[Macworld.com]

From scary zombies to graphically advanced games, Game Room guru Peter Cohen shares 10 of the year's best games and coolest accessories as part of our annual inductions into the Mac Game Hall of Fame. [more]

[dbutenhof]

It continues to strike me as thoroughly absurd when someone mentions Boot Camp being good for "Mac Games" or for "Mac gamers". It's not. It's either irrelevant or perhaps even bad for both.
It's perhaps good for PC gamers who'd like to buy Apple hardware; or for Mac owners who'd like to be PC gamers. But in any case, they're not "Mac Games" (or "Mac Gamers"). They're PC games (and gamers) using a Wintel PC that happens to have been built by Apple. You've shut down your Mac and converted it to a PC. I can certainly see why that appeals to some people, for a variety of reasons; but it's nothing I would ever do.
Given that most Mac users won't want to reboot, or buy Windows for the price of a cheap PC package, it seems likely that Boot Camp won't have a major impact on Mac Games or Mac Gamers; most Mac users who play games will continue to play them on Mac OS X (or perhaps on Microsoft's specialized gaming PC, the Xbox 360). But if the "buy Windows and reboot" mindset takes hold, many companies are likely to rely on that rather than porting games to Mac.

[Immeral]

I think it is a good thing. For some folks, the only thing holding them back to get a Mac was the games. Once there are a lot more people on Macs the numbers will improve to the point where making Mac games will be interesting money-wise. People who switched will start getting tired of switching back a forth just to play games and will start prefering Mac versions of games. It will be slow and gradual but I think there will be a Mac games 'renaissance' in about 2 years- judging from the platform growth rate.

[CloverTAC]

Good call on Avernum 4 and Jets N Guns. These two games provided me with countless hours of gaming on my Mac during the early part of the year, without forcing me to spend hundreds of dollars to get my woefully out of date Mac up to speed.

[Steve_S]

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But if youre an optimist, 2006 set the stage for great things to come in Mac games. The aforementioned software for running Windows on the MacApples Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop, CodeWeavers CrossOver, and TransGamings Ciderpromises to ultimately put Mac gamers on a level playing field with their PC-using counterparts.

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I have a Mac Pro and I don't view either of these as good solutions for Mac gaming. While Boot Camp is a nice option, is not a very viable long term solution. It's viable for the occasional need to run Windows. I agree with Dave's sentiments and suggest that it's not a good idea for Mac gamers to purchase PC software. Parallels is a fine alternative for most things, but games do not seem to be viable at this point. CrossOver and other WINE-like solutions are interesting, but even with that, there is typically a performance hit and it doesn't promote the use of Mac APIs / technologies. Perhaps that's what you'd call a pessimistic view of the state of affairs.
This was definitely a weak year in terms of major software releases. However, as you mentioned in your column, there were a few pockets of relief. There are a few honorary mentions that I'd like to recognize. First is Redline Racing from Ambrosia. This is a really nice racing game for the Mac. It's a game that was sorely needed. I'd also like to mention Pangea's Arcarde. They put some interesting twists onto arcade classics and updated them with modern day graphic effects. I'd love to see more efforts like this, but I fear these smaller games just don't get the recognition necessary. More likely than not, it's smaller game efforts like this that will be the future of Mac gaming. Sure, there will probably always be an occasional port of an A list PC game, but they seem to be coming much less often. Even Aspyr who made it's start from porting Mac games seems more interested in the PC and console market. I'm not blaming them, only pointing out the obvious future from Mac gaming.
Steve

[Peter Cohen]

I think it takes a particularly narrow view to see Boot Camp as anything but good news for Mac users in general, gamers included.
For one thing, based on the conversations I've had with actual game publishers -- as opposed to things I could infer from the statements of gamers or just off-hand observations on the market -- it doesn' look like Boot Camp has had a majorly negative effect on their porting or publishing efforts. So at the very least the status quo has been maintained, and that's important to keep in mind.
Secondly, Boot Camp lowers the barrier to entry for new Mac users who also like to game, because it enables them to continue to play the games they want to without having to worry about a Macintosh conversion. Don't feel like waiting until January when Aspyr is done with Prey? Buy it now and play it today on a MacBook Pro running Boot Camp and Windows XP. Want to play a game that doesn't stand a very good chance of ever seeing a Mac conversion, like Half-Life 2? I play it regularly on my Intel iMac.
Third, it gives Mac users and Mac developers a pretty powerful place to leverage a criticism at Apple from, which is that OpenGL on OS X underperforms compared to DirectX on Windows. Up until now it's been very easy for Apple's defenders, including those within Apple, to say "Well, you're comparing apples to oranges" when we point out the comparative performance deficiencies of similarly configured Mac and Wintel hardware when playing games. That's out the window, so to speak, when you can take a Mac, install Windows XP on it, and see a distinct performance delta between the same game running on OS X and Windows.
Tho in all fairness, Mac OS X OpenGL does perform very comparably to Windows OpenGL on the same hardware. Still, it gives Apple's OpenGL team, as well as ATI and Nvidia's Mac engineers, something to shoot for, and hopefully surpass.
So yeah, Boot Camp is a good thing for Mac gamers.

[hagen]

the more PC people who come over to the Mac, continue to play PC games, will eventually move to Mac games because being on the OS X side is nicer (yes IMO), thus more mac user base, thus more business incentive for game companies to port over to the Mac and perhaps even co-develop
Hagen
Mac Pro 2 GHz, 2 GB, X1900XT, Raptor Raid0, Bootcamp/WinXP fer a few games (HalfLife2, FEAR)

[HumanJHawkins]

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It continues to strike me as thoroughly absurd when someone mentions Boot Camp being good for "Mac Games" or for "Mac gamers". It's not. It's either irrelevant or perhaps even bad for both.

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What you fail to acknowledge is that Macs ARE Wintel PCs. This is relevant to Mac gamers because they are playing these games on an unmodified factory direct Mac. The fact that you define "Mac" as excluding actual Apple Macs that happen to be booted into a third party OS, doesn't make it so.
At the very least, this is as relevant to Mac Gamers as Virtual Playstation software was relevant to PS2 gamers... In other words, very relevant.

[dbutenhof]

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What you fail to acknowledge is that Macs ARE Wintel PCs. This is relevant to Mac gamers because they are playing these games on an unmodified factory direct Mac. The fact that you define "Mac" as excluding actual Apple Macs that happen to be booted into a third party OS, doesn't make it so.

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Sorry, no. "Mac" means Mac OS [X], not just "hardware capable of running Mac OS [X]". That's what made the transition from 680x0 to PowerPC, and PowerPC to Intel X86 so easy. It's the OS, not the hardware, that matters.
An INTEL (not Wintel) chip running Mac OS X is a Mac. "Wintel" is an Intel chip running Windows. (That's the "Win" part.) There's an enormous difference. An Apple-produced Intel box running Windows is an Apple Wintel, just like a Dell Wintel with better industrial design. The Apple PC can also become a Mac by booting Mac OS X, whereas the Dell can't; but that doesn't make it a better Wintel PC.
Boot Camp can certainly relieve certain people of the need to buy a second computer to run Windows, as long as they never need both at the same time. My computer, for example, is a NOW UTC/Contact server for the house, and my wife's has the tape drive and runs Retrospect network backups for us all; booting either into Windows would impact the other computers. Yeah, in theory we could set up a standalone server system that'd do all that... but the point is we don't have to, and you simply can't use Boot Camp in that environment. (Even if I wanted to donate the money to Microsoft for a copy of Windows and go to the trouble of the reboot... which I never would do anyway.)
But, again, an Apple Intel box booted in Windows is a Wintel PC made by Apple... not "a Mac". Not in any useful or meaningful sense. If you don't bother to look under the desk or behind the screen, it might as well be a Dell. So, fine; with Boot Camp it can be a Mac and a generic Wintel PC made by Apple. But it can't be both at the same time, and "Mac gaming using Boot Camp" is nothing more than an oxymoron. Boot Camp lets you buy an Apple box and also be a PC Gamer. You can reboot as a Mac and also be a Mac Gamer. But it's always one or the other.

[dbutenhof]

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I think it takes a particularly narrow view to see Boot Camp as anything but good news for Mac users in general, gamers included.

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Well, fine; I feel exactly the opposite. "When is a Mac not a Mac? When it's running Windows."
Sure, one box to rule them all; but Apple hardware only competes at the "middle high" end and the "middle low" end, and you need to buy a retail Windows on top of that. And you can't do both at the same time. You can't fire up a game while your image renders or prints in the background if you're rebooting. Sure, if your PC game has high graphics requirements, you can't get away with a second cheap PC box that's comparable to the cost of the retail Windows XP license, and Boot Camp gets you a decent performing PC for the price. Probably great for some gamers... I don't believe there's any evidence that this is, or even will be, "good for the Mac" or for "Mac Gamers".
Maybe some of the PC converts who want to run PC games with Boot Camp will get annoyed at rebooting to play, and maybe that will increase pressure/demand/market for native Mac games. But that's an awfully loose speculation at this point. (Maybe they'll just use the Apple PC as a full time Wintel box instead... which is OK for "Apple as a hardware company" I suppose, but not "for the Mac".) The fact that nobody is saying that Boot Camp seems to be decreasing Mac game sales isn't the same thing as an indication of increase... which is the only way Boot Camp will help actual "Mac Gamers". If such evidence shows up, great; until then I remain skeptical.
DirectX being a customized and proprietary low-level gaming API of course gives it advantages in depth and breadth over the general and portable OpenGL API. Should Apple copy it? Resurrect QD3D? Build a completely new API? Try to optimize OpenGL? Maybe any or all, but I'm sure it's not an easy call.

[griffman]

"DirectX being a customized and proprietary low-level gaming API of course gives it advantages in depth and breadth over the general and portable OpenGL API. Should Apple copy it? Resurrect QD3D? Build a completely new API? Try to optimize OpenGL? Maybe any or all, but I'm sure it's not an easy call. "
That's not what Peter was saying. Ignore DirectX. In head-to-head tests on the same hardware, using OpenGL as the renderer, my "Mac tax" was over 20 frames per second in Quake 4 -- the PC version was over 20fps faster than the Mac version. So Peter's point was to Apple and ATI/Nvidia: please work harder to optimize OpenGL on the Mac, so that there's not such a glaring difference between the same game on the same hardware.
-rob.

[dbutenhof]

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That's not what Peter was saying. Ignore DirectX. In head-to-head tests on the same hardware, using OpenGL as the renderer, my "Mac tax" was over 20 frames per second in Quake 4 -- the PC version was over 20fps faster than the Mac version. So Peter's point was to Apple and ATI/Nvidia: please work harder to optimize OpenGL on the Mac, so that there's not such a glaring difference between the same game on the same hardware.

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On DirectX (a low-level proprietary API designed for gaming) vs OpenGL (a high-level open standard API), sure. But Peter also said: "Tho in all fairness, Mac OS X OpenGL does perform very comparably to Windows OpenGL on the same hardware." I haven't looked at the benchmarks, so if what Peter said is wrong, don't blame me... and don't claim I didn't read what he wrote, either. Yes, Apple can try to optimize OpenGL, and they have continued to improve it, including the recent multithreading support. If they can't improve it any more, the alternative would be to invent (or license?) a new lower-level proprietary API that matches DirectX.
I also wonder if the Universal versions of Mac games include all of the low-level X86 computational optimizations that would have been removed for the PowerPC port? For "fresh from Windows" Universal ports it's likely relatively straightforward to keep it... but for example for the games originally released as PowerPC only that were patched with Universal updates... were any original X86 optimizations restored and/or re-enabled, or would comparisons suffer by that much as well?

[Steve_S]

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In head-to-head tests on the same hardware, using OpenGL as the renderer, my "Mac tax" was over 20 frames per second in Quake 4 -- the PC version was over 20fps faster than the Mac version.

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Okay, so you're willing to make gross generalization over what is likely a poorly optimized Mac port? There are examples which also show Apple's OpenGL to perform better than Windows, so I'd tend to side with Peter and Dave on this issue.
Example:
http://www.barefeats.com/bootcamp.html
Notice the Cinebench Hardware OpenGL scores. Quake 3 also did better on OS X, whereas Doom3 lagged slightly (~10%). The point here is that there are enough examples that show Apple's OpenGL to be at least on par with Windows. Just because you've witnessed an example to the contrary, doesn't mean the issue is strictly related to Apple's implementation of OpenGL. Mac gaming ports tend to be poorly optimized compared to their Windows counterparts. So, it's probably more fair to say that you've witnessed a 20% porting tax rather than a "Mac tax" which implies a deficiency in the Mac OS APIs. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement in Apple's OpenGL. Rather, your example is not applicable across a range of OpenGL benchmarks.

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So Peter's point was to Apple and ATI/Nvidia: please work harder to optimize OpenGL on the Mac, so that there's not such a glaring difference between the same game on the same hardware.

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No doubt Apple, ATI and nVidia all have room for optimizations. However, based on your Quake 4 example, I'd be looking for Aspyr to confirm they've optimized everything possible first. If other applications can surpass Windows OpenGL in performance, it's logical to look to Aspyr to bring the Mac Quake 4 up to par first. Sadly, they seem more interested in consoles and PC games these days. Oh, wait, they did throw us a bone with Prey... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Steve

[griffman]

Cinebench is a highly optimized test -- and yes, it performs the same on both. But there's a big difference between an OpenGL benchmark and OpenGL use in game play. In the benchmark, the CPU doesn't have to multiprocess: there's no audio, there's no network, there aren't any other players or robots to worry about, etc.
In game play, every game I've tested so far (I gave but one example) has scored lower on OS X OpenGL than it has on WinXP OpenGL. Whether we wish to blame that on porting, drivers, or OS X, I don't know -- but it's a very easily observed behavior.
As for the quality of the ports ... don't you think Aspyr would do everything in their power to insure that the port is running as quickly as possible on the Mac? The better the game performs, the more units they'll sell. So I tend to blame OS X and/or the video drivers more than I blame the company doing the port.
The fact that Apple has taken proactive steps to increase OpenGL's speed on certain Macs (with multi-threaded OpenGL) also implies to me that they're aware they have a performance issue to address. Don't get me wrong -- OpenGL on OS X clearly doesn't suck. I saw over 70fps in Quake4 with fairly high detail levels and a high resolution. That's amazing. But the fact that the same machine will do over 90fps in Windows implies that we have room for improvement.
-rob.