Very true.

With networked Key Authentication, Piracy will drop quite a bit on Multiplayer games.

Seems to work great for Quake3/ID and Blizzard.

-Owl

[sandsl]

Of the pirated games that I've downloaded, not one has run acceptably on my machine and thus I wouldn't have bought it. If I had have bought one of these games I would have returned it. So game developers haven't lost any money from me.

As far as I'm concerned problems with mac games/mac game business are as follows:
* Artificially low games requirements
* Large percentage of macs unable to play new games with any degree of acceptbility.
* Lack of innovation - generally each new game seems to be a rehash of something else. I don't believe for a second that new games are being optimised for the mac as well as they could be.
* Missing games and long delays - wheres Max Payne 2?

Obviously some of these issues are unavoidable but hey

Resolutions:
* Release demos BEFORE the actual game.
* Ensure games are available globally on the same time scale.
* Accurately list requirements.
* Bring Max Payne 2 to the mac ( )
* More optimisation for the mac, work with Apple.

If you want my money, give me what I want (Max Payne 2).

[cc_foo]

Hi,

Someone mentioned that the prices of Mac games don't seem to fall even though the game has aged somewhat. This is so true. Especially more so here in Australia. For some games, it's cheaper for me to buy it from the USA, and have it shipped to Australia, than to buy it in Australia.

Broadband is the issue isn't it? Downloading 650MB has stopped becoming the deterrent to piracy it was thought to be. Pirates can download games over Bittorrent in a couple of days (or less) now.

Why not convert over to a "shareware" type model like how we do with games like Deimos Rising, EV Nova, and so on? Just let us download these games from Bittorrent, fool around with it for a while. See if it works well on our machines... then sell us legitimate serial numbers online. Sell a serial number at full price.

Prevent pirated serial numbers from working by releasing constant patches, and through online checks during online gameplay.

i.e. in this way, everyone wins. "Pirates" get instant grafitication by getting their game immediately. People overseas get to buy the game at US$ prices without shipping (broadband already paid for). And companies like Apsyr or MacPlay get the full price for their game. They might even be able to cut down on distribution cost.

As harddisks get cheaper, and broadband pipes get wider, maybe we'll even be buying Adobe Suite CS like this one day.

Any opinions?

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by sandsl:
Of the pirated games that I've downloaded, not one has run acceptably on my machine and thus I wouldn't have bought it.

So have you just gotten lucky and bought games that run fine or have you never encountered a game that runs on your Mac? If the former, why resort to piracy in the first place? If the latter, it's time to sell that bondi blue iMac.

[Bloody Brit]

If people really think that they can pirate because they don't think their macs can run a game, they are well and truly irresponsable.

First and foremost: you should all know the minimum specs are just that. The bare minimum required to get the game running. Minimum specs does NOT mean 30+fps silky smooth gameplay with all the highest GFX. It means it will run. Nothing more. now, recommended specs is what you should go by. If your machine meets the recommended specs, it will run fine. If you are below, you either avoid it, or you buy it ACCEPTING THE RISKS.

Secondly: Another good indication of how the game will run is reviews. You should ALWAYS wait for reviews of games if your machine is not top of the range. Not only do you find out what the performance is like, but you find out more about the game. Certainly enough to make an informed decision on whether you like the game or not. By purchasing without first reading reviews, in my opinion, you are accepting responsability if a) you don't like the game, and b) you can't run the game acceptably.

There are many good sites for reviews such as www.insidemacgames.com and www.macgamer.com .


Third: Reader reviews. These are NOT hard to find. Many sites have posts as to how good games are (check the forums on the aforementioned websites) and these are even better for finding out performance on a machine such as yours.

Fourth: If a demo has been released, then you have a choice to download it to test the game first. Some developers don't release demos and I can fully understand why, but those that do offer you yet another oppertunity to find out performance on your machine.

Now, following these points, you can get a pretty good feel for how your system will perform. You should also be able to get a good feel for this from experience too. Only YOU know what your machine is capable of, and just how low fps is acceptable to you. Some people find 15fps fine whilst others need >30. Its all personal preference.

It is my feeling, that Game developers work damn hard to bring us entertainment, and tend to get paid very little. Certainly less than they should. Companies that work to develop Mac Only games, or port mac games are in an even worse situation. Piracy really is killing the mac games market. Its ridiculous. All the comments I read every day about how the Mac users are somehow a higher form of life than wintel users make me feel sick, when I know most of those people are stealing work from others. Just like wintel users. A lot of you have said the only reason for pirating Halo is the history with Bungie and Microsoft. This is ridiculous. Microsoft make a rival opperating system. You might not agree with their practises, but so what? Bungie may be part of Microsoft, but its still the Bungie we all know and love. Frankly, I find mac users hatred of all things microsoft stupid. Its a company. They make products. And yes, they are doing better than apple. That isn't Microsofts fault, thats poor management on Apples part, and poor marketing through the early years. THAT is what caused apples pathetic market share. And to all Zealots: Microsoft did NOT steal all apples ideas. Apple and Microsoft BOTH stole the ideas form the PARC division of Xerox. This is FACT. Make sure if you reply about this, your replys are also based on fact.

There are a few honest people who do purchase all their games, but we are a dying breed. Remember Apples moto? its 'Think Different'. Well, its about time Mac users started thinking different from the standard wintel crowd, and tried to be more honest and open. Piracy is a crime, and I only wish software developers had the same ability as those who run actual shops, that being getting the police involved.


Anyway...I guess what I am trying to say is there is no excuse for piracy whatsoever. If you want to play a game, you buy it. If you aren't sure if you can play it or not, then either upgrade your Mac or risk it. And if you DO buy a game, you should accept full responsability for researching to ensure the game will run adaquatly on your machine. If you made a mistake, then learn from it. If you pirate, you are risking guys (like Brad's) jobs.

To finish: remember Macs are NOT and most likely never will be gaming machines. They have NEVER been marketed as such. If you want a true gaming machine, then buy a console or a wintel machine. If you want to work with Apples wonderful operating system then buy a Mac. If you get a Mac and it can play good games, it should be seen as a bonus and you should all stop complaining.

[lenox]

Excellent first flame, err....post, Bloody Brit

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Bloody Brit:
...but its still the Bungie we all know and love.

Is it really?

In theory, everything you said is true. But reality is different.

[Bloody Brit]

Flame? That wasn't anywhere near a flame. I merely pointed out that pirates have no excuses. If someone broke into your house and stole your TV because they didn't know whether they liked it enough to buy it or not how would you feel?
Would you be sympathetic or angry?
Is stealing things to find out how good they are a good excuse?

We both know the answer to that.

[Bloody Brit]

and horsepoo: how is reality different?

is piracy bad? yes
is it illegal? yes
should people do illegal things? no
Do game developers deserve to get money for their work? Yes
Do game developers work hard to bring us entertainment? yes
Is what I said about apple true? yes
are macs game machines? no

and as for bungie

is it still bungie? yes
do the same people who worked on mac titles still work for bungie? most of them, yes.
did Halo come out for the mac? yes
has their name changed? no
are they anti-Mac or Pro-Windows/Xbox? no

[alpaca2500]

i don't think there is anything wrong, morally, with downloading a game and testing it out (if there is no demo available). and then, if you like the game, you buy it, and if you don't like it, you delete it. you wouldnt go out and buy a car without test driving it, would you? why should a game be any different? however, downloading a game, and playing it as much as you want, without paying for it, is obviously the wrong thing to do. although, most of the games i've bought, i got them before trying them out, because i pretty much knew i was going to like them. i have downloaded dozens of games and there were very few that held my interest for longer than an hour or two...

[jokell82]

Originally posted by Bloody Brit:
Flame? That wasn't anywhere near a flame. I merely pointed out that pirates have no excuses. If someone broke into your house and stole your TV because they didn't know whether they liked it enough to buy it or not how would you feel?
Would you be sympathetic or angry?
Is stealing things to find out how good they are a good excuse?

We both know the answer to that.

Just so you know, it's not stealing, which is why you can't be arrested for it, only sued. Downloading games is copyright infringement - a civil matter, not a criminal matter.

A proper analogy would be going into a book store and photocopying every page of a book. Your actions do not inhibit any sales (the book is still there waiting to be purchased), and you have not physically taken anything from anyone.

[Forte]

All so very true, Bloody Brit.

It is my feeling, that Game developers work damn hard to bring us entertainment, and tend to get paid very little. Certainly less than they should. Companies that work to develop Mac Only games, or port mac games are in an even worse situation.

That they do. :/ And I agree on the issue of Mac-only/Mac-porting developers, too.

Piracy really is killing the mac games market. Its ridiculous. All the comments I read every day about how the Mac users are somehow a higher form of life than wintel users make me feel sick, when I know most of those people are stealing work from others. Just like wintel users.

And then people wonder why some folks get the impression that all Mac users are fanboy-zealots. X_x;;
I love my Mac, but I know that doesn't make stealing ok, though apparently some don't see things this way.

A lot of you have said the only reason for pirating Halo is the history with Bungie and Microsoft. This is ridiculous.

Despite what I think of Microsoft, I'm happy in the knowledge that I bought and paid for my copy of Halo legally from a Mac dealership.

There are a few honest people who do purchase all their games, but we are a dying breed.

*raises hand*

Remember Apples moto? its 'Think Different'. Well, its about time Mac users started thinking different from the standard wintel crowd, and tried to be more honest and open. Piracy is a crime, and I only wish software developers had the same ability as those who run actual shops, that being getting the police involved.

Indeed, indeed. What stuns me is how some people who pirate games online would never dream of walking into a game store, taking a game, and walking out without paying, yet will do the EXACT same thing over the internet.

Anyway...I guess what I am trying to say is there is no excuse for piracy whatsoever. If you want to play a game, you buy it. If you aren't sure if you can play it or not, then either upgrade your Mac or risk it. And if you DO buy a game, you should accept full responsability for researching to ensure the game will run adaquatly on your machine. If you made a mistake, then learn from it. If you pirate, you are risking guys (like Brad's) jobs.

I'm sure someone will find some way to argue that their piracy can't possibly hurt the people who they're helping to prevent being paid for their hard work... :/

To finish: remember Macs are NOT and most likely never will be gaming machines. They have NEVER been marketed as such. If you want a true gaming machine, then buy a console or a wintel machine. If you want to work with Apples wonderful operating system then buy a Mac. If you get a Mac and it can play good games, it should be seen as a bonus and you should all stop complaining.

That's how I see it, and it works well.
However, I'd have to point out that, although Macs aren't marketed as gaming machines particularly 'loudly', Apple does have this page - http://www.apple.com/games/gettingstarted/ - that says on it, and I quote, "For the ultimate gaming OS, look no further than Mac OS X.".

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by Forte:
For some reason, that reminds me of this very freaky video, called "Don't Copy That Floppy!" - http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/floppy.php (it's in Windows Media format, BTW).

I remember that video.

My iMac is nearing 4 years old, and can't play any modern games. Even when it was new, I was shocked at the prices.

[cnelson87]

i always find these discussions on piracy interesting and informative. myself, well, i'm still "on the fence" on what is right or wrong, or what needs to be done to make things right for everyone. so, this is just my dis-informed .02.
on one hand, stealing is wrong. duh. but is piracy stealing? well, nothing is physically stolen, and if it's NOT a game you were intending to buy anyway, then who is hurt? the game pirater gets something for nothing, and really should pay for it if he/she actually plays the game and isn't just "demoing" it. but i really don't see how anyone is hurt.
the same is true for music. if i buy a cd and copy it for a friend who otherwise would never buy it, there is no lost sale. but the friend does get something for nothing. if he likes it and continues to listen to it, then he should buy it. but if he doesn't i still don't see how anyone is hurt by it.
and downloading mp3s? forget it! no harm. it's an imperfect copy, no different than taping off the radio.
software, same thing, unless it's used professionally to make $$, then pony up! if used for fun by average joe, then no harm, average joe got something for nothing.
everyone is pissed that people are getting free sh*t. in this modern digital age i think that is just going to be a fact of life. there is NO lost sale if there was never intent to buy. i have to believe that most people are honest and will buy what they actually intended to buy (otherwise the world is chaos and we're all going to hell so what does it matter anyway?). this doesn't mean that you can SAY you never intended to buy and then pirate something. YOU KNOW if you're being honest or not. basically, botton line as i see it, dishonesty is not stealing. let the issue go.

[sandsl]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
So have you just gotten lucky and bought games that run fine or have you never encountered a game that runs on your Mac? If the former, why resort to piracy in the first place? If the latter, it's time to sell that bondi blue iMac.

The only two games I own (for OSX) are Max Payne and Warcraft 3. Max Payne runs wonderfully, warcraft runs ok. For the record I have a Powerbook G4 800MHZ, and of course I would upgrade my machine if I could - you think I like not having a G5?

As for your question on why resort to piracy, thats simple - i'm not paying for a game that runs appallingly on my machine, wait weeks before it even reaches UK scores and then never using it. Its called wasting money

This is obviously a personal issue for you, so your unlikely to have an unbiased opinion. However, for me, morally I don't have a problem with downloading and testing a game before I make a purchasing decision. My previous post wasn't meant to read as list of excuses, since I don't need to justify my actions, I was simply expressing my views.

EDIT: I'm refering to games I want to buy, I'm well aware some games might run ok my mac.