Jeaz

Hang on, they are hiring a Greek economist?

Hey, very good article. I particularly like the idea of the simplified tournament format. But for it to work, we'd need seeding and that requires a ranking and more consistent tournaments. It's also not healthy that one player, MLG has such big control. Have a world ranking, seed the tournaments with a flat knockout tier system with being best of 5 or even 7 and the quality of the tournaments will get higher.

Considering that more people game on iPads than on say a Playstation 3, it kinda deserves a mention on a gaming site.

@Sooty said:

@Jeaz said:

Well, Mac gaming content is obviously lagging behind Windows. Some will say its because of Direct X or drivers or that Macs cant run games. Neither is very accurate though, it just boils down to money. Traditionally, most gamers own PCs or a console, so that's where the money can be made. Over the last couple of years though, Macs has grown in popularity and so has the gamer community for it. The problem is though, developing big budget games is risky, even for PC so they don't dare to do it for Macs as well. If you look at the indie market, Mac versions are a lot more common. However, don't use Mac App Store as a benchmark, as it's only one of many ways to buy games for Mac, with Steam and GameTreeMac being the most popular alternatives. But, there are still more and more Mac versions of "big" game titles, most recently The Darkness II.

The lack of Direct X is definitely the main factor in my eyes, of course you can relate this to money as Direct X support would make it much easier and cheaper to port over. The App Store is a horrible place for games though, they are so overpriced compared to Steam.

Well, most Direct-X games are portable using WINE or Cider, like Transgaming is doing. So if it just was Direct X, they could all go down that road, or at minimum, we'd see more Mac ports. No, the publishers, and maybe rightfully so, doesn't want to invest in the still relatively uncharted Mac platform.

Well, Mac gaming content is obviously lagging behind Windows. Some will say its because of Direct X or drivers or that Macs cant run games. Neither is very accurate though, it just boils down to money. Traditionally, most gamers own PCs or a console, so that's where the money can be made. Over the last couple of years though, Macs has grown in popularity and so has the gamer community for it. The problem is though, developing big budget games is risky, even for PC so they don't dare to do it for Macs as well. If you look at the indie market, Mac versions are a lot more common. However, don't use Mac App Store as a benchmark, as it's only one of many ways to buy games for Mac, with Steam and GameTreeMac being the most popular alternatives. But, there are still more and more Mac versions of "big" game titles, most recently The Darkness II.

Ehm, there's no Mac version of the first Assassin's Creed game.

Maybe they are going true with that April fools joke, about in game ordering from Pizza Hut :-)

The Fallout IP died with Fallout 2, or maybe tactics. Fallout 3 was a disgrace to the IP, I'm not saying it was a completely terrible game, but it wasn't a Fallout game. Some say New Vegas was better and maybe it was, but I wouldn't support that crap any further so I never gave it a look. The sad part is that there is talent in Bethesda, I mean the TES series holds up really well. But they made Fallout into TES-post apocalyptic and ignored the parts that made the originals so good. I really loved Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2 on my Amiga though.

@Sooty said:

Just install Windows via Boot Camp, then games will run better and you get much more choice in the games you can play.

@Jeaz said:

Psychonauts was recently released as Mac port as well, great game and works even on most MacBooks. Having been a long time Mac users and a gamer, it's quite exciting to see the changes just of the last year or so. With the Mac version of steam and Mac App store, gaming is really coming alive on the Mac. And we of course still have the boot camp, in worst case.

I wouldn't really say gaming is coming alive, the performance on OS X is so bad compared to Windows. I doubt this will change anytime soon either OS X isn't about to add DirectX support. Outside of indie games support for OS X is still poor, and who can blame them? There's no DirectX support, developers are forced to use OpenGL or whatever and for 90% of games that results in terrible performance in comparison.

It's nice that more games support Mac, but ultimately you're stuck playing older games unless you can brute force them with really high end hardware. If you have a mid-range Mac you are sacrificing lots of FPS and will have to lower the settings, even though on Windows the games would run better allowing you to turn the settings up.

My MacBook Air has just been relegated to playing Frozen Synapse every so often, it's tempting to install Windows because then StarCraft II is at least playable (playable meaning 60fps) on medium/high settings, it runs awful on OS X. Then again, I never really play games on laptops anyway.

I doubt you'll get good performance using Windows with an Air anyways. That is probably the biggest difficulty with gaming on Macs - the majority are using laptops and expect them to work as gaming computers.

Yes, Direct X is an advantage for Windows, but OSX itself isn't bad for gaming. You mention Starcraft 2 and I get pretty much the same performance in OSX as I do in Windows. Actually, when I live stream which I do occasionally, it gets really bad in Windows but still ok in OSX.

Also, another problem with Mac games is that they are rarely pure ports. Transgaming is great at bringing games to the Mac, but they aren't real ports and thus running with a bottle around them, slowing performance. Still, games like FIFA12 and Dragon Age 2 runs without any problems on OSX for me.

But with both the Unreal and Source engine fully ported to Macs, plus the similarities between iOS and OSX in programming, we'll see more and more current games coming to Mac.

As a side note and real odd one, I get better performance running League of Legends, using a Parallels Desktop emulated Windows, than I do using Bootcamp. But I blame cruddy boot camp drivers for that.

Psychonauts was recently released as Mac port as well, great game and works even on most MacBooks. Having been a long time Mac users and a gamer, it's quite exciting to see the changes just of the last year or so. With the Mac version of steam and Mac App store, gaming is really coming alive on the Mac. And we of course still have the boot camp, in worst case.