Happy Endings Todd Stauffer
(tstauffer@webintosh.com)
Macs For Gaming
It's time to stop apologizing for the lack of Mac games.
I recently finished a battle-in-print with a PC gaming columnist over the current state of Apple. In his opinion, it's a lack of quality games that's been the downfall of Apple. In my opinion, it isn't.
I lament the mentality in the PC world that allows innovation to be driven by gaming. I've played the occasional game on my Mac, my PC and my Super Nintendo (for which I own exactly one game Ð every six months or so I'll rent another one from the video store). I'm not someone who sees the point of most games, although I do like many of the Sim-style titles and I enjoy a good WWII fighter simulation. I like to play for an hour, tops, and I like to win easy. I enjoy games against actual people (e.g. SkyFighters for Mac) the most.
I'm more than a little tired of people comparing their computer to mine based on the $2,000 Nintendo concept. Of course, I'm often lambasted for taking that point of view. "$2,000 Nintendo? My computer is much more than a Nintendo," I'm often told.
O.K. A $2,000 Sony PlayStation. And, if you don't believe me, walk into a Best Buy store tonight or tomorrow. Look at the PC games. (Do the same with Mac games if you like.) Now, go to the Sony PlayStation aisle. Look that those games. Notice any similarities?
If you play games on your PC or your Mac, I'm not criticizing you. Obviously, there's no point in buying a PlayStation instead of loading a game or two on your computer. Heck, I get the MacAddict CD, too, and I like to look at the game demos. Your computer can play games right alongside GoLive CyberStudio, Photoshop, Director and Quark, so you might as well take advantage of the games.
What bothers me is when the market starts focusing too much of its innovation efforts on personal computer gaming. Computing is about many things besides gaming, although you might not know it after a visit to CompUSA. Gaming is a welcome diversion from the main productivity objectives, but not an end unto itself.
And that's how systems need to be designed. Apples Game Sprockets package, for instance, is apparently wonderful technology that makes game programming much easier. More power to it. But innovations like QuickTime VR, improvements to HyperCard, OpenDoc-like thinking and user interface advances are more important to the Mac platform, in my opinion. It's a balance, and I'm glad people within Apple champion gaming. But I don't think we need to fret much over the lack of a teeming games market.
Some of this plays into my Macs for Creatives argument (see my August 8 column). Windows and Intel machines tend to be great client computers. You can surf the Web, send and receive e-mail, write papers, access server-based databases and, yes, play tons of games. If they were less prone to crashes and configuration headaches, they'd be great home computers.
Macs, on the other hand, are for creating most of that content that's consumed by Windows folks, and in that world innovation should continue. It already does. You'll notice that the Mac industry has a decided lack of client-oriented PCI expansion cards, for instance. Few low-end accelerator cards exist, and the first 3Dfx card is just now coming out. We have RAVE acceleration technology, and, combined with the Mac OS's inherent graphical superiority Ð is good enough for gaming.
Instead, our upgrades focus on MPEG compression, QuickDraw 3D and incorporating video. Mac OS users spend more time creating QuickTime solutions, Macromedia Director presentations and interactive Web sites. That's where the focus should be.
The coolest game I've ever played was a flight simulator that came along with the operating system on the Silicon Graphics workstation I used when I worked in the scientific computing institute at my alma-mater. But gaming certainly isn't a priority for SGI.
The great irony is that the Mac is the easier computer to set up, troubleshoot and use for games and client-side applications (like your typical home office). And we certainly shouldn't discourage Macs as home computers. But the bottom line is that gaming needs to be secondary on the Mac platform, because the Mac is about creating things, not just experiencing them. With better tools like an improved HyperCard, QuickTime layer and multimedia integration, Macs can maintain their reputation as being great for creating diversions like movies, TV shows and PC games.
Hopefully, we'll continue to get some Mac-only games and ports of WinTel games that are consistently better than their PC siblings. But I'd also like to hear about people creating their own games and programs in HyperCard, amazing feats of automation in AppleScript and more incredible panoramas in QuickTime VR. If we need to, we can always play games with Virtual PC.
Or Sony PlayStation. If you're a serious game nut, I honestly recommend you look into this $150 wonder. Not only does it feature most of the 3D shoot-em-ups and many of the flight sims I've seen for PCs and Macs, but you can play it right there in the living room with friends and family. And you can rent the games from Blockbuster. Who could ask for more?
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