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September 17, 2006

games

Gaming the system, part the first: gaming, or lack thereof, on the Mac

Posted Sep. 17, ’06, 8:07 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Games

ChessThere are points these days when loving gaming and Macs can make you feel like your very soul is being torn apart. It’s to the point where my Macs rarely have more than one or two games on them, and even those are time-wasting games like Tetris and Mastermind. Meanwhile, I’ve built an entirely separate computer as a dedicated gaming box (I don’t do email, web browsing, or word processing on my PC—it just plays games).

Jeff Tunnell is in a similar bind. Only Jeff is a game developer, one of the folks behind Garage Games. In a post to his blog, Make It Big In Games, Jeff laments about Apple’s lack of commitment to gaming:

Apple could change this. Since they control all of the hardware, they could easily add in controller support. Standardized controllers annointed by Apple would quickly become ubiquitous and cheap. Apple could make sure their computers ship with better graphics hardware than the built in GPU of the recent Mac Mini, so developers are assured of a minimum graphics standard that will not go down. Apple has wonderful design and awesome software engineers. They could easily add game download support into iTunes. What is more important, games or podcasts? I love podcasts, but the answer to the question is obvious.

Tunnell’s post is a little on the old side (beginning of August), so the point about downloading games from iTunes predates the iPod games. We’ve said before that any push for gaming on the Mac probably needs to come from Apple, but they don’t look as though they’re about to dive in. Let’s take a look at some reasons why.

John Gruber’s analysis of the Showtime event suggested one reason that we shouldn’t probably hold our breath for games:

As per my comment on Wednesday that Steve Jobs is incapable of feigning enthusiasm for products or features he doesn’t really believe in, I got the impression during the games portion of the Showtime event that Jobs doesn’t like the idea of better games on the iPod. He didn’t say much about them and didn’t give them demo time.
Personally, I’m not sure Jobs like the idea of games period. Tunnell says more or less the same thing in his own post: “Apple has purposely disdained games. Games are not considered a “real” use of computers, while graphics, music, and videos are true art.”

The rationale for this? It reminded me of a comment that I heard in the Macworld Podcast’s dissection of the Showtime event in regards to the iTV. Jason Snell suggested that Steve Jobs simply doesn’t have a TV-centric media consumption like many Americans. I’d say the same is probably true for games; if Steve Jobs doesn’t quite “get” games, then Apple’s not going to spend time on them. That’s why, as Jeff points out, Apple simply hasn’t invested the time into gaming that Microsoft has. Not to suggest that Bill Gates plays games any more than Steve Jobs does, but the business model of Microsoft is not necessarily predicated on what Bill Gates does or doesn’t find interesting; that’s one of their strengths and one of their weaknesses.

For Jobs, it seems as though gaming is a kid-centric affair. See the titles that ship with Macs by default over the years? Nanosaur. Bugdom. Regardless of their value as games, it’s hard to argue that they’re not targeted at a younger age group. But gaming is a market primarily driven by teenagers and young adults and the Mac’s providing little that’s going to appeal to them. And Apple doesn’t have to be the one providing the games, but as the holders of the keys to the holy platform, they do have to provide tools to those who would make the games. And yet, for Apple, the word that Tunnell uses above, “disdains,” is spot on. Look at the game that Apple ships as default part of the OS X operating system: Chess. To my mind, that’s indicative of their entire attitude to gaming.

“Aha!” you might say. “But now Apple’s come up with playing games on the iPod. How does that fit into your little dour theory, eh?” I tell you this: the iPod gaming platform, as it stands now, is just more of the same for Apple. I’ll explain in part the second, so stay tuned.


1 Comments

exnihilo said:

Apple may be able to use this to thier advantage, if they are really going to shun games. They could do another Mac & PC commercial as follows:

The PC guy is dressed in shabby shorts and a dirty t-shirt, with a game controller in his hand. The Mac guy is dressed in a sharp Armani business suit. They introduce themselves. The Mac guy says that he can run the latest business aps like Office, Quickbooks, etc, and then he could talk up his file compatibility. He then tries to send a file to the PC guy, but the PC guy is too busy playing "Unreal" to recieve the file. The PC guys says, "OK OK! HOLD ON! Just one more round!" The Mac guy says, "OK PC, I know you can run a lot of games, and that's great, but we've got work to do... Hey, PC... PC?" The PC guy just ignores the Mac guy. Fade to black.

September 17, 2006 8:33 PM

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