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Playing on Mac...why don't more games do this?

2

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  • grndzrogrndzro Member UncommonPosts: 1,163

    Mac's are not designed for gaming.

    The OS isn't designed for gaming

    The 1 button mouse isn't designed for gaming

    Mac lost any edge in computing as soon as they dropped PPC and RISC instructions.

    I'm sorry you bought a Mac. and no it isn't more reliable. I have never totaled a PC in 20 years. The guts of a mac are the same as a PC except they are outdated and practically non upgradable, and double price.

    you spent 2x the money on a name and 1/2 the functionality.

  • hail2dathiefhail2dathief Member UncommonPosts: 232
    Originally posted by grndzro

    Mac's are not designed for gaming.

    The OS isn't designed for gaming

    The 1 button mouse isn't designed for gaming

    Mac lost any edge in computing as soon as they dropped PPC and RISC instructions.

    I'm sorry you bought a Mac. and no it isn't more reliable. I have never totaled a PC in 20 years. The guts of a mac are the same as a PC except they are outdated and practically non upgradable, and double price.

    you spent 2x the money on a name and 1/2 the functionality.

    Lol, i'm not sorry at all that i bought a great computer from a great company.  I have a PC for gaming and was just stating that it's nice to have a game i like playable on the mac for when i don't want to sit at a desk all night.  I love my macbook pro and will never own a cheap flimsy windows laptop again.  I know what i own is not for gaming, just nice little perk that i enjoy.  Actually, the only reason i own and build a new PC every couple/few yrs is because i'm forced to do so for gaming purposes.  My macbook will resale for more than the price of a brand new windows laptop, macs are notorious for retaining their value, whereas there is no resale value for a windows laptop.

    It all comes down to personal preference and I prefer macs to pc's and Mac OS to Windows, of course i think it's just a fact that Mac OS is better than windows.

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  • ArndushArndush Member Posts: 303
    Originally posted by hail2dathief
    Originally posted by Arndush
    Originally posted by hail2dathief
    Originally posted by Arndush
    Originally posted by hail2dathief

    So besides ESO,WoW, GW2, EVE, and LOTRO (that I can think of off the top of my head) there are no other AAA MMO's that you can play on the Mac.  While I have tried all of those games, I don't really like them all that much, except i did play WoW for a couple years.  It's so nice to be able to play a game i actually like on my 2012 Macbook Pro.  I can run the game on Medium settings and get 30+ FPS and the game runs great and still looks pretty damn good on medium settings.  There's nothing better than laying in bed and playing some ESO while watching TV in the background.  I wish more AAA MMO's would adapt to making their games run on the mac.

     

    I know some will say, well macs aren't made for gaming etc. but mac has actually gotten better with putting much better graphic cards in their machines and they're more capable of playing games these days.

    I'll give you a more practical reason that has less to do with being a hipster, or what is and isn't made for gaming. Price. PCs are already expensive enough. Macs are even more so. Building your own PC is the most economical way to get a top shelf gaming rig that can handle today's games. I can build a kick ass gaming rig that will be one half the price (maybe more) of a comparable Mac.

    I agree %100 but that's not an issue, millions of people have macs o why not cater to a bigger demographic if your game can meet those requirements.  I didn't get my macbook to game at all but if your game can be played on the mac platform, why not do it?  Maybe make a few extra bucks while you're at it. 

    Also, it doesn't cost much to buy a decent rig.  I can go drop a few hundred dollars on a Asus per say, and then just drop some extra RAM and a good video card for about $250 or so more and BAM gaming rig.  Will it be the best gaming rig around? no but it will run most games, especially MMO's on high settings.

    According to Net Applications, as of February 2014, Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8, account for 90% of the OS market. MAC accounts for 7.69%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

    If you are a game developer, and you do an honest cost/benefit analysis, is it really worth your time to focus on 7.69% of the market, or are you going to concentrate on the other 90%?

    I understand that completely but I'm not saying make a game strictly for the mac lol.  Apparently, some AAA companies seem to do it without any issues, so I don't see why more companies can't.  All I am saying is making a cross platform game can't be all that hard, i mean STO just did it lol.

    It's not about programming difficulty. It's about cost/benefit analysis. Some developers may have a low enough cost to be able to justify the small returns that will be generated by having the game on the MAC as well. Or, in the case of ESO, it may simply be a case, where they forecast enough PC sales, that the expenditure to also have a MAC client is small enough that it makes sense just for the goodwill it engenders in the community.

    Not every gaming company can spend the money on second client, regardless of the ease or difficulty of the programming. Some can. This is a business, it all comes down to the bottom line and the cost/benefit analysis of each individual company.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483
    Originally posted by hail2dathief

    I am saying that there are millions of people who own macs so why not appeal to that demographic.

    And there are more than a billion people in India, so why shouldn't every game try to appeal to that demographic, too?

    The only people who matter are those that might buy your product.  Many people with a Mac simply aren't gamers.  That's partly a self-selection issue as wanting to play games is a pretty compelling reason to get Windows; if you just want it for web browsing and e-mail but not games, then Windows doesn't offer any real advantages over a Mac apart from the price tag.

    But there's also a question of the cost of converting it to run on Mac.  If your game is written in Java and you use OpenGL, then you probably do port the game to Mac, as that's nothing worse than write once, debug everywhere.  If you develop a game using Visual Studio and use DirectX for your graphics, sound, and networking, then you're going to have to recode and retest a whole bunch of stuff to port that to Mac.  Maintaining and debugging multiple very different code paths that have to give exactly the same experience to the user is a major nuisance and adds considerably to the cost.

  • BonemaneBonemane Member UncommonPosts: 353
    Originally posted by hail2dathief

    Lets say that you get 6k people to buy your game based on the fact it supports the mac.  You're product is a minimum $60, so at a minimum you are gonna make 360k just on box/digital sales alone.  Now lets say that you retain half those players after the free month.  If you retain 3k players for one pay month that's another 45k.  Now lets say you retain one third of that for a year, you're talking another 180k.  So that's about 600k just to develop the game to be played on a mac.  These are just random numbers obviously but do you think it really would cost a company an extra 600k to develop the game cross platform?  I guess it could if you bring on extra devs that are strictly there to program for mac which is very possible.  I'm not completely sure how a gaming company goes about programming a game for cross platform.

    My numbers could also be low, so you could be talking an extra million in revenue just to cross platform your game.

    Let me know if i'm way off base.

    You're missing a few things. You'd have to bring in a different team of Mac developers (let's say a small team of 10) or pay more to have someone who can program for both Mac & Windows (Its easier to just have an entirely different team). Then, you'd have to bring in a on-site Mac tech support team to support the new Mac developers or contract out a company to do the work whenever something breaks. Oh and don't forget all these people don't just have base pay of what 50-70k each?, but benefits as well which could easily bring it millions of dollars just based on salaries. Plus you have to buy all the the Mac equipment they need to work and test on (application testers at times can have 6 or more machines running). Add on software, development licenses, possible need to have them Mac certified as well and this will easily be a couple million. There's a lot of backend stuff you're missing in your equation like networking equipment or printers they might have to buy that's more compatible with Macs.

    Keep in mind the yearly salaries alone would be well over 600k for a team of 10 people. I haven't even thrown in anything like taxes yet. Also, they have to make a decent profit, just making enough money to cover expenses is not good at all.

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  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,975

    Because we must continue the fight to blot Apple and all of its products from the face of the earth.

    Beginning with gaming is a good start.

    image

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    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

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  • RecklooseReckloose Member UncommonPosts: 39

    I'm not going to bother going into a mac vs windows debate.

    The reason there aren't many MMO's made for mac is a pure numbers game. On one hand, there are ALOT of windows machines out there, and only so many macs. To justify the cost of developing for OSX, means you need a minimum number of users to justify the development costs. With macs being the minority, it is difficult to justify the added development cost.

    Also, just look at the line of macs right now. Most are not really gaming capable, except for the uber high end (at the moment, it's either high end iMac, or high end macbook pro), which further limits the amount of people who would game.

    ESO is going for LOTS of people, so that's how they are justifying the development cost.

    There is also the cheap way to develop for macs, which is to just throw a wrapper around the windows game. LOTRO, STO and Eve all did this. However, I don't think any AAA game would just use a wrapper on initial release for mac support (it just would smack of laziness and not caring about the mac platform). They always wait a few years minimum before doing so.

  • eGumballeGumball Member Posts: 151
    Expensive costs. GW2, WoW and EVE are the giants of the western MMO market and Lotr got Warnerbros. 
  • hg2012hg2012 Member Posts: 69

    Good read here, in short Microsoft are to blame for lack of support for OpenGL leading to a lack of cross platform games being developed leading to a lack of gamers on other operating systems.

    http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483
    Originally posted by hg2012

    Good read here, in short Microsoft are to blame for lack of support for OpenGL leading to a lack of cross platform games being developed leading to a lack of gamers on other operating systems.

    http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

    That's also more than four years old, and a lot can--and has--changed in that time.

    Though in my opinion, the case for using OpenGL is stronger today than it was four years ago.  Having to argue that you can match DirectX functionality by using OpenGL extensions with spotty vendor support is a very weak argument.  Today, the key DirectX 11 stuff is integrated into the core OpenGL standard.

  • DraemosDraemos Member UncommonPosts: 1,521
    Originally posted by hail2dathief
    Originally posted by Arndush
    Originally posted by hail2dathief

    So besides ESO,WoW, GW2, EVE, and LOTRO (that I can think of off the top of my head) there are no other AAA MMO's that you can play on the Mac.  While I have tried all of those games, I don't really like them all that much, except i did play WoW for a couple years.  It's so nice to be able to play a game i actually like on my 2012 Macbook Pro.  I can run the game on Medium settings and get 30+ FPS and the game runs great and still looks pretty damn good on medium settings.  There's nothing better than laying in bed and playing some ESO while watching TV in the background.  I wish more AAA MMO's would adapt to making their games run on the mac.

     

    I know some will say, well macs aren't made for gaming etc. but mac has actually gotten better with putting much better graphic cards in their machines and they're more capable of playing games these days.

    I'll give you a more practical reason that has less to do with being a hipster, or what is and isn't made for gaming. Price. PCs are already expensive enough. Macs are even more so. Building your own PC is the most economical way to get a top shelf gaming rig that can handle today's games. I can build a kick ass gaming rig that will be one half the price (maybe more) of a comparable Mac.

    I agree %100 but that's not an issue, millions of people have macs o why not cater to a bigger demographic if your game can meet those requirements.  I didn't get my macbook to game at all but if your game can be played on the mac platform, why not do it?  Maybe make a few extra bucks while you're at it. 

    Also, it doesn't cost much to buy a decent rig.  I can go drop a few hundred dollars on a Asus per say, and then just drop some extra RAM and a good video card for about $250 or so more and BAM gaming rig.  Will it be the best gaming rig around? no but it will run most games, especially MMO's on high settings.

    Because rebuilding a game to work on Macs isn't free and the money you make off selling to the Mac audience isn't worth the time.

  • HrimnirHrimnir Member RarePosts: 2,415

    Its basic economics/business.

    Its called a cost/benefit analysis.

    According to this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers) MAC only occupies 8% of the desktop/pc market share.

    Why spend an ungodly amount of resources porting to a platform that isnt going to even come close to returning a profit?  Its quite literally pointless.

    If you want to game, get a windows box, end of conversation.

    "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

    - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • Dreamo84Dreamo84 Member UncommonPosts: 3,713
    I think most of it just boils down to only the bigger titles can afford to put the manpower into creating a cross platform game. They have to look at cost to potential profit.

    I think they also look at how likely their game is to run well on the average Mac. TSW for instance eats graphics cards for breakfast. 90% of macs would probably be destroyed by it. But a game like WoW or even ESO and GW2 can probably run on a lot of mid range macs decently. I'm sure they look at the market and the specs to determine the potential customer base.

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  • eliteroelitero Member UncommonPosts: 264

    As Qizz mentioned earlier its the simple fact of DirectX, most companies don't feel like spending extra to emulate it on a Mac.

     

    And for those really talking about hipsters or whatever, maybe there are people that carry that shit as a facebook machine because of the popularity that is Apple now and one feels it is just an accessory, but it is a great developer machine out of the box and any developer can tell you that.

  • Dreamo84Dreamo84 Member UncommonPosts: 3,713
    I will also add it's the same reason most mobile games don't come out for blackberry...

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  • MMOExposedMMOExposed Member RarePosts: 7,400
    Originally posted by Bonemane
    Because Macs are proprietary garbage that don't make gaming machines due to poor hardware and refusal to better their standards. Apple probably charges a ridiculous amount for development licenses on any of their "luxury" machines which pushes a lot of potential developers away. When a Mac with 32GB Ram and 3tb of hdd space cost something like $12,000 when a person can literally build a PC with better specs for less than $700 why bother? Oh and that number isn't fake, a couple months ago my friend who's a Mac fiend showed me his dream PC off the official Mac website. Once he put in the specs it was $12k for a mid-range gaming mac desktop. I lol'd so hard I almost crapped my pants. Funny thing is I had built a monster super computer with 100gb ram, 12+tb hdd space, gps card, wifi, best graphics card on the market, led lights, all the bells and whistles for less then $5k.

    When you can explain the logic about that, you know where to PM me,,,,

    Philosophy of MMO Game Design

  • DatawarlockDatawarlock Member Posts: 338

    Mac or no Mac.... why are people even bothering to argue that ANY laptop is a viable gaming platform? The poor heat dissipation alone pretty much writes them off unless the majority likes the mediocre graphic settings to keep from locking up.

     

    Anyhow, Windows has the majority.

    Thanks to Steam Linux may be viable soon.

    Mac... is a ripped off and thoroughly dumbed down FreeBSD core bastardized with some hacked linux code with a custom Xwindows veneer laid over it that people actually pay money for because they think Apple still makes an operating system of any sort. Even iOS is a modified linux build. If it weren't for my particular choice, I'd pay for a windoze license long before I give Apple any money for a glued together mashup of free software that can't do what either windows or even it's core *nix systems can do very well lol.

  • BonemaneBonemane Member UncommonPosts: 353
    Originally posted by MMOExposed
    Originally posted by Bonemane
    Because Macs are proprietary garbage that don't make gaming machines due to poor hardware and refusal to better their standards. Apple probably charges a ridiculous amount for development licenses on any of their "luxury" machines which pushes a lot of potential developers away. When a Mac with 32GB Ram and 3tb of hdd space cost something like $12,000 when a person can literally build a PC with better specs for less than $700 why bother? Oh and that number isn't fake, a couple months ago my friend who's a Mac fiend showed me his dream PC off the official Mac website. Once he put in the specs it was $12k for a mid-range gaming mac desktop. I lol'd so hard I almost crapped my pants. Funny thing is I had built a monster super computer with 100gb ram, 12+tb hdd space, gps card, wifi, best graphics card on the market, led lights, all the bells and whistles for less then $5k.

    When you can explain the logic about that, you know where to PM me,,,,

    You gotta be more specific. Logic behind what? Apple's ridiculous price gouging and misleading advertising? The reason behind me building that PC? Apple refusing to up their standards in-order to compete? I still chuckle thinking about how Apple has gotten into people's psyche enough to convince them to buy a $12k basic desktop (literally nothing special about it) with parts you can find at BestBuy. For that price I'd be expecting custom everything and it's made out of 24k gold or...the PC I built! 

    If you want to know why they can get away with that stuff its simple. Business 101 talks about the effect marketing can have towards the consumer's psyche. Apple markets itself as this company that provides "premium" devices for the cool crowd, therefore once that gets into the mind of the consumer the "premium" tag allows Apple to charge whatever it wants no matter demand or quality. This is what car makers like Mercedes Benz or Lamborghini do. The people who buy these things feel like they're somehow better than someone else just by buying it when most likely... they're not. It's all marketing and manipulation. This is why you see people who use Apple somehow bypass fact and logic to get their point across that Mac is superior, because the marketing is embedded in their psyche once they establish that connection to it.

    Once hipsters get connected to something that's a red flag. They're the people who go buy a $14 slice of toast because "it has this special organic jam that's nurtured in the Himalayas for 6 months before being sold." Most people just look at them crazy and are like,..." Dude, you just waited in line for 2 hours and paid $14 for a piece of toast."

     

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  • AtrigoAtrigo Member Posts: 44
    I bought this 27" iMac in 2010, still going strong. I do bootcamp SWTOR, but all other MMO's I play have a Mac client or I don't play. I'll be giving ESO some time and money just because they developed a Mac client. The graphics are amazing on this machine and I can set all my graphics settings on high and get perfect performance. my specs, 2.93 I7 chip. 4 Gigs DDR3 Radeon 5750. Runs like a champ. ESO looks stellar and so far has played well for Beta. And my Nostromo and Deathadder work very well with too. 
  • AzureProwerAzurePrower Member UncommonPosts: 1,550
    Seems like this is going on in this thread instead of being about ESO.
  • tom_goretom_gore Member UncommonPosts: 2,001
    Originally posted by Atrigo
    I bought this 27" iMac in 2010, still going strong. I do bootcamp SWTOR, but all other MMO's I play have a Mac client or I don't play. I'll be giving ESO some time and money just because they developed a Mac client. The graphics are amazing on this machine and I can set all my graphics settings on high and get perfect performance. my specs, 2.93 I7 chip. 4 Gigs DDR3 Radeon 5750. Runs like a champ. ESO looks stellar and so far has played well for Beta. And my Nostromo and Deathadder work very well with too. 

    Try going to Cyrodiil with 100 players on the screen.

    Also, 30 FPS is no "perfect performance".

     

    Damn macboys are even more blind than I thought. I guess it's easy when you don't have any reference. Radeon 5750 lol...

  • MikeJezZMikeJezZ Member UncommonPosts: 1,268

    One does not simply buy a Mac for gaming.

     

    Seriously though - If you bought a Mac and expected to play games, you're gonna have a bad time.

  • AtrigoAtrigo Member Posts: 44
    Originally posted by tom_gore
    Originally posted by Atrigo
    I bought this 27" iMac in 2010, still going strong. I do bootcamp SWTOR, but all other MMO's I play have a Mac client or I don't play. I'll be giving ESO some time and money just because they developed a Mac client. The graphics are amazing on this machine and I can set all my graphics settings on high and get perfect performance. my specs, 2.93 I7 chip. 4 Gigs DDR3 Radeon 5750. Runs like a champ. ESO looks stellar and so far has played well for Beta. And my Nostromo and Deathadder work very well with too. 

    Try going to Cyrodiil with 100 players on the screen.

    Also, 30 FPS is no "perfect performance".

     

    Damn macboys are even more blind than I thought. I guess it's easy when you don't have any reference. Radeon 5750 lol...

    thats my point. I have a 4 year old iMac with those specs and hardware and yet I have not found an MMO I can't play. I would say my iMac would out perform a 4 year old PC with the same exact specs. 

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483

    The internal hardware on an iMac or MacBook Pro tends to be mid-range.  The hardware can handle gaming--and does on Windows systems that use exactly the same hardware.  The barrier to gaming on these is software, not hardware.

    The MacBook Air and Mac Mini, on the other hand, and low end hardware as far as performance goes.  You're paying for the form factor if you get those, not for performance.

  • hail2dathiefhail2dathief Member UncommonPosts: 232

    Wow, you guys are taking this way too far lol.  As i have stated several times, i don't have my macbook for gaming, i would never buy any laptop for gaming.  I was merely stating that i can run ESO on my macbook at medium settings and it runs fine.  I enjoy being able to hop of my desktop and then hop on my macbook and chill on the sofa or in bed and continue to play. 

    Also, I asked why AAA MMO's companies don't do this more often.  If you go to he gamelist on here and look at the mac games, there are plenty of smaller games and smaller companies that make game playable on the mac and i guarantee they don't have the money that these AAA companies do.

    Again, not saying macs are gaming machines or that i bought my mac to game on by any means.  Just saying that games can obviously run on a mac and obviously some companies do it.  It's nice to see some companies do it and it's a nice little perk is all.

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