The Mac is not a gaming machine. Like it or not, the fastest
Athlon will pound a G4 in Quake 3 any day.
Wait a minute. How many times have you heard similar statements?
Probably too many. The truth is, gaming on the Mac is what you make
of it. For me, it has been a pretty good choice.
Why do most Mac users use Macs? Not because they want to be able
to get their hands on the buggy first-day release of that new
program. Not because they want to spend as little as possible up
front. Most Mac users are Mac users because they recognize that the
Mac has a superior interface and better quality than your
run-of-the-mill Windows PC.
This translates directly to gaming. Some Mac users have bowed to
the industry standard and admitted that Windows is a better gaming
platform. Although the Mac may not be the ideal gaming platform for
someone who is happy and impressed with the abilities and interface
of Windows, I would argue that if you prefer the Mac interface
overall, you will prefer Macs for games also, despite the
obvious points against them.
A little less than one year ago, I picked up a Pentium 75, for
very little cost. At that time, my primary Mac was the 68040-based
LC 475. Although I was not
planning to use the P-75 as my main machine, gaming or otherwise (I
was planning to eventually buy a PowerPC-based Mac, which I have
since done), I did expect that I would be enjoying many new games
as the result of gaining Windows 95.
Well, to make a long story short, that P-75 is now serving as a
Linux box in a friend's basement.
About one month after purchasing that P-75, I had a condition
which caused me to spend some time in the hospital. Being the avid
gamer that I am, I planned to bring a computer from home to pass
the hours. Despite the fact that if I had taken the P-75, I would
have had literally hundreds of new games to discover, and plenty of
time to discover them, I brought the Mac. I brought the Mac, even
though I had by that time discovered and played and replayed just
about every game worth playing that would run on a 68040.
Why?
As I was saying before, it's the interface. After the luxury of
playing games on a Mac for years, that P-75 running Windows did not
feel natural. Admittedly, some of this feeling came from my not
using Windows 95 regularly, but in the same sense that we Mac users
love the Mac's interface, the games just did not feel quite "right"
on the PC. A good game is a good game, but it can be made into a
great one by capturing the feel of the Mac. In my opinion, this is
one factor which has made Civilization II such a strong seller on
the Mac as well as the PC.
Some game developers have been wondering why their recent Mac
ports are not selling nearly as well as their PC counterparts.
Consider Caesar III. I recently bought this game, and have no
complaints yet about its game play. However, if you only saw the
monitor (and the monitor was not Apple-branded), you would have no
reason to think that the game was running on a Mac instead of a
Windows machine.
It seems that Mac users have some extra standards for games to
pass, namely, is the game Mac-like? This makes quite a bit of
sense. If Mac gamers cared only about game play and not other
aspects of the game, there would be no reason for them not to just
go out and buy PCs. To use a tired car analogy, if all you cared
about was getting there fast, you would just drop the biggest
engine you could find into your old beater, and when you felt the
need, you would upgrade other components, like the wheels, the
transmission, the exhaust system, whatever. Parts would not be hard
to find, and would be quite inexpensive. However, if you had been
used to driving a nice but not especially sporty Lexus, you would
not be thrilled at moving to a customized Chevy Citation for your
high-speed needs. It is the same with Mac gamers. Once you have
gotten used to the more refined OS, you will often be willing to
make some sacrifices to stay with it.
I'm glad to say that I do not look at using a Mac as my primary
gaming machine as a sacrifice at all. I consider gaming on Windows
to be the sacrifice, because I have less fun when gaming on
Windows. Admittedly, we do not get as many games as our
Windows-using friends. However, especially with Apple's recent
strong financial report, this is changing. Also, a few dedicated
Mac developers have been consistently turning out some of the best
games available ever since Apple's darkest hour. My big hope is
that the big game developers would realize that by porting their
games to the Mac, they are doing the hard part. It is a shame to
see a good port fail to meet expectations because someone has
forgotten to give it a Mac-familiar interface.
Few people would argue that Macs have more games available, or
more gaming-oriented video cards. But is the hardware all it takes
to make a good gaming platform? Absolutely not. I would have been
perfectly happy with that P-75 if it could run the Mac OS. However,
it can't. And, although it is an inconvenience, I am much happier
waiting a few months longer for games, not getting some of them at
all, and paying more for that new video card which still may not
give me quite as many frames per second, if that's what it's going
to take to game on the Mac OS.
Limited selection? Define limited. I have gotten enough new
games recently to last me several months (at least), assuming a few
of them are good.
