Mac Top 10 Upcoming Mac Games 2023.

[Colstan]

MrMacRight has released a video for his top 10 Mac games expected in 2023. (It's actually closer to 15 games.)



Everyone and their pet muskrat knows that the situation could be much better for Mac gaming, nobody denies that. I do think that there are two positive takeaways from this video.

First, there was some speculation that the switch to Apple Silicon would kill Mac gaming, with the added complexity of switching to a new architecture. That does not appear to the be the case.

Second, I've been watching MrMacRight's videos for many years now. Typically, there were one or two "AAA" titles, a handful of "AA" titles, and a shedload of simple indie games. This list is mostly "AAA" or "AA" titles, which is actually an improvement over what Mac gamers have had to chose from in the past.

Finally, on a personal note, as someone who didn't play System Shock, back in the day, I'm looking forward to the remake, which is covered in the video's "bonus" section.

 

[Nycturne]

First, there was some speculation that the switch to Apple Silicon would kill Mac gaming, with the added complexity of switching to a new architecture. That does not appear to the be the case.

For the software engineers in those threads, this was a bit of a head-banging-into-brick-wall moment. Back in the 90s, the ISA/architecture mattered, but these days? It's the platform. It's Metal vs Vulkan vs DirectX, it's if Unity/Unreal or the engine of choice makes stuff available to target your OS of choice. And it is if the bean counters decide that the costs of having a couple platform experts on hand and the extra validation costs are worth it to go after the market. If anything iOS expertise in Metal and the larger market there should help make it easier to target Mac these days (more engineers you can hire for platform expertise, etc).

Considering this is an industry that has historically underserved various groups, there's also whatever biases/perceptions exist for the executives overseeing things.

I'm a bit surprised to see the renewed interest in the platform though. Not going to say no to stuff like No Man's Sky or Everspace showing up though.

 

[Colstan]

Considering this is an industry that has historically underserved various groups, there's also whatever biases/perceptions exist for the executives overseeing things.

I think there's always been a historical bias within gaming circles. Game developers aren't just programmers and designers, but also gamers themselves. They probably grew up with their own custom hotrod PC, like many of us did, and Macs were seen as little more than art pieces or over-priced toys. I should know, I certainly did when I was younger.

I suspect the reason that we are seeing Baldur's Gate 3 released as a first-class gaming citizen on Mac is because of Larian's employees. While they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't profitable, I think they're putting in the work simply because they like the Mac platform. Larian have long put effort into the Mac versions of their games. They've also gotten a tremendous amount of free advertising in Apple's keynotes, but I that's most likely Apple seeing the effort and reciprocating.

I'd love to see Remedy's games on the Mac, such as the upcoming Alan Wake 2 and Control 2, but they've never shown the slightest interest in Mac gaming. I don't think it's a bean counter issue for them; I think Remedy simply doesn't consider the Mac worth bothering with, and have never had that mindset.

Apple appears to be shopping around for developers that might want to give the Mac a chance, but it tends to be stalwarts like Larian, 4A, and the good folks at Feral that are in it for the long haul.

 

[Nycturne]

I think there's always been a historical bias within gaming circles. Game developers aren't just programmers and designers, but also gamers themselves. They probably grew up with their own custom hotrod PC, like many of us did, and Macs were seen as little more than art pieces or over-priced toys. I should know, I certainly did when I was younger.

Oh of course. But generally I'm thinking of the behavior of "Do something poorly, and then use the sales data from that to justify ignoring a market opportunity". For example: https://www.themarysue.com/why-game...ont-sell-and-what-it-says-about-the-industry/

So very much like skewed sales data 10 years ago can paint a picture that female leads come with a sales hit (and I would say that things have gotten worse for women in gaming in recent years so who knows what this data looks like today), you can say the same thing when games come out for the Mac years after their PC release with little marketing budget or fanfare. GaaS may change that to some extent, but it's not like I'm going to be chomping at the bit for a Horizon: Zero Dawn release on Mac today after I've played the sequel, and the PC has had a release for almost two years now. Even when I was a Mac gamer in the early 00s, the issue was that releases were generally too little, too late, or I couldn't play with friends who had the PC version when the releases where simultaneous because of incompatible network code. Games that didn't fall into this trap did quite well. Maxis, Blizzard, Quake and Unreal Tournament were staples, and surprise, they had pretty good support on the platform while they were still culturally relevant.

I'd say businesses are even bigger slaves to the data today than then. It's so much easier to have more data at your fingertips as an engineer, but still fail to do the critical analysis to understand why certain trends are happening.