![]() ![]() Nanosaur, Bugdom, Otto Matic, Enigmo and many other hit Mac games have emerged from Pangea over the years, and they keep plugging away, most recently with Enigmo 2. Pangea Software, a company that’s largely built its reputation with Mac gamers by having its titles bundled with Macs for years. No discussion of original Mac game publishers would be complete without a tip of the hat to Publishing original Mac games isn’t their mainstay, but they do have a large Mac following-and more often than not, the games are released simultaneously for Mac, Windows and sometimes Linux. So far, they’ve published a bunch of great Mac games like Marble Blast, Orbz, ThinkTanks, Dark Horizons: Lore and TubeTwist. GarageGames is the archetypal example of the expression “eating your own dog food.” The company makes and licenses multi-platform game engine technology called the “Torque Game Engine” to small developers for as little as $100, and they also publish games made by those licensees. You can buy Freeverse’s games online, too, including really fun titles like Toysight Gold, created by another independent Mac developer called Strange Flavour-just the thing for new iMac or MacBook Pro owners who want to turn their iSight cameras into a game controller-as well as some of the best and most beloved card games released for the Mac, like Burning Monkey Solitaire. I already mentioned a few titles that appeared on the Mac at the same time as they have other platforms, but let’s turn our attention to “independent” Mac game developers-companies that might not command a high profile, but ones that should definitely be on your radar, even if games are only of passing interest to you.įreeverse has, in recent years, also migrated to a business model not unlike the “big guys.” They’ve distributed Mac game conversions published by Virtual Programming, for example, and this year they plan to release a couple of Mac game conversions of their own-Heroes of Might and Magic V and Legion Arena.īut original Mac games remain Freeverse’s mainstay-in fact, they were sponsors of the Original Mac Games (OMG) Cup, a contest to stimulate original Mac game development. And it’s simple: Buy games from original Mac developers. Suffice to say that for now, there’s a practical step you can take to help turn the market around. ![]() There are a lot of reasons why the Mac hasn’t blossomed like other platforms when it comes to gaming, and I’ll be taking a look at some of those reasons in future blog entries and offering some suggestions for change. And secondary development platforms are almost always doomed to failure. Macs are a secondary development platform that’s an afterthought, if it’s a thought at all, in the minds of mainstream game developers. It’s been up for less than a week, and the iPhone App Store has already killed Top 40 radio.The problem with conversions, which still make up the bulk of the games sold for the Mac every year, is they relegate the Mac to the status of a “me too” platform. ![]() ![]() Since the store launched, iPhone users have streamed 3 million tracks through Pandora, and Westergren says they’re listening for an average of nearly an hour a day. Apple takes a cut of every app sold, for example, and imposes its own user-interface guidelines and technical limitations that some say are meant to stifle competition.īut the doors may have been opened just far enough to change everything. The iPhone, to the consternation of some developers, is still not completely “open” to outside apps-at least not in the way your desktop machine is. Not everyone is happy with the new App Store system. Now, with the iPhone and its built-in iPod, you’ve got both: a full library of songs you’ve purchased and the entire Internet of songs you might like. While your iPod plays music you already own, Pandora gives you music you don’t know but will probably like. Streaming radio is the perfect complement to an MP3 player-you could say it’s the part of the iPod that’s been missing all along. ![]()
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