Outtakes from The Current State of Mac Gaming series

In the course of writing my three-part series on Mac gaming I came up with a lot of excess material, which I elected to cut in order to strengthen the individual pieces. But some of that material is worthy of publication, so I have collected the best 'outtakes' from the series and included a brief note explaining why it was cut, in addition to giving context where necessary.

If you missed any of the three articles, you can find them at the links below.

In the Rocky History of Gaming on the Mac I briefly mentioned the impact of Myst on both Mac gaming and gaming as a whole. What I didn't do, though, was offer the following analogy that became evident in looking at the demise of the adventure genre.

There is a curious correlation between the gradual death of the adventure genre and the similarly drawn out fall of the Mac platform. While it certainly could not be linked as causation, neither of these declines would have helped the other. Adventure games have always been popular on the Mac, and back in the early 90s were the leading video game genre -- now a title clearly held by the first-person shooter. Their demise served to expose the barrenness of the Mac gaming landscape, populated by the occasional shareware developer and a handful of porting companies, but little else. To extend the analogy, Bungie was akin to an oasis in the centre of this barren landscape, and companies like Maxis and Blizzard were the tumbleweed flitting across the lifeless ground, providing just enough comfort and hope to keep Mac gamers searching for their hidden Eden. The shareware developers and porting companies were the wandering merchants and caravans, or wayward travellers fighting against the heat and wind and thirst berating them.

This was originally in the discussion from part 1 on the Intel transition. It was cut to keep the narrative flowing, since it was too long to keep as an aside.

The reality is somewhere in the middle. Neither Mac games in general nor porting companies specifically died in the transition to the x86 family. Then again, they haven't exactly excelled in their new surroundings. The Mac as a gaming platform with Intel processors is plagued by the same problems that existed with PowerPC processors. It can only be purchased in standard configurations (except the Mac Pro, which is overkill for most games), with minimal opportunity for hardware customisation and no way to upgrade the graphics card, which is typically an aging mid-range model. And market share -- while increasing -- is still too small to garner serious attention.

These three sentences were part of the introduction to the final installment, but were removed because I just didn't know where I could go from there.

So you can excuse the cynicism that accompanies nearly every major announcement on the platform. Some keep hoping, though, because like the boy who cried wolf they may one day speak the truth. Unfortunately, the believers number too few, and when that day comes their cry may go unheeded…

I wasn't sure this paragraph added anything to the discussion on the future, so it was cut.

There is a possibility that iPhone OS and Mac OS may converge at some point in the next few years. Depending on how Apple handle it, that could make it vastly easier to use an iPhone game as the basis for a Mac game. The magnitude of difference between the two platforms in form and function mean that it will never be as simple as a recompile to shift code from one to the other, but it could potentially come close.

This followed on from the line "Someone has to go first. But who?" (In the final part.) I cut it because I felt it took the "everyone is getting their toes wet" analogy too far. Maybe I was wrong about that, but I feel the article is stronger without it, anyway.

I fear there will be no-one willing to make the first move. This dance has been going on for years, and there is no reason for it to end now. One group will dip their feet in, then run back to the someplace warm and secure. Then another group will do the same thing. Occasionally, two groups may try simultaneously, as occurred with the Halo announcement in 1999 or EA's return to Mac publishing in 2007. So far, though, there has been too little follow-through.

I just couldn't find a place for the rest of these.

Indie just fits with the Mac, long known for its contrarian ideals that were popularised in the "Think Different" ad campaign of late 90s, but were present from the very beginning -- the original Mac tag-line was "a computer for the rest of us." Small and unique games were commonplace on the Mac in those early years, with influential titles including Dark Castle, Balance of Power, Fool's Errand, Spelunx, Myst, Sim City 2000, Marathon, and The Colony.

There were times when shareware, which was the indie business model for years, held the community together. Apple's mid-90s decline saw commercial developers ditch the Mac in droves -- it just wasn't feasible to stay. So it fell to shareware developers to fill the gap, and, remarkably, they did. Many of them are still around today, while others -- coming from the Windows side -- have helped the market grow, even amidst increasing competition and interest from the lucrative iPhone and Xbox Live platforms.

Now the indie movement is blossoming, with thousands of small no-budget game projects in progress around the world. These games -- particularly the more unique and high-quality ones -- are finding a warm and welcome audience (if and) when they arrive on the Mac. Indie games are set to continue to benefit disproportionately from being available on the Mac. With luck, the effect will be reciprocal. The astounding sales data released by some indie developers will drive more of these small independent games to the Mac, and it could soon become the primary development (and initial release) platform for a break-out hit like Braid, World of Goo, or Crayon Physics.

Open-source

Open-source software has made it to the big time in recent years, driven by mainstream acceptance of applications like Firefox and OpenOffice, and increasing public awareness of Linux as an alternative operating system. As a consequence of this -- along with the rise of cheap professional development tools -- there has been a marked rise in the number of open-source game projects. These tend to use either Windows or Linux as the development platform, but offer an up-to-date Mac version that is maintained by a few volunteers.

Thanks to those generous individuals, Mac gamers can enjoy original games like VDrift, Alien Arena, and Yo Frankie!, in addition to numerous remakes and "spiritual successors" like OpenTTD, Freeciv, Widelands, and Freecol, which offer improved graphics and AI over their source material. Other open-source gaming projects target modern hardware compatibility and graphical upgrades for some older games, without going to the trouble of a remake. Aleph One makes the Marathon games playable on new and recent computers. D2X-XL gives gamers the chance to replay Descent 2 natively on modern hardware with enhanced graphics and added features. And TenebraeQuake is a Quake client that offers considerable graphical improvements.

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