Feral Interactive CEO David Stephen explains why he came up with his new Feral Legends line of games, what criteria he looks for in that series, and how he's avoiding the dreaded "budget" tag.

There's an old curse, purported to be Chinese in origin: "May you live in interesting times." For senior executives at MMORPG developer NCsoft, it was an interesting holiday season indeed: As the company was preparing to release the Mac version of its MMO City of Heroes, it was slapped with a lawsuit by Worlds.com. Unfortunately, trying to get to the bottom of the lawsuit's merits is much like trying to figure out the true origins of that curse, but M. Scott Boone, associate professor of law at Appalachian School of Law, helped me sort it out.

Conventional wisdom says that a recession doesn't hurt the entertainment world as hard as other sectors, but recent events have confirmed that the steep drop in consumer spending has finally caught up with the videogame industry. So what does that bode for 2009 when it comes to Mac, iPod and iPhone gaming?

When Ambrosia Software released Aquaria last month, it marked the publisher's 36th entertainment release, including iPhone versions of existing games and titles that were updated to run in Mac OS X. Join us for a look at the company's history, its future, and "el Presidente" Andrew Welch's thoughts on Mac and iPhone game development.

Gaming on the Mac remains moribund, with some prolific publishers scaling back their efforts to concentrate more on console and Windows games, but TransGaming has seen success with its Cider portability engine, which has enabled several game releases in recent months. Earlier this year, TransGaming launched GameTree Online, a digital delivery service that could also help spark growth in the Mac gaming market.