Gaming on the Mac Still Sucks

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Originally uploaded by amberdc.

Mac gaming sucks. Period. The end. We all thought it would improve with the switch to intel. and it might, but I am becoming less and less sure of that each day.

Now at MacWorld Peter Cohen suggested that people shouldn't hate on mac gaming so mach in fact. It is a great platform for gaming. Before we begin the meat of the article Cohen wants to assure us that he isn't just a mac zealot saying that Macs are great gaming machines, because he loves Macs. On the contrary he owns each major console except the 360, and he would if he could afford it. Glad we got that out of the way. When I first read the article I thought great maybe I can learn about great gaming experiences I have previously over looked or maybe the intel switch is in fact causing more developers to release on the mac and PC simultaneously.

Unfortunately I haven't. Through out the rest of the article. Cohen goes through and sites examples of games played on the mac ranging from his children's age to himself. Here is what he said about the kids gaming habits on their Macs

"Neopets is a “virtual pet site” that boasts more than 70 million users and more than 160 games, while Gaia Online is more of what we used to call back in the day a “MUD,” or multi-user dungeon. Its creators call it a “virtual space ‘hangout’” that’s rife with other users and non-player characters (or NPCs), some good and some bad. And there’s plenty of games and distractions, including special events. (An alien invasion that culminates around Halloween is always a big hit at the Cohen house.)"

See? His kids can log on to websites with thier macs that allow them to play games! We all know thats a load of crap. Websites with games like Yahoo!, Neo Pets, etc. Are not games made for the Mac instead they are designed to run in a browser. We also know that most games would designed to run in IE and firefox, if they are savy enough the developers might consider Safari but most of the time it is Apple's Safari team that focuses on website standards that allow for game sites to run in Safari. Notice that Cohen never explicitly says what browser his kids are using. As far as kids are concerned they are really Mac gamers. Instead they happen to use Macs to go to game sites, which are designed to run on as many browsers as popular. I guess we could call them browser gamers since that is their platform of choice. On to Mr. Cohen.

Cohen says he likes Blizzards Wolrd of Warcraft, which was created for the Mac since day 1. This is great for Blizzard to do but by no means is it the rule. In fact I see it as the ONLY major game publisher that does this. All the other major studios like Ubisoft and EA hire Mac gaming companies to port their games over to OS X months or sometimes years after the initial release, if we even get them at all. (Half-Life anyone?) Which again instead of being an example of how great a mac is as a gaming platform it is in fact an example that shows how little attention the mac gets in the gaming world.

To conclude the article Cohen completely sides steps and basically ignores the anemic state of Mac gaming, by saying when you combine consoles and Macs you can have a great gaming experience. I would say you could remove Macs from the equation entirely and receive just as satisfying of an experience. In fact if he were to switch his Macs to PCs he would have an even better experience. With games like Half-Life 2, Doom and Neverwinter Nights 2.

To see the issues Cohen has ignored please click here.