Dated: Written on September 14, 1998
  About: Mac Game Development
 Author: Randall Shaw

DISCLAIMER: This article is not PC (politically correct), so if you get overly offended about that, do not read further... but make sure to come back to read my 2 cents on "The Imprudence of Being Politically Cracked".

We're Mac, we can't stand inadequate products.
Shoddy workmanship can be tolerated on the Wintel PC architecture of computers, but here in the world of Mac, we won't stand for it. We bought Mac because we demand high quality and like not to deal with troublesome software, or poorly developed products, but rather deal with easy to use Mac-like software that is of high quality and bug-free. Let us talk specifically about the Game Software Market (as it is the largest and still growing).

Have you noticed that the majority of game titles on the Mac, are high quality unique software products? And that the few titles that are bombs were either a lacking PC port, or a hack-off of what was already made but done worse? You don't need 20 different flight simulators that are all half done and full of poor interface designs. You don't need 30 versions of Duke Nukem with a different character. The Mac market, and the PC market in games are two completely different fields, and it really pains me to see game companies showing their lack of intelligence when it comes to judging and planning for the two.

A true reason why game companies refuse to make products for Mac, is that they don't want to take the time to make it of the quality we so demand. They are so used to just hacking out some piece of crap that the PC market will gladly accept as "what is supposed to be". Why do you think the PC people put up with Windows? (yes, that was a jab) The PC market has hundreds of redundant games that are a slight variation of some other PC game, just done a their way. Most are of low quality, poor workmanship and low replayability.

But this is OK, because that is what the PC users are used too, so they do not expect anything more (who cares if they are crap, when I have so many crappy titles to choose from!). However, when a really high quality title comes along, one like Myth (made by a Mac first company), or Unreal, they horde it up and scarf it down like they were so hungry for that kind of quality. The PC market "is" hungry for quality, but the game companies are too lazy to give it to them. Due to this fact, the companies just downright refuse to make anything for the Mac market, because we won't even BUY something that is of such low quality.

However, that doesn't seem to be the publicly announced reasoning behind their lack of support. Let us analyze some other issues that the game companies claim to follow.

Market Share? Bah.
I have long wondered why some game companies do not make game titles for the Mac, at first I figured they didn't know how, because the Mac is so much more superior than conventional machines. However, it's been said, that the market share isn't there. This makes me wonder what they are smoking. Where does market share matter when you make a huge profit anyhow? Explain to me how a game company like Bungie Software can be so incredibly profitable, and be doing such good business, when all they did was make a few games for the Mac? I'll tell you why, because what they made was of high quality. The products were designed for Mac. This is before they decided to make Myth: The Fallen Lords, which was a simultaneous Mac/Wintel released title, because they wanted 'all' the money (which is step two(?) in their plot to take over the world).

LucasArts is a good example of what not to do. They decided to pull out of the Mac game making because they were not making as much as they wanted too from their games on the Mac. Now, greed earns no respect in my opinion, but neither does pure stupidity. It can't be because they are greedy, because then they would be making games for every computer type, and not pulling out of a profitable market. It must be that they either are not smart enough to continue making quality products, or they have some new president that is afraid of the Mac. Either way, it makes no sense to not make a game for both Mac and PC.

The games they created when they were making them for the Mac, were "good". They were not block busters to the public, nor where they top ten hits (they were on the PC, but not the Mac). The Indiana Jones series was dated, even though it was a very good game. Dark Forces didn't pan out incredibly, because it lacked many things that the Mac gamer wanted at the time, and it was also competing with Marathon. Their other titles either came out at the wrong time, or were lacking something. I think a game company like LucasArts should not write-off their own bad market planning on the Mac market being a poor field to develop for, but in fact see what 'they' did wrong in the first place. I used to be a big fan of them, till they pulled this ludicrous market decision. I doubt they will ever gain respect again in the Mac community.

I personally loved the games from LucasArts. The Dig, Indiana, Dark Forces, Full Throttle, et al were extremely delightful for what they were and when they finally made it to the Mac. Granted I knew that they were not in the field where the general public would like them, and thus why they did poorly. They just came out at the wrong time, competing with first person shooters, and were very dated in technology (kids today demand the highest possible whizbangs, I swear).

This leads me to the next major issue about Mac development, porting.

Ports, get 'em right.
I must talk about something that really frustrates me about game developers who judge the whole Mac market on a single simple Port. Here is a scenario: Let's take our somewhat ok, doing well PC game we have here. Let's port it over real quick and not bother adding any Mac specific code, dialogs, or easy to use menu commands. Let's also leave in the mouse driver we wrote for the pc, and have it override the Mac mouse driver. Let's use our sound driver to generate all the sound, instead of using the built on sound the Macs all have. Leave the image at VGA double pixels, since Mac users don't really need hires images. Oh and yeah, lets not touch the poor menu systems and backward installer and command line method to make the game run. Then lets stick it in the same box (change the sticker to mac hardware specs) leave the manual the same, and give the game a 16 pixel by 16 pixel icon. Ok, now that it's out, lets judge the whole Mac market on that single title for any future stuff we make.

(holding profanity back) [silence] [chirp chirp]

Westlake Interactive is a great example of what you should do when porting (they recently did MacUnreal). In fact, commission them to port your game for you! They know that Mac gamers don't tolerate poor ports. They redesign the interfaces to be Mac-like, they optimize the code to work great under a Mac, and they fix all sorts of bugs that were there to begin with. Not to mention they get rid of all the horrid PC crud that us Mac users don't like (or we wouldn't be Mac users, yes another jab). In fact, games they port to the Mac are better than the PC counterparts. Which makes us Mac gamers all giddy, because even though we get the title a month or two later, the title is much better than the one on the PC. Plus, we get to run it on a better architecture (but that's an uppercut to the jaw instead of a jab). Logicware is also another great group who know what is going on, and they port programs from one platform to another. They are currently doing some things from Interplay.

Actually, let me digress again. What they do is an incredibly good thing to do. They buy a license to port a software title over to the Mac. They are a group of dedicated Mac programmers (they know how to program for Mac that is), and know what the Mac is and what standards go with it. They then port a game over, making it run great on a Mac, and remove all the bugs and problems that have been reported on the PC side. Then when they release this to the Mac community, it is of high quality and workmanship, in effect, using the PC side as the testing grounds for the game. If it does well, they know it will do well on the Mac. If there are many problems reported, they address them as they are porting it to Mac so those problems do not exist for the Mac users. In the end, the Mac version is of better quality, and a well made piece of software than its PC counterpart. It's sad, but that is what happens. This then makes the PC people upset, because we are getting the same games, just made better. However, if the game companies would have done their job in the first place, then both sides would be happy.

Another thing about ports that is a fairly bad thing to overlook, is porting extremely too late. Anything after three months is too late. Let's look at Diablo. This game was ported how late? Due to this, the technology was dated, the plot was old, the intrigue was gone. Battle.net for Mac gamers was a has been before they ever got there. Did diablo sell well? Not really. Is the game company going to judge the sales on their poor planning to release it in a better time frame? Hell no, that would be admitting they were wrong! The game itself was flawless. The port was of great high quality, and was very slick and had Mac optimizations and allowed Mac-like interface. But the time table was what killed it. It's a shame too, they had so much going for them, yet now they will look at that and not bother making another title for the Mac.

What shouldn't be done, is make something where something else already supercedes it. This is why the port of Doom to the Mac didn't tide over too well. We already had Marathon, which was so far superior to Doom, that there was no reason other than novelty, to play Doom. Do research before porting a game over. You can only profit from it.

Standards, we follow a spec!
The Mac is a finely tuned machine. It has standards that are used, and high quality standard hardware. The Mac comes with built in video, and built in sound, among other built-ins. Developing on the PC requires one to write all the code to handle all sorts of oddball sound cards, and video cards. Not to mention put in a few too many drivers for all sorts of mice and chip sets. To me, a programmer, I find that it would be a larger hassle to make something for the PC, than for the Mac. The Mac has all these built in standards that make everything uniform and easy to use, so that programming is left to just the product itself, and not having to rewrite the Operating System every time a new game is developed.

This should be greatly considered when creating anything for the Mac. We have standards. We expect those standards to be met, or you will be met with a really bad review of your product. Notice how all the great organizations (IMG, MacAddict) that review games for Macs, always mention something about interface, ease of use, and Mac-like quality? It's not just because they are picky, it's because they know the Mac public will not accept something thrown together without any solid groundwork. Many companies have misjudged their products ports lack of success on the Mac. They overlook that they didn't design the game for Mac, but just made it "work on the Mac". In fact, if all the game companies whose products fail, would realize that it takes a different development to make something for the Mac, then they would know why their products fail.

The Future
Macs are not going to die. Not when the Macintosh sports the highest quality of architecture, and ease of use. Mac games are only going to flourish now with the release of the G3. Also the release of a Mac specific/optimized Voodoo2 card (the GameWizard) will help that matter. G3 chips are now being used in Arcade machines because they are fast, cheap and usable. So game companies can't hide behind their falsehoods of "the market isn't there for us to develop for it". They just make themselves sound absurd if they say and think that, hurting themselves more than anyone else.

Games are what is being made most frequently. Utilities, word processors, graphics packages, all end once you make one that does it well. You don't need more than one good word processor, one good spreadsheet, one good 2d graphics programs. So games are where the new software development is. Games get made monthly and have the largest consumption. Parents buy games, kids buy games, parents buy games for their kids, business types buy games, professionals buy games, doctors buy games too!

With the increase in Mac owners, and the increase in demand for better quality, and fun games. It is just an incredibly bad market decision to not develop anything for the Macintosh platform. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by standing with outdated beliefs, let your company grow and become prosperous with the Mac market.

Now, Mac users, go read this on MacPlay's website. MacPlay used to be one of the best sources for quality Mac games. What happened? They shot themselves in the foot. It was so smart of them to back out of a growing market at this time with the release of G3 machines that are very much gaming machines. For them to give up on the Mac market, means that they were never really dedicated to it to begin with. I had supported them from the start. I have most of their games on my shelf (with the exception of a few casino games that are not to my liking).

They, like others, are yet again basing their poor decisions on the Mac market declining. In the last few years, they have been releasing games that were not what the public wanted at the time. Who cares about poker games, or casino type games, when full action and intiguing plot is what the public wants? In addition, they have been reducing their advertising of their products. This right there is a sure killer on sales. If you don't put your product in a mail-order catalog, you will not sell it. Period. Mail-order is the main area of sales for Macintosh software and hardware.

It is jumping on the bandwagon. They think the market is declining, so they pull out, then others think the market is declining, so they pull out. In effect, 'they' are the cause of the market declining, 'not' the public. The public had nothing to do with it. When all the game companies pull out just because they are afraid, doesn't mean that the public is not hungry for the games. The Mac users are hungry for games. If the users have no idea a company is selling a game, then they can't buy it now can they?

What I would do...
I would do what Bungie Software did. I would not ignore the other platform, but instead make a game that runs on both platforms equally in every way, and have it released simultaneously. Not to mention if the game is networkable, I would make the game work cross platform for the networked games, just like Bungie has. They have the right goals and criteria, I just wish every game company would follow them. Bungie started out on just Mac, but they did that to get the money they needed to make a cross platform game, and now that they have, there is no going back now. They see the wealth and power of creating something for both platforms, and would never give it up. I foresee them in the future, making their games work under Linux and BeOS and every other OS [chuckle].

But if that is not the case, then I would become a porting house. I would take a game that is a hit, or going to be a hit on one platform, and port it over to the other platform. When doing this, you make a hit game even better, thus making it an incredible hit on the other platform. Also, you are not having to create something from the ground up (new graphics, plot, story, characters, etc etc). You take all that has already been made, and just make it work for something else with the added improvements for that platform. You make money off of someone elses creation (buying the license to do so, mind you). I see a profitable future in porting houses, if the game companies are too muddled to do it themselves.

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