Some of you might already know that I do some other blogging work on another Weblogs, Inc. blog called WoW Insider, all about World of Warcraft, the MMORPG videogame. Most gaming companies tend to shy away from the Mac, but Blizzard has always been the exception. And with World of Warcraft, there are actually huge benefits to playing the game on a Mac. A while ago they added builtin iTunes controls (right into the official client), and as of the upcoming patch (now available for players to play around with on a public test), they've actually created an ingame movie recorder-- only for the WoW Mac client.
It's a pretty well done feature, too. WoW Insider's Paul Sherrard took the recorder for a test drive, and created what you see above (after a little bit of iMovie fiddling). The options are pretty impressive for an ingame vid capture as well-- you can control whether the UI or cursor is seen or not, and you even get a choice of codecs (including H.264, Pixlet, or Motion JPEG). Very nice. Whoever's working on the Mac team at Blizzard really knows what they're doing, and is definitely giving Mac users the hookup on cool exclusive features.
Apple is releasing games for the iPod. EA and id show up at the WWDC keynote. And the rumors say Nintendo may team with Apple for the iPhone. All signs point to an Apple that seriously wants to reenter the gaming market, an arena that has been dominated by PCs and consoles for quite some time. But exactly how can they do it?
They're doing some of the right things already, and we can expect them to do more in the future. But here's five suggestions (or predictions, if you will) about what Apple can do to attract gamers back to the Cult of Mac.
1) Put (even more) games on iTunes.Steam is a nice digital distribution system, and Xbox Live Arcade is a better one. But no one has done digital distribution like Apple has with iTunes-- first music, and now movies and television shows. What they need to do is add games to the software, and even go so far as to create a kind of "iTunes Arcade," where you can buy games for your iPod, your iPhone, your Mac or MacBook, and even your Apple TV. And I'm not talking dinky downloads like Lost-- I'm talking EA's Madden, Need for Speed, and even Battlefield 2142. Run patches and updates through there as well (EA's Link might not like that, but it hasn't been successful enough that they wouldn't consider joining iTunes if asked), use CoverFlow as a cool browsing and launching interface, and you've got the key not only to a solid revenue system, but also a promotion and distribution channel.
This video is just flat out amazing. Mike Phillips is a Mac gamer and writer, who just happens to have been born with spinal muscular atrophy. He's apparently only able to move his thumb, and yet that doesn't stop him from playing Unreal Tournament and World of Warcraft. This is possible thanks to a proximity switch connected the Swifty USB switch interface from Origin Instrument and the SwitchXS software from AssistiveWare. The latter looks basically like a kind of on-screen keyboard, that Mike scrolls through to select arrows or letters, etc. Seeing Mike frag people left and right is enough to make me keep away from him online.
AssistiveWare has a variety of products to help disabled Mac users, as well as other videos demonstrating some of them.
With the release of Myst Online for the Mac* (and our own nagging, monthly World of Warcraft bills), we TUAW bloggers got together to discuss our favorite low-cost Mac games. Sure, those MMORPGs are fun, but $14.99/month (Warcraft) and $6.95/month (Myst) isn't. So, in the name of gaming cheapskates everywhere, here's our list of great, inexpensive Mac games (in no particular order).
SketchFighter 4000 Alpha by Ambrosia Software. Cost: $19US. Requirements: Mac OS 10.2 or later.
By Ambrosia Software, this shoot-em-up game features upgradeable spaceships, mean bosses, challenging levels and even a level editor. But most of all, we love the dead-on, retro, "hand-sketched" graphics. SketchFighter was designed to look like the very images that young geeks like me spent all of Jr. high school scribbling on notebook paper, and the developers at Ambrosia really nailed it. As an 11 year old, I could only imagine my creations coming to life. Ambrosia made it actually happen, and as a result SketchFighter is wicked fun to play.
Well here's something I missed last week. This past Tuesday was "patch day" in the world of Warcraft. The latest patch, v. 1.12, brought several changes to the game, including the ability to control iTunes. From the Key Bindings preference window you can set up keys to control play, pause, next, back and volume from within the game. Why would you want to do that? Because that song you hear in each of the inns can get stuck in your head for a long, long time.
Blizzard Entertainment, creators of highly addictive cross-platform games like World of
Warcraft (among others) have announced their intentions to continue work on Mac-native games. In a statement earlier in the week, the
company said, “We have a recognized track record of native Mac OS support, and we have no plans to break with
that tradition. We understand that our Mac player base prefers native software whenever possible, and our cross-platform
development practice addresses that."
Translation: Just because Mac OS 10.5 will allow you to very
easily run Windows on your Intel Mac, Blizzard (and other Mac game developers, we're betting) won't be giving up the
ghost. So fear not! Now if you'll excuse me, it's been a whole ninety minutes since I've played World of Warcraft, and
I'm starting to twitch a little.
After my
initial tinkering with Windows XP on
my 17" iMac Core Duo, I reinstalled XP on my Mac, using Boot Camp to eliminate the original partition and
build a new one, this time 20GBs in size, so I'd have plenty of room for games. I then installed World of
Warcraft, since I already had a copy installed on my OS X partition that I was very familiar with and which would
serve as a nice comparison. The results: WoW on Windows XP on my iMac, running fullscreen on my external 24-inch Dell
monitor with all the graphics settings ramped up clocks in at about 6fps faster than my OS X
installation of WoW, running fullscreen on the same display with the graphic settings pulled back to their default
settings. Nice!
Let the PC gaming on sleek Mac hardware begin!
ps--sorry the picture
above taken with my cameraphone isn't better.
In case you didn't
see my post yesterday over at WoW
Insider, I just wanted to point out over here that, yes, indeed: yesterday's Universal Binary patch for World of
Warcraft means the game runs nice and fast on my iMac Core Duo.
On a 1.83Ghz Core Duo with 2GBs of RAM and
128MB of VRAM, I'm seeing 50-60 frames per second in unpopulated areas with the graphics set to the defaults. If I ramp
all the graphics up, I'm still seeing 40-45 frames per second in these areas. If I enter something like a battleground
where there's lots of action going on, I'm seeing about 30-40 frames per second with the graphics set to the defaults
and 18-28 frames per second with the graphics pushed to their limit. Keep in mind that 24 frames per second is a
stop-motion animated film, and regular full motion video is normally 29.97 frames per second.
Overall, I'm
ecstatic. Finally! A Mac gaming machine that actually plays games!
Dear Game Developers: the time to
code for Mac is now!
Our own C.K. Sample III posted
this morning on WOW Insider hinting at the fact that World of Warcraft as
of today may be Intel Mac compatible and no longer require Rosetta.
When he logged in this morning, WOW launched an updater to version 1.9.3.5059. Now the comment at the bottom of his
login screen which used to mention Rosetta, now notes GCC Intel.
All realms of WOW are currently down for maintenance so we will have
to wait with bated breath until 11AM PST for someone to actually test WOW on an Intel Mac.
Apple is releasing 
With the release of 
Well here's something I missed last week. This past Tuesday was "patch day" in the world of Warcraft. The 
In case you didn't
see my 
