Portland gamer says 2K Games President Christoph Hartmann "should be fired."

[Where is BioShock2 4 Mac?]

Stumptown Game Machine:


Brand loyalty: Some companies companies have it, some don't: Apple definitely has what it takes to keep their customers coming back: they refresh their product line 4-5 times a year. Hollywood has it to. I think they're up to seven Saw movies now? Video Game companies on the other hand... Not so much. When it comes to marketing, gaming game developers seem to be stuck in the 90's when where Nintendo would release a new Zelda title every 3 years. (No wonder Mario soared right past!).


Steve Theoharis from Portland Oregon's ClickTeam says "Gamers are like crackheads... They always need a fix. If you don't feed their need, someone else is going to get the business. "

Web Developer Bryan McMullan from Portland based Liquid Development complains on the 2 year delay for Mac titles: "When is 2k Games going to release Bioshock 2 for Mac, when we're grown up? Their CEO should be fired." Fellow gamer and rapper Timothy Ericson (Timmy-E) added: "In his failure to meet customer demands and release new titles in a timely manner, 2K Games CEO probably costs his parent company Take-Two millions of dollars in lost revenue."

Even non-gamers are complaining about it. John Westimier from Fort Worth Texas says: "I'm not a gamer, but I love me some Plants vs. Zombies. I played it on an iPad for 2 weeks, beat it and instantly wanted more. The only game I would buy is Plants vs. Zombie 2. I even wrote the idiots at PopCap asking why they blatantly fail to supply an obvious demand... No response."

Video game companies need to understand this: There are an influx of new gaming companies and though you might not consider them a big threat, they are. PopCap sold to EA for $750M for making simple little apps that are extremely addictive. You need to get on the ball and release more titles because Apple will strip you of your customers so fast you won't know what hit you.

[_Pax_]

Boo hoo.

If you want a computer that plays games, and gets them in a timely manner? Buy a PC or buy a console.

You got what you paid for (overpriced middle-of-the-road quality PC parts with an over-restrictive Apple OS).

[IllusionOfLife]

This article is filled with so many logical fallacies it's ridiculous. First off, Apple refreshes each of their product lines once a year, if that. Second, while I've always supported gaming on Macs and find that there's no decent excuse anymore to *not* release games on the Mac, 2K is not, by any means, the only company who is ignoring the Mac. Most of the biggest games of 2011 were not released for Mac: Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, SWToR, Call of Duty, etc. If people are demanding blood for 2K not having released BioShock 2 on Mac (despite the fact that a port is in the works as we speak) than it's only fair that they be demanding blood from EA, Activision, Warner Bros, Bethesda, etc.

Also, I shouldn't have to point out how utterly laughable it is to point to the Saw franchise as a shining example of the right way to do anything. Ask anyone who cares even remotely about the art of filmmaking and they'll tell you that the blind dedication to rushed franchise products are hurting the film industry, not helping it. Same goes for video games. Plants vs. Zombies is a fantastic game, and PopCap has continued to support it, adding new content through updates that have all been available for free. When and if they decide to make PvZ 2 I expect it will be a significant improvement over the first, giving us all new things to enjoy, rather than a few tacked on features that you would expect from a one-year-later sequel. PopCap could have easily packaged a few of these updates together and called it a sequel, and probably made a fair bit of profit for it in the short, but it would have been the wrong choice for the company in the long term both artistically and financially.

[Fugue]

You need to get on the ball and release more titles because Apple will strip you of your customers so fast you won't know what hit you.

some serious delusion issues, Apple products are great & a triumph of very clever branding (look at this slightly shinier version of what you bought last year, buy it!) but anyone who is serious about gaming is never going to buy a Mac and never will.

[IllusionOfLife]

some serious delusion issues, Apple products are great & a triumph of very clever branding (look at this slightly shinier version of what you bought last year, buy it!) but anyone who is serious about gaming is never going to buy a Mac and never will.

*Ahem* (writing this on my Mac)

[Fugue]

I said serious

I really don,t know why anyone would choose a mac for gaming, as above you miss out on a lot of games and wait an age for others, if there was a market as some would claim Publishers would be all over it. Apple can't "strip customers" with the market as it is, just nonsense.

Apple products are great (I have an iPad and iPods) but very overpriced for what they are IMO

[IllusionOfLife]

I said serious

I really don,t know why anyone would choose a mac for gaming, as above you miss out on a lot of games and wait an age for others, if there was a market as some would claim Publishers would be all over it.

As I mentioned in another thread, due to the long neglect of gaming on the Mac, both from Apple and developers, we Mac gamers have had to accept the fact that the majority of our gaming will have to take place on other platforms, be that consoles or a dedicated gaming PC. That being said, I believe gaming on the Mac does have a bright future, it will just take several years to shake old notions about the platform in order to get there.

With Valve bringing Steam to the Mac and more and more developers narrowing the window between the initial release and the Mac release (to the point where in some instances they are the same day) there has been a dedicated effort to reviving gaming on a Mac. Macs have gained a very significant market share, and while Windows based PCs are still the dominant platform, the longer developers ignore the Mac, the more potential customers they lose.

[Fugue]

If publishers ever decide to release games on mac at the same time as the others I and probably many others would consider a mac but if that was going to happen it probably would have already.....

Someone I know has A 27" mac and compared to my bunch of pc boxes it's actually nice to look at and doesn't take up a whole corner of the room, like all apple products aesthetics make up a big part of the package but for me it's the rest they fall down on.

iPad is the only exception, still the best tablet I've tried.

[IllusionOfLife]

If publishers ever decide to release games on mac at the same time as the others I and probably many others would consider a mac but if that was going to happen it probably would have already.....

Valve has stated that starting with Portal 2 all of their future titles will release simultaneously on Mac. Dragon Age II was a Mac game on launch day, Double Fine's Adventure Game will be getting a Day one Mac release, and there are several other noteworthy games recently that have had day one Mac releases. It's happening, just not overnight.

[_Pax_]

I read somewhere, semi-recently, that another problem of developing games for MAC is that the toolkit available to game makers is much more extensive on PC, than on Mac. And many of the PC tools are free, or very low priced .... whereas the few for Mac are quite expensive.

Which means, it's also cheaper and easier to develop games for PC.

[Codex]

.... whereas the few for Mac are quite expensive.

Which means, it's also cheaper and easier to develop games for Mac.

My logic filters might be broken, but I think you just divided by zero :s

Also, the argument that 7 Saw movies = quality of product is really bad. Yes, Hollywood churns them out really quickly. However, that doesn't make a good product. Arguably, the first Saw movie was great. The second had a neat concept but really lost the strength of the first. From that point... well, I own all of the films simply because I kept hoping they'd have the punch of the first. They never did.

Churning out things consistently without adding new ideas or making a "fully functional" product that is "true to the original" doesn't make something good. The same can be said (and often is said) for cross platform products. Games that are released simultaniously for PC, PS3 and 360 are often criticized for having serious flaws on one or more systems. Addin in additional systems, such as Mac or smart phoens can only compound that, given the sheer amount of optimization needed.

However, this doesn't mean that I don't think game companies should take the time, and the money, to create games for all the current gaming systems. Playing devils advocate, however, they're going to go for the ones that make the money, which is PS3/PC/360. Mac, thanks to the late 90's murder of the system, just isn't thought of as something that can play games effectively even if the OS is just as capable as PC. This may change though, looking at Valve's push to bring more games there. There needs to be a few more devs that jump on the bandwagon of same day releases, but that also means investing in the people that can optimize it properly. When that comes to 2K, maybe they've done the smart think by handing the rights for Mafia II and BS2 to Feral Interactive. If they don't know how to do it, getting someone who does is important.

[Precarious]

Not trying to side with anyone here, but I'm also on a Mac. While I played BioShock on it, I honestly don't think BioShock 2 was suitable for PC or Mac. Just my opinion. A hell of a lot of games have been released for PC only. BioShock 2 is no exception nor are other companies exempt from the fact that there is a demand.

[Fugue]

Valve has stated that starting with Portal 2 all of their future titles will release simultaneously on Mac. Dragon Age II was a Mac game on launch day, Double Fine's Adventure Game will be getting a Day one Mac release, and there are several other noteworthy games recently that have had day one Mac releases. It's happening, just not overnight.

Yes but valve have trouble with the number 3 so you'll still not get to play anything.

[headkase]

I think the largest obstacle developers face when porting to a Mac (or Linux!) is that in their source-code for the games themselves the programming interface most games use is DirectX. DirectX is proprietary to Windows and Xbox. If a developer wanted to bring their title to Mac they'd have to rewrite significant portions of their code into something more portable - which would almost certainly be OpenGL. Valve games have supported both DirectX and OpenGL for ages so they're already ahead of the curve in being able to move to non-Microsoft platforms. I believe that the PS3 supports a variant of OpenGL - how compatible it is with standard OpenGL I don't know however, and that would reflect how easily it could be ported to the latter.

Basically, there is significant work to be done on a game when you've coded for DirectX and you want to leave the Microsoft eco-system into OpenGL for other platforms. Macs have about 6% market share, and taking that 6% as a 100% sub-category: 1% may buy your game. A lot of the time it's just not worth it to spend the time, effort, and money to realize a port.

Edit:

If you are a Mac user then there is one product you should be completely aware of:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

Crossover. It allows you to run quite a few Windows applications (including games) on your Mac or Linux system. It doesn't work with 100% of titles but it does work with quite a darn few. The biggest advantage to Crossover is that you don't have to dual-boot and you don't have to purchase a Windows license.

Check it out! There's a free trial so you can give it a good tire-kicking!

[_Pax_]

My logic filters might be broken, but I think you just divided by zero :s

No, but my then-sleep-deprived brain certainly made me type "Mac" when I meant "PC. Oops! Off to the Edit button, I go!!

This may change though, looking at Valve's push to bring more games there.

Andhonestly, I look forward to that day. I'll never pay the extra premium for the whole "Cult of Apple" prestige thing, but the more gamers there are at all, the more games there will be, at all.