Mac gaming

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A popular use of personal computers is the the playing of video games. However, the relatively small market share of the Apple Macintosh platform (under 7% in the US, and under 5% worldwide, since the late 1990s) has led to a unique situation for games on the Macintosh.

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[edit] Porting from Windows

Most of the high-budget games that come to the Macintosh were originally created for the Microsoft Windows operating system. In order to run on the Mac OS, they must be "ported," or translated into code which will compile on the Mac. As modern big-budget games are usually very large and very complex, this porting can be a difficult and expensive task.

[edit] In-house porting

Occasionally, porting is done "in-house;" that is, the Macintosh version of the game is created by the same company that created the original Windows-based game. This is an ideal situation, as it means that those creating the Mac version have direct access to the original programmers in case of any questions or concerns about the code. It also increases the likelihood that the Mac and Windows versions of a game will launch concurrently or near-concurrently, as many of the obstacles inherent in the third-party porting process (described below) are avoided. Another benefit of in-house porting (if it is done simultaneously with game development) is that the company can release hybrid discs, making distribution of the game easier and largely eliminating the shelf space problem.

One company celebrated for doing its own in-house ports (and releasing them at the same time as Windows versions of games) is Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the wildly popular game World of Warcraft. Other popular in-house ported games are Linden Lab's Second Life and Aspyr's Stubbs the Zombie.

[edit] Third party porting

However, most ported Mac games are not done by the original game's creator, but rather by third-party "porting houses" which specialize in bringing games to Macintosh.

If a porting house decides that they wish to bring a Windows game to the Macintosh, they approach the company that is creating (or has created) the Windows game and announce their intentions. The two companies negotiate and work out a licensing deal in which the porting house gains access to the game's original source code, artwork, and so on, and the rights to create and sell a Mac version of the game, in exchange for a licensing fee which may be a flat one-time payment, a percentage of the profits from the Mac game's sale, or both.

The porting house's programmers then begin modifying the source code to adapt it to the Macintosh. This is often a difficult task, as code for games is often highly optimized for the Windows operating system and Intel processors (although the Macintosh's recent switch from PowerPC processors to Intel processors simplifies things somewhat). One example of common work for a porting house is converting graphics instructions targeted for Microsoft's DirectX graphics library to instructions for the OpenGL library; DirectX is favored by most Windows game developers, but is incompatible with the Macintosh.

Due to the time involved in licensing and porting the product, Macintosh versions of games ported by third-party companies are usually released anywhere from three months to more than a year after their Windows-based counterparts.

[edit] The middleware problem

Something that has been hampering the porting of games to the Macintosh is so-called "middleware." These are specially-designed libraries that handle certain aspects of games; for example, the popular Havok physics engine is used by many games to allow objects to realistically react to each other in the game world. This middleware is licensed to the original Windows game creators for inclusion into their games. However, the license the Mac porting house obtains from the game creators usually does not include rights to use whatever middleware the original creators used. The Mac porting company therefore has two options: either approach the middleware companies and work out their own deal to license the code for inclusion in the Mac game, or attempt to work around the middleware by coding and/or licensing an alternative.

Usually, porting companies will choose the former option; however, this is not always feasible or possible. In the case of the aforementioned Havok, Havok's developers refuse to lower their fees for the licensing of the Havok engine in proportion to the Macintosh market share. Licensing the Havok engine for use in a Macintosh product costs exactly the same as the cost for use in a Windows product, even though the Mac product will clearly sell far fewer copies. The Mac porting houses would be unable to receive a worthwhile profit (if any) from the game after paying for Havok's licensing fee, so they have not done so.

In the case of GameSpy, a company that creates code that allows games to connect to servers on the internet for internet-based multiplayer gaming, the company does not license its code to Macintosh developers at all. However, games that use GameSpy have appeared on the Mac. In most cases, their network code is replaced with more Mac-friendly code; however, since only the Mac version of this game uses the code, this means Mac gamers can only play against each other and won't have access to the higher numbers of Windows-using servers and players on the internet. However, in some cases, GameSpy has been reverse-engineered and implemented into the Mac game, so that it is able to network seamlessly with the PC version of the game. Unfortunately, in the case of Havok, its complexity renders reverse-engineering effectively impossible, so as of present no Havok-based games have come to the Macintosh. This means that some very popular games which use the engine, including Half-Life 2 and Far Cry, have not yet been ported to the Macintosh and most likely never will be.

[edit] The effect of Boot Camp & virtualization

In April 2006, Apple released a beta version of Boot Camp, a product which allowed Intel-based Macintoshes to boot Windows XP. Within the next few days, videos and screenshots of Mac computers using Windows to play games not — or not yet — available for Mac OS X, such as Battlefield 2, Half-Life 2, and Rome: Total War, appeared on the Internet.

Now that Mac machines can play Windows games without having to wait for what might be an incomplete Mac port, some have declared the Macintosh game porting industry as moribund. This is perhaps a bit hasty, as Macintosh machines that are Intel-based and thus able to run Boot Camp are still in the minority. Because sales have increased remarkably since Apple moved to an all Intel line-up in August of 2006, it is difficult to estimate how long it will be before the installed base of Intel based Macs surpasses that of PowerPC based machines. Also, using Boot Camp requires one to reboot one's Mac to boot into Windows, then restart again when finished to return to Mac OS X; thus, it's not very convenient for frequent use. Still, it might very well be the case that gamers who acquire these Intel-based Macs will use Boot Camp to run the Windows versions of games exclusively, and never purchase Mac ports of these games when they are released, either because they do not find the convenience of running the game in OS X worth purchasing the game again, or they are no longer interested in the game. If this is the case, porting houses will have to change their business model to survive. However, at present, it does not appear that Boot Camp has had a noticeable destructive impact on the Mac gaming industry.

Windows virtualization software such as Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion are also seen as potential solutions for running Windows software on the Macintosh. In some ways they are better solutions than Boot Camp, as they do not require rebooting the machine and they allow the user to run both the Mac OS and a Windows environment at the same time, but splitting the system's resources across two operating systems means that neither will run as fast as it would alone. To help modern, resource hungry games run in virtualization, VMware Fusion's public beta 2 supports hardware-accelerated 3D graphics [1] up to DirectX 8.1; newer games requiring DirectX 9 are not yet supported. Parallels Desktop for Mac has not yet been optimized for Windows gaming.

[edit] Original Mac games

Although currently most big-name Mac games are ports, this has not always been the case. Perhaps the most popular game which was originally developed for the Macintosh was 1993's Myst, by Cyan. This game defined the graphic adventure genre. After its immense popularity, it was ported to Windows the next year, and it became the best-selling game of its time on both platforms. Cyan's later games were released simultaneously for both platforms with the exception of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, which was Windows-only until a Mac-compatible re-release was released (currently in beta) by GameTap in 2007, with the help of the Cider virtualization software developed in part by TransGaming Technologies.

Another popular Mac game was the Marathon series of first-person shooters. These games were released in the wake of the popular DOOM, which defined the first-person shooter genre, but contained many innovations new or uncommon in similar games from the time, such as weapons with two functions (for example, an assault rifle which could also shoot grenades), and the ability for the player to look and fire up and down, swim through liquids, fight alongside allied characters, and wield two weapons at once (one in each hand). Bungie Studios would port the second in the series, Marathon 2: Durandal, to the Windows platform, where it would meet some success. They also ported their post-Marathon games Myth and Oni to Windows. At the 1999 Macworld Conference & Expo in New York, Bungie showed a demonstration of a new game entitled Halo, to be released for the Mac the next year; however, before this happened, Bungie was purchased by Microsoft. (This move angered many Mac gamers, who accused Bungie of selling out.) Halo was released exclusively for the Xbox video game console in 2001. The Macintosh (and Windows) version of the game would not arrive until late 2003, almost four and a half years after its original announcement at Macworld. (Despite the earlier anger among the Mac gaming community, Halo was a resounding success on the Macintosh.)

Presently, there are many companies both large and small creating original games for the Macintosh; however, following a trend in the industry, these tend to be lower-budget "casual" games with simple graphics that are easy to pick up and play in short bursts, as opposed to high-budget "hardcore" games that are more graphically intensive and require large investments in time to play and master.

[edit] The shelf space problem

One problem afflicting both porting houses and original Mac game developers is that of "shelf space," or how much space a retail store allocates to stocking Mac games. Already, due to its small market share, Macintosh software as a whole will receive very little shelf space in most major computer retail stores, if it gets any at all. Within that space, retailers will usually be reluctant to stock relatively inexpensive games which may or may not sell well instead of high-cost, guaranteed high-selling products such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. Due to this, almost all smaller Mac game companies release their products using a shareware business model, either exclusively or in addition to a more traditional retail "boxed" version. All porting houses and larger game companies have stuck to the traditional model, but the recent rise in the digital download model may lead to some companies eventually releasing games as paid downloads in a model similar to Valve Corporation's Steam service. Virtual Programming was one of the few porting companies to offer commercial games via digital download, although with the launch of Deliver2Mac in early 2006 other companies are beginning to move towards digital distribution. Aside from getting around the shelf space problem, shareware and digital download models also provide a larger percentage of profit to the company, as the wholesaler middleman is avoided and costs (and turnaround times) involved in media replication are eliminated.

[edit] External links

[edit] Notable current porting houses

[edit] Notable current original game developers

[edit] Mac gaming web sites

  • Inside Mac Games features news, reviews and previews of upcoming Mac game hardware and software, as well as active forums.
  • The Game Room is part of Macworld's site and features news, reviews and commentary articles.
  • Macgamefiles.com features game shareware, updates, and demos.
  • Apple Games is Apple's official site for gaming on the Mac.
  • Mac Games Database is packed with info on just about every past and present Mac game ever released.
  • MacGameStore.com sells a wide range of games available both in retail and digital download versions.
  • Deliver2Mac specializes in Mac game digital downloads.
  • iDevGames is a community for original Mac game developers which holds a yearly "OMG Cup" contest recognizing excellence in games created by independent developers.
  • Macologist.org is a site dedicated to ensuring game modifications are compatible on the Macintosh platform. It also includes reviews and game modification downloads.
  • GreenAppleGames.com features downloadable casual games for the Mac.

[edit] Other

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