This isn't an official announcement or anything, but the company bought an iMac a little while back with the hopes of doing a Mac port of Depths of Peril (and future games).  So I've been doing a little crunch to see if I could get the game up and running on the Mac fairly quick. 

Luckily, I planned for this when building the engine by using OpenGL and OpenAl, so it hasn't been too bad so far.  As of right now the basics are working (graphics, sound, input, etc.).  There are still a bunch of bugs and there are some features that aren't ported yet, but it's close enough that I feel that I can talk about it some. :)

I think the minimum OS version is going to be 10.4.  It should eventually be a universal build (so far just intel).  Hopefully the minimum computer specs will be similar to the Windows version, but I'm not sure yet.

Anyways, for those Mac folks out there that might read this, considering I'm pretty new to Macs, what are the things that Windows to Mac ports usually get wrong or forget to do?  Basically, what are the things I'm not likely to know about Macs that I need to know for a port of a game?

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Piracy is rampant, consoles are doing great, and NPD sales numbers for the PC look terrible so PC gaming must be dying right?

I have talked some about piracy before so I won't talk more about it right now especially since it seems to be a hot topic at the moment, but there is a great post from Brad Wardell (Stardock) here.

Consoles are doing pretty good.  The new generation has greater graphics then ever, but without the Wii there wouldn't be too much innovation in the console market.  Part of the reason is that none of the consoles are open.  For the most part you need a publisher and permission from the console makers.  So that is 2 groups of people to say why your brilliant new gameplay isn't a good idea and they won't risk money on it.  Now things like Xbox live are making this a little better, but it's nothing even remotely like the PC where anyone can release anything they think will be fun.

Ok, finally on to what I think most people latch onto when they say that PC gaming is dying, the NPD numbers.  In 2007 PC game sales were $910.7 million, but in 2006 they were $970 million, and back in 2004 it was $1.1 billion. It sure appears that PC gaming is dying.  There is just one small problem, the NPD numbers are completely broken. I'll sum it up in 5 words: steam, casual, subscriptions, ads, and worldwide.  Ok, now I'll explain. :)

1) They don't include any digital distribution sales like Steam, Reflexive, Arcade Town, Gamer's Gate, Big Fish, RealArcade, AOL Games, MSN Games, ...  This list could go on for a long time.

2) This feeds into #1 quite a bit, but much of the casual market is on the PC and a lot of it is purchased online, so it isn't included either.  Last time I heard the casual market alone was nearing $2 billion.

3) It doesn't include any subscription fees.  So how much did WoW's 9 million customers pay in subscription fees?  Yeah, well this isn't in the NPD numbers either or any of the other MMO games out there.  The PC still dominates in this genre.

4) It doesn't include ads in any way.  More and more games are being supported by ads, either free MMOs or web based games and guess which platform most of these are run on?  Yeah, PCs.

5) It only includes the US in the numbers.  This effects the consoles as well as the PC so it is not PC specific or anything, but the gaming market is becoming more and more worldwide.  Just as an example, our own game Depths of Peril has sold in 33 different countries so far and almost half of our sales are outside of the US and this is with a game that is English only.

The PC market is far from dying.  It's just changing faster than the stats people can keep up.  I am very curious what the PC numbers would look like if they actually factored all 5 of the above things into them.  I would bet the PC would look pretty damn good against the consoles then.

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I'm kind of curious how many other gamers are like me and like to play games with their significant other.  Delilah and I really like to play games together, but haven't really had many opportunities lately.  You would think this would be easy, but the big catch is that we don't really enjoy competing against each other so that rules out most multiplayer games.

Why don't we compete against each other?  I create games for a living and play way more games, so I'm usually better at them.  So it's no fun for either of us if we are competing directly.

So anyways, we have played a lot of games co-op (Diablo, Star Wars Lego, etc.).  Some singleplayer games we have played together by switching back and forth who is actively playing (Zelda).  We have even gone as far as starting games, saving instantly, and transferring the saved game to the other person's computer so we could play in the same game (Civ games).

So back to my questions.  Anyone else out there that plays games with their significant other?  Anyone play primarily co-op with their SO?  And finally anyone else go through so much trouble to do it?

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So I'm going through the news of the last couple days, and not one but two RPG companies have gone out of business.  Both Iron Lore (Titan Quest) and P2 Entertainment (Gods and Heroes) have shutdown.

It sucks when any company goes out of business.  Even if you don't like a particular company or their products, there are still a bunch of individuals involved that don't deserve to lose their jobs.  Hopefully all of their employees will land new jobs in the industry pretty quickly. 

But neither one of these are really surprising.  Typical retail game developers start and usually stay in a really bad business position.  Most developers can't survive without a publisher contract paying their current overhead and typically the contract ends when your current game ships.  So if you can't sign another contract soon enough after the first game ships, you tend to go out of business.  They basically live paycheck to paycheck and the paychecks might stop at the end of each game.  I have no idea if this happened to Iron Lore, I just know it is extremely common.

As for P2, what does everyone expect?  All of the MMO people seem to be trying to compete directly with WoW.  This not only means you are trying to beat out WoW which is very unlikely, but you are competing with the other tons of companies trying to do the same thing.  It's just common sense that most of these companies are going to fail.

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