Poll: Are RPGs/regular video games "too good" for Macs? (MacBooks in particular?)

[Mr Wednesday]

What makes me laugh were those "I'm a PC/And I'm a Mac" ads we had. Apple banged on and on about "fun stuff", which is pretty much an out and out lie, unless your description of fun is digital solitaire.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

yeah apple isn't very good for games, they got the blizzard ones and that's about it

this video accurately describes it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo4BpgfWiBE

tho with osx there are some open source rpg's out there that have osx ports.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Go to Apple.com and try to find which game you can play. If I remember there's a list with some good titles.

 

[Copter400]

You could go with the Penny Arcade game. It's pure win.

 

[tenkerasu]

I would prefer not to pay for it. Note to shatnershaman: My point here is, why have fantastic graphics and amazing processing power...and not have games? I got the Mac because I was so fed up with my other laptop (which got stolen, I might add, but who in their RIGHT MIND would steal a TANGENT. Ugh, honestly, guys, go look those up, they are miserable. And of course I got one.) and because my roommate had one and wouldn't stop raving about it. I was, of course, skeptical, but I got one, and here I am, wondering why they didn't make games for it. Thanks to Random argument man. I will check that out ASAP.

 

[Jordan Deam]

I used Boot Camp to install Vista on my Mac laptop. Basically just did it for Steam. It's a bit of a pain to have to restart my computer every time I want to play a game, but it probably does wonders for my productivity

 

[Alex_P]

Why don't they make more Mac games?

Pretty simple: DirectX.

Microsoft's DirectX has a lot of warts but it's a powerful graphics-and-the-kitchen-sink API for game development. The only thing comparable on non-Windows PCs is... OpenGL. Which is pretty decent but a bit hard to work with and really hasn't evolved nearly as much as it should've over the past ten years. There's a bunch of cool open-source libraries for game development out there but they're not widely used and most can't really keep up with the cutting edge.

Most big fancy commercial games are developed for DirectX. If you want to play games on your computer, you've gotta pay the ransom for DirectX; that means buying a copy of Windows. Or you can get a free (Wine) or non-free (Cedega) knock-off and hope it's compatible enough for what you need.

If Apple wants more big fancy commercial-grade games on their platform they've gotta sink a lot more money into building in the infrastructure to support them.

-- Alex

 

[Iori Branford]

Why don't they make more Mac games?

Pretty simple: DirectX.

And that's not all.

What I'm going to express next is just my opinion, but an opinion derived from experience: Apple has no real corporate interest in the gaming community and does not see computer games as a path to success or a better image for Apple. That's not to say that some parts of Apple don't enjoy games and their promotion....But the reality is that Apple has struggled for a long time to avoid the perception that Macs are toys, and so their principle emphasis is on science, small business, education, and the creative arts. All very grownup stuff.
...
It doesn't take long to find a litany of negative comments on the Internet about how Apple's most affordable consumer systems are just not up to serious gaming. Rather than complain, this should be taken as an outward sign of Apple's most serious branding intentions:

Yes, games are fun, and we love many of them, but this is not the most significant message we want to deliver as a company.
...
[And] amongst many more senior managers, including Steve himself, I suspect there is some lingering concern about the essence of the game market. Computer games, as we've come to know them, are mostly (not always) about aggressive behavior, conflict, battle, wars of power, domination, and sometimes, in the worst cases, some very unwelcome social behavior. To put it bluntly, death and destruction.
...
Games are a part of life, learning, and growing. Some computer games have terrific redeeming value, and many do not. Action movies and games permeate our culture, and in some ways, they just can't be ignored in our day-to-day lives. But that doesn't mean that Apple's management believes that considerable emphasis needs to be placed on this market when there are so many other more important things for people to do with their lives and their computers.

 

[tenkerasu]

The problem I have with this thing is that it's written by a person who was born and raised LONG before video games came about, and therefore he (and I'm sure many other people from that era and from before the sixties) don't honestly know the good and bad about video games - and they're not all about destruction! Personally, I like Painkiller for the XBOX - but only because it's a time waster, and not because it's bloody and gory. As a matter of fact, that game is horrible graphics-wise and otherwise, and there is a reason why there's a note on it saying MATURE.

Apple is getting itself into a really bad situation here by saying that Macs "don't have time or money" to make them into gaming computers. The reality is, it's losing a good chunk of it's consumers by doing this - and I don't care what people say about getting the Boot Camp for it: THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF GETTING A MAC. It just annoys me that half of you are either strictly for me on this one or strictly against me. The latter group bashes people that have Macs because you are so proud of your PCs.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

The problem I have with this thing is that it's written by a person who was born and raised LONG before video games came about, and therefore he (and I'm sure many other people from that era and from before the sixties) don't honestly know the good and bad about video games

yeah cause last time i checked Nolan Bushnell, Will Wright, Trip Hawkins, Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto all have no clue about games and how good they are, btw they were all born before the 60s

the point of getting a mac is NOT to play games, they are well known to be non-game friendly, so using boot camp is a way to play games, that is basically your only choice

 

[Alex_P]

Apple is getting itself into a really bad situation here by saying that Macs "don't have time or money" to make them into gaming computers. The reality is, it's losing a good chunk of it's consumers by doing this - and I don't care what people say about getting the Boot Camp for it: THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF GETTING A MAC. It just annoys me that half of you are either strictly for me on this one or strictly against me. The latter group bashes people that have Macs because you are so proud of your PCs.

That's the realistic answer. I'm sorry you don't like it.

I don't like the idea of shelling out $100 just for the privilege of dual-booting to the absolute piece of crap that is Vista, either, but it really is the only way to seriously play the newest and hottest computer games (Wine is a passable solution if you're somewhat technically proficient and know that the particular game you like can run on it).

Although, really, given how buggy and DRM-ridden modern video games have become, I'd be trying to isolate them from everything else on my computer anyway.

-- Alex

 

[Woe Is You]

Nihilist is a DOS game, right? You can run that in DOSBox (which you can get on your Mac). It needs a bit of wizardry to get it running on that, though.

Apple is getting itself into a really bad situation here by saying that Macs "don't have time or money" to make them into gaming computers. The reality is, it's losing a good chunk of it's consumers by doing this - and I don't care what people say about getting the Boot Camp for it: THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF GETTING A MAC. It just annoys me that half of you are either strictly for me on this one or strictly against me. The latter group bashes people that have Macs because you are so proud of your PCs.

One might argue that the point of getting a Mac is not to play games on it.

You'd first have to convince developers that there's a big market in Mac game development. For example, is your roommate a gamer? Does your roommate pine for PC games on the Mac? Most people I know who game AND have Macs rarely are interested in Windows games in my experience. They have their Wiis, 360s and PS3s for that. Considering that a lot of game devs have been moving OUT of the PC gaming pool, I'm not really seeing shops doing more Mac games soon. Even after that we'd have a myriad of issues like tools.

And frankly, I'm not really seeing how "Apple is getting itself into a really bad situation" here at all. Their marketshare is getting larget and larger. Once it's large enough, the developers will follow. That's how it goes.

For the record, I haven't seen the last point being made at all. Merely the point that if you want to play games Windows games, the best option is to use Windows for it. And since installing Windows is possible on a MacBook through Boot Camp, it's your best option. With some obscure titles, your only option.

EDIT: Woah, the above posts hit before I managed to finish my post. They basically say the same thing much better than I did.

 

[tenkerasu]

Big thanks to everyone on this, believe me. And my roommate LOVES her Mac - and she desperately wants PC games for it. We'd go to this place by our college that had games and DVDs and stuff uber cheap, and she'd get a bunch of PC games and try to play them on her Mac. Some worked, some didn't. I will see if I can get MacDOS or whatever that is...so long as it's under a hundred bucks.