Mac Indie Games

[thewreck]

This thread caught my attention, basically because the indie game studio which i am part of has recently decided to start making games for mac. (the games work on pc too though).

I think I might be able to share some interesting data that we gathered when releasing our first game.

We sent press releases to both Mac and PC sites/magazines and newsfeeds. We sent to the same amount of sites, for both pc and mac, and to sites of about the same 'size'.

About 90% of the mac sites published our story, even big ones. We appeared on the front page on many large sites, right next to news about steve jobs and ipod stories.

Few of the Pc sites published our story. There was a deep silence between us the recipients that was hard to analyze since they didn't answer.  However, a few of them, as i said, published the story, often on the front page of things as well.

Now, here comes the really interesting part:

When looking at the visitor traffic this generated we found a scary pattern.



Each time a mac site had taken up our story, the traffic skyrocketed, whilst every time a pc site had taken it up, nothing happened.

what does this mean? Can't be sure, but it sure opened our eyes about the mac community.

[xander]

It just shows how desperate some of us Mac users are for good games. 

While I get the impression that most Mac users don't buy their computers to play games, I also think that most of them are willing to buy good games when they are released.

xander

[Sfiera]

I for one am looking forward to Starcraft II. But, if it turns out that my current Mac isn't capable of running it, I'm not going to go out and look for a new computer; and if I were a PC user, I wouldn't go out and upgrade my graphics card either. I view it as just too expensive to keep a computer close enough to the edge to make "gaming computers" practical. That's why consoles are big these days.

Alec raises an interesting point about the console-ness of Macs, but it's not enough; IIRC, in the MacBook line, memory ranges from 1 to 4GB and VRAM from 64 to 256MB. You could certainly make a good game by targeting only the lower end, but people are in general going to want graphics to improve with their computers--that's for example why SpiderSoft made Avernum instead of "Exile X".

Obviously Avernum is not up to the standard of graphics in the PC world, but I think any distinction between the preferences of Mac and PC users in that regard may be artificial. In the PC world, latest-and-greatest games get promoted towards the hard-core gamers, and people that care about games (enough to search the indie scene) have the systems to play fancy ones anyway. Games aren't promoted to Mac users as much, so there's not that same bias in what sorts of games the average Mac user hears of. That's whence the proportionally bigger spike thewreck is seeing, and whence the sense of indie-friendliness; you're not at such a disadvantage in getting your voice out.

Of course, with the size of the market, it still probably isn't the best way to make money

[p3ter_st0ry]

Macs rule!!! Nice defense of Macs xander http://www.systemshootouts.com/ is also a good site for price comparisons.
I think Apple should get their own developer page for indie game developers, that would definitely be cool. Oh, and just saying Sfiera, I'm guessing that  most indie developers aren't in the business because it's the best way to make money anyway, just saying. 

I'd definitely like to see some Indie game that are optimized for quad/octo-core macs. That's my next purchase, right there 

[Alec]

Writing games for set hardware is always more fun... you can do the crazy optimizations, and weird little secrets.

Developing for the SNES would have been super rad. Limitations are actually pretty creatively inspiring!

Ah for the days when console hardware was actually crazy different...

(genesis vs. snes, nes vs. master system)

[p3ter_st0ry]

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

[KingAl]

The nice thing about that definition being that it can't be refuted, because no medium is without limitation...

[Alec]

...no medium is without limitation...

...YET.

 

[emphyrio]

The games from grubbygames all have mac versions and are very enjoyable.

[Sartan]

I'm somewhat horrified that no one has mentioned Wolfire yet. David's got some intriguing little works out so far, but look at his devlog to see what he's really capable of.

[Alec]

Lugaru is awesome. 

[KingAl]

But wolves are evil and stupid and annoyng and... Aaaargh!

* KingAl has a mental breakdown

[2disbetter]

Writing for set hardware is just better because you know what your limitations are going to be. You don't have to build in scaling which save A TON of time.

Mac's are great because of the console like design, but at the same time it's the very reason they never took off like PCs.

2d

[Alec]

I agree!

I would like to see Macs become like PC/Consoles hybrids! Why hasn't Apple designed an awesomely user friendly gamepad and built-in game launcher yet?

[xander]

I agree!

I would like to see Macs become like PC/Consoles hybrids! Why hasn't Apple designed an awesomely user friendly gamepad and built-in game launcher yet?

In part, it may be a bit of a legacy issue.  Some 23 years ago, when Macs were first introduced, Jobs was very worried that people would look at the GUI, and think that Mac's were for games, relegating them to the toy category.  I think that Apple has been very slow to realize that a serious machine can also play games.  It may be the kind of thing that happens in the future, I wouldn't hold my breath -- at least not until Jobs is dead and buried.

xander