[Mooga2]

I am inclined to believe it is the style of games being ported. I'm from the 8-bit Nintendo generation that sunk way too many hours into Mario, then graduated to Sega and Sonic the Hedgehog. I have never had much fun with Halo, Marathon, or the third-party shooter games that overwhelmingly get ported to the Macintosh market.

The last enjoyable games I can remember are the Legend of Kyrandia, an old-school adventure game. And, Madden for OS9. If they ported Madden 2005 for OSX -- I know they would have at least one customer waiting to purchase it.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by sandsl:
THowever, for me, morally I don't have a problem with downloading and testing a game before I make a purchasing decision.

According to you, every game you've bought runs great, and you've never bought a game that runs poorly. (Max Payne didn't even have a demo for the Mac, so I guess you didn't test it first?)

Furthermore, if every game you've pirated runs poorly, then why do you even continue? It makes no sense.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by cnelson87:
if it's NOT a game you were intending to buy anyway, then who is hurt?

You post your credit card number, name, address and CCV number from the back of the card. I promise I won't use it. No one will get hurt and, hey, you'll still have it.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Mooga2:
The last enjoyable games I can remember are the Legend of Kyrandia, an old-school adventure game. And, Madden for OS9.

Did you ever try Escape from Monkey Island?

[Kitsune]

Game makers need to wake up and wonder why people pirate Mac games. Here are some

* You buy Madden 2000 and there are serious bugs in it that they don't bother fixing. Also don't bother porting later versions. No wondeer Mac Sport Games sell bad, we get 1 every 5 years and then that's the end of the series. I have invested in a Playstation 2 now for my sports games, guess what I will spend my money on.

* The company sells out to MS and then fails to release the product for 3-4 years later. Why pay top $$ for an old game?

* The Sims Expansion packs cost a fortune, for the same amount of money you can get 1 expansion pack for Mac, or the entire series on PC.

* poor range. How long can we play yet another shoot em up or golf game without dying of boredom.

On the positive side I agree with the concept of not buying anyway so not great loss. I don't have any games I pirated that I play often or would have bought. I have 4 original copies of the Marathon series however (love that game) and a ton of others. I try to support the Mac Gaming market, but it's so hard with the prices we must pay.

[moonmonkey]

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.

Just because you haven't figured out to do it doesn't mean other people haven't.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Kitsune:
Also don't bother porting later versions.

So one reason you pirate Mac games is because...later Madden titles didn't come to the Mac? Hm.

The Sims Expansion packs cost a fortune, for the same amount of money you can get 1 expansion pack for Mac, or the entire series on PC.

A quick check on outpost.com shows the following:

Sims Makin' Magic Mac and PC: $29.99
Sims Unleashed Mac and PC: $29.99

If $30 is a fortune, then I don't know what to tell you. Now my math isn't the greatest, but it seems to me that if the Mac and PC expansion packs for those 2 cost the same, EA would have to give you money for you to be able to afford the entire series on the PC for the same price as one Mac expansion pack. And if EA is giving out money, let us know so we can get a piece of the action.

How long can we play yet another shoot em up or golf game without dying of boredom.

And another reason you pirate Mac games is because...they're not the ones you want to play? Hm.

[lenox]

I don't agree with pirating games, but I also don't agree with being falsely satisfied with third-class games.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
Did you ever try Escape from Monkey Island?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally posted by Kitsune:
* The company sells out to MS and then fails to release the product for 3-4 years later. Why pay top $$ for an old game?

This argument about Halo I just don't understand at all. Do you honestly think that, had Bungie released Halo three years earlier than it did, it would have been the same game? They didn't incorporate any advances in those three years? Top of the line Macs three years ago would have been able to play it in its current state just fine? Give me a break. It's just as much a "new game" as is the nth interation of every sports game that gets released for the PC so quickly by cannibalizing the previous engine.

[emark]

I have a MP 800 quicksilver, recently upgraded w/nvidia gf4 ti. guess what, I couldn't find/don't know ANYONE who owns the game, couldn't pop it in my machine and figure it out. Reader reviews based on playability of other machines don't mean squat. Minimum requirements, as said earlier, don't mean a whole lot.

The demo for UT04 has run excellently. I completed Halo on the xbox. I would like to play it again. I quit my job to return to Uni for a grad degree and can't upgrade my machine to run one game...My machine is incredibly responsive in the OS, and productivity apps.

Doesn't it seem odd that there still isn't a demo of Halo? Yet the same company pre-released a demo of UT04? I downloaded Halo, saw how bad it gasped for air on my machine, and deleted it. I was lookikng for a reason to BUY. I am looking for a reason to support mac gaming....Halo in it's current state isn't one of them.

MacSoft list a 933 MHz Mac as te minimum req. for UT 04. They make no mention of how dual processors can effect it in their marketing materials, though we all know from reading around that it can offload sound and other small tasks to the 2nd processor...that said, without the demo, i'd likely not have ordered it, owning a dual 800 QS.

I'm no more a pirate for trying the game that way then if a friend lent me his CD...I would well have preferred to do it that way, but it wasn't possible. I suspect that the majority of people who engaged in downloading didn't follow that path, and they are playing still. I think that sucks...the arguments of well, I play it a little, or I don't like it but play it don't fly...
I'd say anyone who plays it at all after the first 20-30 minutes of checking it out, trying different settings to see how it runs is full of crap...and I expect fully to be lambasted for downloading the damn thing, but I assure you I'm not playing it.

I also assure you I often travel 60-65 on a 55 mph road, yet consider myself a very safe driver...

If they can get the performance up that I can see on MY machine (get a demo out), I'd be happy to fork over the cash...until then, the market's changed, and simply turning out a title w/ marketing hype and a big name doesn't cut it...and if the Halo hulabaloo has taught me anything it's that.

The biggest buz surrounding Halo hasn't been how cool it is to play, it's a bunch of BS rehash over and over arguments about piracy.

Just for the record, since beginning gaming a few months ago, I have bought Ghost Recon, UT03, and pre-ordered UT04...tried 4 times to buy Quake 3 and keep getting backordered/out of stock from idiots that showed stock on web site so I'm stuck with an OS 9 demo....on another note, how Freaking stupid is it to not just print more copies of something people still want/play....I'm not buying some used/open **** with #'s already in use off ebay....dumb business people in this mac gaming market...

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by emark:
I downloaded Halo, saw how bad it gasped for air on my machine, and deleted it.

Your point about wanting a Halo demo is fair, but setting that aside for the moment, I also have a DP/800 QuickSilver, albeit with a GeForce 3 instead of a GeForce 4.

Halo performs very well on my Mac, certainly above what I would call the minimum baseline of playability. I can't crank the settings up to max on everything (that would be an unreasonable expectation given the stated minimum requirements) but it's perfectly fine with the defaults. I can maintain a roughly 30fps average on my setup with those. I think you're over-exaggerating your claim of how unplayable it is.

on another note, how Freaking stupid is it to not just print more copies of something people still want/play

Because it was released in 1999, Quake 3's sales long ago flatlined, and another manufacturing run would likely involve thousands of units - you can't just print them as needed. For it to be worthwhile, they'd have to sell enough of that batch to turn a small profit. Odds are that they've projected from their past sales (and a present-day cost that's much less than before) that there's not enough demand to make doing one last print run economically sensible. Sucks, but that's the way it goes.

[Mooga2]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
Did you ever try Escape from Monkey Island?

Yes I did, that was a very good game.

I don't know if any game developers are listening - but if you are and you show loyalty to a series, macintosh gaming will be much more successful. Users need to be able to depend on the series to be on the shelves. Madden, for instance, was developed with great hype for one year and subsequently dropped. I would have purchased every update from 2000-2005, but once hooked to the game, I had to go elsewhere to play it.

The Kyrandia series (book one) was a great game in the mid-90's, but the second book wasn't developed for macintosh. When the developers released the third book for macintosh - I can remember being a scrawny teenager and thinking it was the dumbest business move because none of the macintosh users were up-to-date on the series. I certainly didn't buy the third book of the series.

I think everyone can see my point... So, until next time, I have my macintosh for design and programming, NES and Genesis emulators for when I want to play nostalgic games... and a PS2 for keeping up with Madden.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Mooga2:
I don't know if any game developers are listening - but if you are and you show loyalty to a series, macintosh gaming will be much more successful.

The trick is that the first game in the series needs to sell well enough to justify continuing. Sales of a series don't typically increase as the series continues, so success of the first is key. If you look at Aspyr's lineup, you can see that we're committed to several at the moment. As a side note, I don't believe Aspyr has ever done a game and not published an expansion pack released for that game.

[sandsl]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
According to you, every game you've bought runs great, and you've never bought a game that runs poorly. (Max Payne didn't even have a demo for the Mac, so I guess you didn't test it first?)

Furthermore, if every game you've pirated runs poorly, then why do you even continue? It makes no sense.

Who said I am continuing to pirate games? I gave up pirating games because they run crap on my machine, not because I'm against people downloading and testing games before they purchase.

Max Payne was a xmas gift

[Mooga2]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
The trick is that the first game in the series needs to sell well enough to justify continuing. Sales of a series don't typically increase as the series continues, so success of the first is key. If you look at Aspyr's lineup, you can see that we're committed to several at the moment. As a side note, I don't believe Aspyr has ever done a game and not published an expansion pack released for that game.

You're right. I have checked out the current Aspyr lineup and you have committed yourselves to several titles, including Tony Hawk, The Sims, and Tomb Raider.

For the sake of my own argument, I would consider the following:

- Priority number one, bring back Madden. It's one of the best-selling titles of all time, and it's a sad state when the macintosh platform lacks a venerable football title. An article in Wired Magazine stated that football accounts for more sales than any other sporting games. Bring it back, and macintosh gaming will be taken more seriously.

- The resurgence of new/alternative styled sporting games are immensely popular. Talk with EA about bringing one of their new 'EA Sports Big' games to the macintosh. SSX and NBA Street were both immensely popular titles, with NFL Street becoming a hot brand in and of itself. Tony Hawk is a great title in this area, and I think you can broaden your scope with one of these.

- Need of a macintosh platform game with mass appeal. There is a need for a non-violent game such as Jak & Daxter (v. 1), Mario, or Sonic. Fit to the hippy Apple market, mac gamers would thrive for something like Bugdom. Sega has a hard time selling games, but as this is a unfilled niche in the macintosh market, you may be able to talk with them about porting a game for cheaper.

- Violent games. Get a well-recognized title like Grand Theft Auto.

Finally, stay ahead of the curve and port future versions, not old ones. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was a nice release, but the third version for PS2 was already available by the time the second version was available for macintosh. I don't like buying old games unless they are nostalgic, or really really cheap; I think this goes for everyone else, too.

That's about all. I hope this can help you out. Macintosh pirating is something that will happen regardless, but as more Apple Stores pop up around the states - bringing new buy-worthy titles to their shelves will create more impulse buys.

- Moo!

[Forte]

- Need of a macintosh platform game with mass appeal. There is a need for a non-violent game such as Jak & Daxter (v. 1), Mario, or Sonic. Fit to the hippy Apple market, mac gamers would thrive for something like Bugdom. Sega has a hard time selling games, but as this is a unfilled niche in the macintosh market, you may be able to talk with them about porting a game for cheaper.

I agree, there, though I'd have to say that Sega is a very poor choice. Their games are coded so badly that they were full of bugs and glitches on their own consoles (back when they produced them), and the same goes for the titles they've released on other consoles, and for Windows, too.
To use a recent cross-platform example, Sega's Sonic Adventure was originally released on their Dreamcast console in 1998, and was so buggy that it had to be revised for it's Western release in 1999. That was still buggy, and the game then went through several lesser revisions (the last being in 2001, if memory serves), and it still remained so.
The game was ported to the Nintendo GameCube in 2003, and though they removed some bugs, they added just as many, if not more, in their place.
The Windows version was released a couple of months ago in Japan, and is about to be released in Europe (no US release yet as far as I'm aware), and that has all of the bugs from the GameCube version, which still had bugs from the Dreamcast version, and then added some all-new bugs of it's own!

Why did I mention the above? Well, I read a recent interview with Glenda Adams, about porting Windows games to the Mac, and it was noted that whilst poor code doesn't give *too much* of a performance hit with x86, it will fall flat on a Mac. X_x;;

More on-topic, I do most definitely agree that the Mac needs a universally-appealing "mascot"-type game like Mario or something, though I think something new and original would be better than a port. IMO, the current Mac game line-up seems a bit unbalanced without such a thing available.

[joe]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
Your point about wanting a Halo demo is fair, but setting that aside for the moment, I also have a DP/800 QuickSilver, albeit with a GeForce 3 instead of a GeForce 4. Halo performs very well on my Mac...

I was in a similar situation. I'd been waiting on buying Halo until I had something decent to handle it. Now I do (dual 1.4/R9700). But I won't buy until they fix the bug in their latest upgrade that nags you for the disc! It probably doesn't take full advantage of dual processors either - can't tell without a demo. At least UT2004 looks impressive going by the demo. Let's hope they get the copy protection right (anti-piracy YES, but NOT anti-consumer).

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
Because it was released in 1999, Quake 3's sales long ago flatlined, and another manufacturing run would likely involve thousands of units - you can't just print them as needed.

That's a shame. I bought a lot of games over the years (UnReal, Summoner, ST:EliteForce, etc). But I've got a lot more fun out of Quake3 than any other. Reason: it's still a blast even if I don't actually play the game. It FULLY utilizes the dual 1.4Ghz G4 chips and Radeon 9700 in my Tower. Hard to believe I had it optimized to run 40fps at 800*600 Normal mode on my old iMac DV. Now it's able to do better than that at 2048*1536 with all the details on max. And no nagware either - as if that crap actually belongs in a commercial product.

In case you think this is just a Q3 rant, think again. It's not only the gameplay that makes it so good. It's the fact that it fully takes advantage of my hardware and doesn't nag me every time I want to play. All 3 are features I look for before spending $50 US on a new game. It's time the publishers and developers started being more consumer oriented with their titles. Why? Because you're always going to have a problem with theft - ditto WalMart, KMart, and every other market you compare to (even cars). All this preaching about piracy does is to draw attention away from the product itself. Find out why we're not buying the games - then PLEASE fix it..........joe

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by sandsl:
Who said I am continuing to pirate games?

The only thing I've been trying to figure out is why you started. From everything you've said about every legal game you own (they all run fine), you had no motivation to start. I don't see the leap of logic that takes you from games running fine to a desire to pirate them.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Mooga2:
- Priority number one, bring back Madden. It's one of the best-selling titles of all time, and it's a sad state when the macintosh platform lacks a venerable football title.

It didn't do so hot on the Mac. It eventually broke even, but several years after the fact. For an annual series, that's pretty much suicide. At best, we'd have to stagger the releases every 2-3 years. Also, I haven't seen the article in Wired you reference, but are you certain they were talking about US football and not soccer? I ask because every time the topic of Madden comes up, a bajillion international "quarterbacks" pipe up about how they could care less and want "NHL/NBA/Soccer/Rugby/Australian Rules" instead.

Tony Hawk is a great title in this area, and I think you can broaden your scope with one of these.

I think we all agree here. It's usually just a matter of being able to sign the title, and if that title uses any proprietary libraries for which we can't get the source to do a Mac version. That's what's holding up most of the other EA sports titles at the moment.

Need of a macintosh platform game with mass appeal.

Feral just released Rayman 3. There's been some speculation that most people that buy these games do so on consoles and not on PCs, which is why a lot of these titles no longer appear on the PC either. It's also true that piracy on consoles is dramatically lower then on the Mac or PC, so a lot of times, console developers want nothing to do with computer releases, as they're just a drop in the sales bucket to them at that point.

Get a well-recognized title like Grand Theft Auto.

Believe me, the desire for this one is well known. Being able to land it is another thing entirely.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was a nice release, but the third version for PS2 was already available by the time the second version was available for macintosh.

Tony Hawk 4 was simultaneous for Mac and PC. It lagged behind the console release, but not as much. Usually we try to get these things out as soon as we are able, but it's not going to be possible to ship the Mac versions day-and-date unless the Mac market grows substantially and we can convince the original developers to let us in the door earlier.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by joe:
It FULLY utilizes the dual 1.4Ghz G4 chips and Radeon 9700 in my Tower.

Joe, I know you harp on SMP support like it's the holy grail, but I've got news for you - Q3 doesn't fully utilize your DP chips - it uses about 130% out of 200%. For a ported game to achieve a 30% offload to a second processor, you're looking at slipping the development schedule by roughly 6 months, and even then you can't guarantee that much of an improvement.

Find out why we're not buying the games - then PLEASE fix it

Sales numbers show that Mac Q3 didn't fare any better than similar games with less optimization and copy-protection "nags".

[a2daj]

Originally posted by joe:
I was in a similar situation. I'd been waiting on buying Halo until I had something decent to handle it. Now I do (dual 1.4/R9700). But I won't buy until they fix the bug in their latest upgrade that nags you for the disc! It probably doesn't take full advantage of dual processors either - can't tell without a demo. At least UT2004 looks impressive going by the demo. Let's hope they get the copy protection right (anti-piracy YES, but NOT anti-consumer).

All this preaching about piracy does is to draw attention away from the product itself. Find out why we're not buying the games - then PLEASE fix it..........joe

You might as well avoid UT2K4 then since it will require the DVD

Halo is GPU limited so dual procs wouldn't make much of a difference if any. The original engine wasn't designed around multiple threads so it's not necessarily trivial to add it. The CD requirement is not a big deal. If it had it from the beginning no one would care. But it's easy to get by without hacking any app.

At least all the preaching is getting people to realize that piracy is a big deal and does affect people. It's something the general public doesn't necessarily know much about.

[Forte]

I just read a pretty interesting article (linked on Slashdot) on iDevGames about the issue of piracy, but it's written with a viewpoint I haven't really seen before - that of (in short) "Piracy may help bigger and more well-known developers to stay on top without encouraging them to innovate". The article is here - http://www.idevgames.com/content/view/209/37/ .

[Mooga2]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
It didn't do so hot on the Mac. It eventually broke even, but several years after the fact. For an annual series, that's pretty much suicide. At best, we'd have to stagger the releases every 2-3 years. Also, I haven't seen the article in Wired you reference, but are you certain they were talking about US football and not soccer? I ask because every time the topic of Madden comes up, a bajillion international "quarterbacks" pipe up about how they could care less and want "NHL/NBA/Soccer/Rugby/Australian Rules" instead.

I can see your company's hesitation from a economical standpoint. After breaking even on the first one, why spend money on future versions? You are in the business of making money after all!

A couple of factors: the market has changed. Apple Stores are available across the United States, and make for excellent impulse buys.

Online gaming has grown : not only has it grown, but you need to have the latest version just to play online with your gaming friends. Madden is an annual purchase now, just to keep playing with friends.

Consumer appeal : Madden has consumer appeal. The Wired Magazine article that I mentioned earlier, showed the dominance of Madden in the sports market. Football (american football) accounted for greater sales than any other sports game by some ridiculous margin. Look for the Wired Magazine (between 1-2 years previous) that has Jason Kidd on the cover, his body half rendered. The top story was the continued dominance of EA Sports, it has game sales and breakdowns that would be useful to your company.

Plus, the closest competitor to Madden is Sega (now ESPN Football), whose latest version was outsold to Madden 10-1. Do a google search on press releases, my stats are not exaggerated one iota.

Consumer standpoint :

This lends to my previous argument. If people know that Madden will be available on the Macintosh dependably, they are more likely to purchase it for Mac than a console. Macintosh users are very loyal, I kid you not. When your first Madden version came out, it was a nice surprise to everyone.

Think about the perspective of a buyer. Sales were lost in the fact many gamers went out and purchased it on their PlayStation console. Who knew that Aspyr was making it for macintosh? ... too late, I already purchased my PlayStation version. If Aspyr had stuck with the series just one more year, it would have been a much better indication of game sales for the series.

I really don't mean to harp on you, but I hope it gives you insight into what one consumer thinks of the macintosh gaming. I wish you all the best, and look forward to hopefully seeing Madden back on the macintosh.

[emark]

Brad, good point about the economics of turning out another run of Quake III.

I don't know if they'd consider it, but what if they sold it without fancy paper wrapping, etc.

I just want a legal disc and a usable #. It is hard to imagine that they couldn't turn that out themselves in small quantities, and sell direct w/o a distributor.

It seems like people are still playing it. it is still one of 2 big "benchmark" games, and new add-ons, worlds, maps, mods keep getting released....

It's hard to imagine that they couldn't even run a cd-burner / duplicator and sell the game with a pdf of the instructions for $20 to $30 and not be profitable w/o committing to a big run....

But, it's probably too small a fish to fry.

If they would sub-license it to me, I'd sell them on ebay for $30/each + $5 S+H in brown paper, and send them $10 per copy, and probably make next terms tuition....even If I burned them 1 at a time....hmmmm, who do I call to set that up?

Oh well, back to reality.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Mooga2:
A couple of factors: the market has changed. Apple Stores are available across the United States, and make for excellent impulse buys.

I don't believe we've seen sales of Mac games increase since the advent of Apple stores. However, it's helped show Apple first-hand that games in general are popular on the Mac, which does help us in a different way.

This lends to my previous argument. If people know that Madden will be available on the Macintosh dependably, they are more likely to purchase it for Mac than a console. Macintosh users are very loyal, I kid you not.

As a long-time Mac user myself, I know full well how strong the loyalty is. However, it's still very much up in the air if there are enough loyal Mac gamers out there who will buy Madden on the Mac. Many Mac gamers (and former Mac gamers) will tell you that they prefer playing sports games on the console for many reasons that we as a Mac gaming company can't control - timeliness and fixed system specs chief among them.

When we estimate Mac sales, we typically look at the sales of the game on the PC and then use a percentage of that to get Mac sales. As it happens, sales of Madden (and other EA sports games) on the PC have dropped in recent years, so it seems like a harder case to make for annual Mac releases nowadays.

Who knew that Aspyr was making it for macintosh? ... too late, I already purchased my PlayStation version.

We fight this same battle with most of our other games as well, so it's not a problem exclusive to sports games.

Having said all this, I think it's safe to say that we want sports games on the Mac as bad as you, but we have to be pragmatic about it. There are some technical issues that prevent EA sports games from coming to the Mac - they use a proprietary library that we've never been able to get code for. It could be that this is easier now that we've got programming staff in-house at Aspyr, but last I heard it was still a very sticky issue with EA. If I hear anything I can share, I'll definitely do so.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Forte:
I just read a pretty interesting article (linked on Slashdot) on iDevGames about the issue of piracy, but it's written with a viewpoint I haven't really seen before - that of (in short) "Piracy may help bigger and more well-known developers to stay on top without encouraging them to innovate".

I saw that too. I think it makes sense for PC and console game markets, but I'm skeptical how much of it is applicable to Mac games.

If you say that the "big developers" on the Mac currently do game ports from the PC, then innovation really isn't a factor - it's hard to make a Mac version of, say, Medal of Honor innovative.

In fact, the only innovative developers/publishers on the Mac right now, in terms of Mac-first/Mac-only development are Pangea, Freeverse and Ambrosia. The author of the article, Aaron Fothergill, did ToySight and Airburst, all published by Freeverse.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by emark:
It's hard to imagine that they couldn't even run a cd-burner / duplicator and sell the game with a pdf of the instructions for $20 to $30 and not be profitable w/o committing to a big run....

Yeah, you'd think they'd find some way to milk it more effectively. Once the big PC game publishers get over their fear of online game distribution (which would also mean giving up stuff like Macrovision SafeDisc on the PC in favor of some serial-based or DRM scheme), then stuff like print runs won't matter.

[goMac]

I think overall presentation is a concern. I don't mean to pick on Brad, who has helped me before on AoEII networking problems, but the icon for that game is ugly as sin. I don't see Halo's icon as very nice either.

The one turn off with Mac versions is they seem quite slapped together. I remember when I used to buy Mac games and it actually seemed like someone had gone back and made attention to detail. I'm very turned off on a game that doesn't have things like automatic support for widescreen resolutions (:cough: Jedi Knight II). Even if I do go widescreen via the console the in game movies get all weird.

Another little thing that always bothers me are the installers for games. This just seems to reflect the general mentality. With PC games its obvious someone on the other end was working for the whole experiance and put together a nice installer. Mac installers aren't really buggy, they just reflect the little attention to detail. Blizzard seems to do installers for Mac the best.

I personally usually buy all my games. I have an un-licensed copy of Quake 3 floating around cobbled together from PC data files because I had to play at a LAN party but thats about it. Everything else I own. The reason I bought those games was always either a) I played them at my friend's house on a PC or b) the demo was fun. I don't have time to look on sites for a good game. Blizzard is the only company I'll really buy from without demos.

I bought Halo without a demo and I have a mixed reaction on that. On my brand new Powerbook, it runs rather bad unless I turn down the graphics, but even then they look worse than the XBox version.

I just don't see the same quality we saw in, say, 1997 when there were so few Mac games quality and presentation was important.

Game houses should hire a person just to go through the game and make it nice. I.E. make a nice icon, installer, etc.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by goMac:
I think overall presentation is a concern. I don't mean to pick on Brad, who has helped me before on AoEII networking problems, but the icon for that game is ugly as sin.

Hey, I didn't do the icon, so you're not hurting my feelings. I agree, in fact.

I'm very turned off on a game that doesn't have things like automatic support for widescreen resolutions (:cough: Jedi Knight II). Even if I do go widescreen via the console the in game movies get all weird.

With Quake 3-based games, you can't add widescreen resolutions to the in-game UI or you have a situation where you've got pk3 files which are deemed unpure when attempting to play on a pure server. Otherwise I would have done it rather than waste my time typing the blurb in the readme about it.

Mac installers aren't really buggy, they just reflect the little attention to detail. Blizzard seems to do installers for Mac the best.

Aside from the general bugginess of Stuffit InstallerMaker, can you be more specific?

Game houses should hire a person just to go through the game and make it nice. I.E. make a nice icon, installer, etc.

Aspyr has an icon artist that they use, and I think pretty much all Aspyr games have nice icons, although I'll admit some of them are a bit...out there for my personal taste (I didn't personally care for the trippy Jedi Academy icons).

As for installers, well, that's just a big bag of suck, no doubt about it. Now that we have programmers in-house at Aspyr, one of the projects we're considering is doing an installer in-house to help eliminate some of the issues we've had with third-party installers in the past. As you can probably tell, we tend to favor drag-n-drop installs when possible for partly that reason.

The downside to this is that when you write your own installer instead of licensing one, it represents quite a challenge to get it to do the right thing on all the configs, including the ones you don't support or will never support. So we have to weigh the importance of having our own custom installer and putting some programmers on that for several months vs. the benefit of having those programmers doing another port or two. With Blizzard, they focus on one Mac title a year at most, so they have a lot of time to polish things and get it right. We unfortunately don't have that luxury.

Another thing is that, as you touched on, we don't have one person doing all our installers - it's usually left up to the lead programmer on the title. I'd rather someone else do the installer any day, because I find it an unpleasant and frequently frustrating task. I also wish our readme's were a little more consistent in appearance (and I wish I never had to type another one myself). These are things we're all looking towards unifying now that Glenda is at Aspyr, but it'll probably be a while before we get it all sorted out like we want.

Any specifics on how we can help "polish" our games would be most welcome, so keep 'em coming.

[goMac]

Why not also include demos with the game? I know space is limited (eventually moving to DVD will help), but I remember when I bought LucasArt's games back in the 90's on cd, and they came with all sorts of demos. In addition to playing the game, I spent plenty of time playing the demos. I usually ended up buying half those games because the demos were so entertaining. (These games were also easily playable on older machines, but I know thats not really up to the porting houses).

While I personally don't mind drag and drop installs, it completely confuses the mac converts I know. They're so used to installing, they don't actually understand the concept of dragging it to your hard drive.

Launching the game is also generally confusing for them. Numerous times they will go and re-fire up the installer because they are used to starting the game by opening the cd on Windows (the autostart will typically figure out if the game is installed and automatically start it). Doing something similar on the Mac would be cool. Just have a "Start" application on the CD which will install the game if the user has not yet installed. If the game is installed (just scan for the bundle sig), give the option to launch the game, or re-install. If you're working on an installer in house, this would be really cool. People can still launch from the hard drive, but PC users won't be as confused. Its sort of besides the point, but all the PC users I know make a point of this being an example of "why macs are so hard to use."

This has also been discussed before, but the DirectPlay for Mac issue is really annoying. A lot of people will use their PC for gaming so they can play with the rest of the world. It would have been great to play AoEII with my PC friends. In the end, it was still fine, GameRanger did well for net play, but I still felt left out at LAN parties. I actually always find myself going back to those games that support PC's on LANs like Warcraft III, Halo, Unreal Tournament. I would have loved internet play in Black and White, but alas, as far as I know there was no way to play against PCs. There simply weren't any Mac players ever on.

[Holigen]

Originally posted by someone I forgot who:
This argument about Halo I just don't understand at all. Do you honestly think that, had Bungie released Halo three years earlier than it did, it would have been the same game? They didn't incorporate any advances in those three years? Top of the line Macs three years ago would have been able to play it in its current state just fine? Give me a break. It's just as much a "new game" as is the nth interation of every sports game that gets released for the PC so quickly by cannibalizing the previous engine.

Yes, to the first question. Yes, to the second. Heres why:
After Bungie's new CEO (formally CFO) sold the company to MS, Halo was going to be a launch game for the XBox. The team had a very limited time frame to complete such a port, a few months maybe. The three years were spent on the Xbox and the only huge advance made was online Multiplayer. I dont understand your logic...

Originally posted by Brad:
With Blizzard, they focus on one Mac title a year at most, so they have a lot of time to polish things and get it right. We unfortunately don't have that luxury.

Yes, but this is for an amazing online experience and original game that gives you both the PC and Mac version in the same box. Big difference there bucko.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by goMac:
Why not also include demos with the game?

You've answered that yourself - space. Take a look at most current CD-based games and you'll see they pretty much run right up to the edge. As you guessed, we'll definitely be including demos on DVDs as space permits.

While I personally don't mind drag and drop installs, it completely confuses the mac converts I know.

This is a catch-22. A lot of Mac fanatics view this as a big strength of the Mac, so taking that away wouldn't give a perfect solution. I think it's probably OK to force Windows converts to learn to do things The Mac Way (which happens to be the Easier Way IMHO), as it's a lesson they'll have to learn many times with other Mac software anyway.

This has also been discussed before, but the DirectPlay for Mac issue is really annoying.

This is well-known to just about everyone in the biz, so the nanosecond we can solve this problem, you can bet we will.

[Scotttheking]

Hey Brad, I'm curious, Aspyr is listed as being in Texas, but you are in AZ. How does that work?

The whole pirating thing is interesting.
Personally, I don't pirate. I just stop buying.

For instance, Maxis used to be great. Their Mac versions were done in house, and released in a timely manner. Now they are owned by EA, and their products aren't so great. I really don't buy them anymore, as a result. Not that I have time for games anymore, either.

[- - e r i k - -]

Judging from my own experience I think the problem with games and piracy is largely due to the market segment's economics. I used to pirate games because I couldn't afford it. Now that I'm no longer a student and got a job I buy them instead. Now the problem is I can not find time to play games, especially if they don't instantly capture me. I buy some games for GameCube (and occasionally PS2). However, I rarely buy (and play) games on the mac anymore. I bought Enigmo, EV Nova and WC3+FT and that's about it.

It may be just me, but games don't capture me like they did anymore. I still re-play Sam & Max, the Monkey Island series and Day Of The Tentacle. They are still diamonds even after all these years. Escape from Monkey Island was a let down due to it's dumbed down console-friendly controls and sub-par "everything has to be 3d nowadays"-graphics. Still it was the best game in years.

[Zwilnik]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
I saw that too. I think it makes sense for PC and console game markets, but I'm skeptical how much of it is applicable to Mac games.

If you say that the "big developers" on the Mac currently do game ports from the PC, then innovation really isn't a factor - it's hard to make a Mac version of, say, Medal of Honor innovative.

In fact, the only innovative developers/publishers on the Mac right now, in terms of Mac-first/Mac-only development are Pangea, Freeverse and Ambrosia. The author of the article, Aaron Fothergill, did ToySight and Airburst, all published by Freeverse.

When I wrote the article, the main areas that I saw it had effected on the Mac were the non games apps like Word, Photoshop etc. where it doesn't matter how good or how much cheaper the opposition is, people still find it easier to steal the 'standard' than to try another option.

As far as Mac games are concerned, the effect is greatly lessened, as you don't 'need' a particular 1st person shooter app to be standard. Also, it's not in any developers interest to promote a 'free' market to help make a game a standard must have title, the resultant sales numbers and profits would be too small.

However, whenever it's easier to just download the 'big' game of the moment rather than buy any of the others, it will affect the market. Those gamers that are playing a stolen copy of Halo are gamers that aren't buying Halo or any other Mac game. That's why it's in the interests of all the games developers (and in the long run, the games players) to help reduce software theft and develop a Mac specific games market.

[FurionStormrage]

I own mostly PCs and play PC games. I don't own a console and have no real plans on buying one in the future. My first and last purchase of a Mac game was and is Nascar 2003 Racing Season.

No where on the box does it say that the Mac version is incompatible with the PC version. If you guys are even going to bother to port a PC game to the Mac at least allow us to play with our PC buddies. Sure, after buying the game I found the tech support issue listed but it's not on the box.

After this little fiasco I decided to look at C&C Generals, my next target of acquisition on the Mac side. Much to my surprise, I noticed that Mac to PC connectivity is not supported. Not only is the Mac version 6 months behind the PC release, it won't allow me to play with my PC buddies. Do I even dare consider Medal of Honor? It's not listed as being COMPATIBLE, so I must assume that it is not (ya know, that once burned twice shy thing).

Based on this, I have no intention of buying a game from Aspyr. I like Macs, but I'll be d*mned if I am going to spend my hard-earned money to find out that I can't play a ported game with a person who is playing the non-ported version.

The irony of this post is that I wanted to support the Mac gaming community and I would have saved money by finding a pirated copy...

[a2daj]

You seem to not understand a lot of things about Mac ports... If the PC game uses DirectPlay, there's no way for there to be Mac<->PC network compatibility because it's a proprietary Microsoft technology. Even if they don't use DirectPlay there are instances where it's just not possible to get the network code working because of how the PC code works, like in C&C Generals. It's the fault of the PC developers. As far as I can tell it's pretty much 10 times out of 10 the fault of the PC developers when it comes to cross platform network compatibility. Don't blame the Mac publishers for things out of their control. They do their best to support the Mac platform.

All of the Quake 3 based games are Mac<->PC network compatible.

[poulh]

Notice how everyone has bought Warcraft III? Maybe it has to do with logging onto Blizzard.net to play multi-player and that in turns checks your serial number.

Macsoft/Aspyr/Macplay should make a serial checker (I know this is Microsoftish and its not trusting the consumer). People will complain, but tough. These companies are just squeeking out a profit.. and the G4 hardware doesn't measure up to Intel (this is the reason wc3 is slow on my imac 800, not Blizzard's bad port).

Plus if you were forced to buy the game a few more copies would be bought... and then we would have a better chance of seeing the expansion packs.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Hey Brad, I'm curious, Aspyr is listed as being in Texas, but you are in AZ. How does that work?

I work from home.

[FurionStormrage]

Originally posted by a2daj:
You seem to not understand a lot of things about Mac ports... If the PC game uses DirectPlay, there's no way for there to be Mac<->PC network compatibility because it's a proprietary Microsoft technology.

DirectX/DirectPlay = API
TCP/IP = transport layer

Originally posted by a2daj:
Even if they don't use DirectPlay there are instances where it's just not possible to get the network code working because of how the PC code works, like in C&C Generals. It's the fault of the PC developers.

And when you spend money to license porting a project no one asks for help in this regard? Pu leeze...

Originally posted by a2daj:
As far as I can tell it's pretty much 10 times out of 10 the fault of the PC developers when it comes to cross platform network compatibility. Don't blame the Mac publishers for things out of their control. They do their best to support the Mac platform.

Once again, who's porting the game? If you think that I'm going to be willing to pay full price for a game that only connects with the 2% of Mac users who decide to play Mac games then you are delusional. Notice that I had to find out after I bought the game to find out that Nascar 2003 Racing Season was not compatible with the PC version. You can issue whatever excuse you want to, but this information was not presented to the consumer at all on the packaging. That was, and is, entirely Aspyr's fault regardless of what resources may or may not have been spent on the networking.

MacSoft happened to make Master of Orion III completely network compatible simultaneously with its PC release despite the fact that QSI programmed the game with DirectX...

[FurionStormrage]

Originally posted by poulh:
Notice how everyone has bought Warcraft III? Maybe it has to do with logging onto Blizzard.net to play multi-player and that in turns checks your serial number.

I got mine well before I bought a Mac. Blizzard is one of the very few gaming companies that go out of their way to support the Mac and PC platforms in the same box.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by FurionStormrage:
DirectX/DirectPlay = API
TCP/IP = transport layer

That distinction is fairly obvious, but I fail to see how it's relevant. Have you done network programming before?

And when you spend money to license porting a project no one asks for help in this regard?

Often times, a condition to signing a Mac license involves a "no contact" clause, meaning that we can't bother the original developers. That's irrelevant to C&C Generals though, since the problem has to do specifically with how floating point is handled on the Mac vs. the PC at a lower-level than what any of the C&C programmers would be familiar with.

MacSoft happened to make Master of Orion III completely network compatible simultaneously with its PC release despite the fact that QSI programmed the game with DirectX...

DirectX is a collection of gaming APIs: Direct3D, DirectDraw (now combined and called DirectX Graphics), DirectInput, DirectMusic, DirectSound, DirectPlay, DirectSetup and DirectShow. As such, if you use, say, DirectX Graphics or DirectInput, you are under no obligation to use DirectPlay and vice-versa. You can probably see where I'm headed with this...

[FurionStormrage]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
That distinction is fairly obvious, but I fail to see how it's relevant.

The TCP/IP packets are sent with no knowledge that they come from DirectPlay, no? The transport layer != the network code. At least not in any properly programmed piece of software I've ever worked on...

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:

Often times, a condition to signing a Mac license involves a "no contact" clause, meaning that we can't bother the original developers. That's irrelevant to C&C Generals though, since the problem has to do specifically with how floating point is handled on the Mac vs. the PC at a lower-level than what any of the C&C programmers would be familiar with.

Well, don't stop there. Pray tell me how any program gets ported since the Mac and PC are so different?

But guess what? I am not going to buy that game at all now (on the Mac) thanks to it not working with the PC side.

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:

DirectX is a collection of gaming APIs: Direct3D, DirectDraw (now combined and called DirectX Graphics), DirectInput, DirectMusic, DirectSound, DirectPlay, DirectSetup and DirectShow. As such, if you use, say, DirectX Graphics or DirectInput, you are under no obligation to use DirectPlay and vice-versa. You can probably see where I'm headed with this...

Ah, yes, the literal translation of Master of Orion III took place because they claimed to work with DirectX but chose not to... Sure, they may not have used DirectPlay but they certainly used DirectDraw yet MacSoft somehow managed to produce that game despite having to overcome the massive inconvenience of programming for a platform that has no shred of DirectDraw on it. They somehow managed to get all those DirectDraw calls to work with OpenGL. Who woulda thunk it?

[a2daj]

Yes, Aspyr could have put up a warning, but you easily could have asked about network compatibility before buying NASCAR.

And as Brad already alluded to, just because a game uses DirectX components doesn't mean you have to use all the components. Unreal Tournament uses Direct3D but doesn't use DirectPlay.

Oh, and most fast online multiplayer games usually use UDP over TCP/IP.

The developers that worked on the PC version of MoOIII also did the Mac version. PC<->Mac network compatibility was part of the plan so they didn't use DirectPlay. MacSoft just published it.

[FurionStormrage]

Originally posted by a2daj:
Yes, Aspyr could have put up a warning, but you easily could have asked about network compatibility before buying NASCAR.

I paid my $20 and I lost. I won't lose money on my next Aspyr game because I won't buy another Aspyr game. I am not asking for my money back, I am simply stating the obvious. The phrase "Let the buyer beware" springs to mind and I will certainly be more aware of this in the future.

Originally posted by a2daj:

And as Brad already alluded to, just because a game uses DirectX components doesn't mean you have to use all the components. Unreal Tournament uses Direct3D but doesn't use DirectPlay.

It certainly doesn't use Direct3D on the Mac... What part of that is hard to understand?

[a2daj]

Working around Direct3D or DirectDraw is nothing compared to working around DirectPlay. They're completely different. One is for graphics, the other is for networking. In multiplayer games, a PC client or server isn't going to care about what graphics API one of their clients are using. The only thing that matters is that the client can communicate properly. Since there's no Mac version of DirectPlay, a Mac client cannot connect to an appserver which requires DirectPlay to communicate.

There's more to game networking than just UDP and TCP/IP. DirectPlay packets containing bits of information which are not publically known. Mac developers could reverse engineer parts of the API to get a game working but an update from MS or even an update from the game developers could render all that work useless. That's what happened to Alien vs Predator. Burger Bill and Co. spent a significant amount of time reverse engineering one of the versions of DirectPlay for AvP. The publisher at the time had PC<->Mac networking a requirement. So they sat around with packet sniffers and reverse engineered just enough of the API to get AvP working. But an update to DirectX screwed everything over. So, no more PC<->Mac network compatibility.

[a2daj]

Originally posted by FurionStormrage:
I paid my $20 and I lost. I won't lose money on my next Aspyr game because I won't buy another Aspyr game. I am not asking for my money back, I am simply stating the obvious. The phrase "Let the buyer beware" springs to mind and I will certainly be more aware of this in the future.



It certainly doesn't use Direct3D on the Mac... What part of that is hard to understand?

If you want to base a publisher on one game, go ahead and cry about it. But they have several games which are excellent and have PC<->Mac network compatibility.

You really, really don't seem to want to understand what's going on. The Windows version of UT uses Direct3D, What part of that is hard to understand?

[FurionStormrage]

Originally posted by a2daj:
If you want to base a publisher on one game, go ahead and cry about it. But they have several games which are excellent and have PC<->Mac network compatibility.

You really, really don't seem to want to understand what's going on. The Windows version of UT uses Direct3D, What part of that is hard to understand?

'kay, first of all, I program on Windows 2000/XP, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD. It was not, and is not, my intention to argue the merits or lack thereof on programming on one platform or another.

My point is very simple: The primary reasons why Mac games don't get bought is not piracy. It's because the games are late and they don't always talk with the PC version. I was waiting for the Mac version of Generals. Why am I not going to wait any longer? Because, 1) it's 6 months later and I want to play the game and 2) I can't bring it to my friend's house and play it on a LAN. It has nothing to do with my being able to download it or pirate it. It's simply because it won't play with the people I play with.

If you want to sell Mac games release them when the PC version comes out and release games that allow you to play against PC people. Anything less is just a waste of money...

[a2daj]

Sales of Mac games show that people are willing to buy games that are later than the PC counterpart.
I'm surprised that someone that does development on multiple platforms would spout off something along that lines that simultaneous releases are the only way to go. But since it seems that you don't do game development that's understandable. But simultaneously releases for all PC games is impossible. The reasons why should be fairly obvious. Late ports are not a waste of time or money. Games without cross platform network compatibility are also not a waste of time or money. Buying a game that doesn't work at all is a waste of time and money. A game without cross platform networking is not considered broken.