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Craig Stern
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« on: October 10, 2008, 10:41:51 AM » |
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Some say that Mac and Linux users are starving for games, and that since they're largely ignored by mainstream game companies, they are ripe for indie game sales. This guy thinks selling to Mac and Linux users as well as PC users will boost sales by somewhere between 10 and 30%. What do you think? Is it worth it? If so, what tools can you use? (Flash and Unity work with Mac. Game Maker doesn't. Flash works with Linux. Game Maker doesn't. That's about all I know so far.)
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muku
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« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2008, 11:06:24 AM » |
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If you use a major language like C++ and only portable libraries (SDL, OpenGL etc) porting shouldn't be a big deal.
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Μarkham
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« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2008, 11:12:29 AM » |
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There was enough demand for Toady to port a Mac version of Dwarf Fortress, so I guess there is a bit of truth to that. Those making their own engines will have the advantage, of course.
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TeeGee
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« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2008, 11:38:30 AM » |
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I know from experience that good games sell really well on Mac and it's very easy to get the word out about them. Just doing one press release got our company's games to be featured on Apple.com for few days and sales are very good to this day. I don't remember the exat numbers, but I think it was close to 40% increase in direct sales. Definitely worth it.
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dmoonfire
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« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2008, 11:41:17 AM » |
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Mac users are starving for good games. After working in a Mac shop, I am completely convinced of that.
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brog
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« Reply #5 on: October 10, 2008, 01:58:54 PM » |
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It would probably not be too much work to build my game for Mac and Linux since I'm using SDL/OpenGL. But I don't know the first thing about developing for these platforms and I don't happen to have instances of them lying around to try it out on either. Is it possible to compile a game for Mac/Linux on Windows? Then I could send it to friends with these machines and make sure it works without them having to go through the hassle of trying to build it themselves.
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increpare
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« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2008, 03:11:22 PM » |
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All of my stuff is cross platform. There's a certain amount of overhead involved in making stuff mac-compatible. Same for linux, I guess.
All of my games should compile just fine on linux, but I've never gotten around to making builds, much less submitting to the main package repositories (oh wait: that's more the path of open-source stuff than 'make money of games' side of things).
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shrapnel
Level 1
summer rain (soon)
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« Reply #7 on: October 10, 2008, 09:42:05 PM » |
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I feel like it's worth writing code with a cross-platform mindset, even if you don't actually plan on porting to another platform. It's good habit.
That sort of goes out the window if your basic toolset or programming language isn't cross-platform, though.
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henzenmann
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« Reply #8 on: October 11, 2008, 12:15:10 AM » |
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It would probably not be too much work to build my game for Mac and Linux since I'm using SDL/OpenGL. But I don't know the first thing about developing for these platforms and I don't happen to have instances of them lying around to try it out on either. Is it possible to compile a game for Mac/Linux on Windows? Then I could send it to friends with these machines and make sure it works without them having to go through the hassle of trying to build it themselves.
Building a cross compiler for Mac was not easily possible last time I checked because you need parts of the Apple SDK to work on your build system (I tried Linux to Mac, and gave up after many hours). You could probably build a Windows to Linux cross compiler using Cygwin. The easiest way to create a Linux build system though would be to get VirtualBox or any other virtualization software and just install a Linux distribution on it. |
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Mathieu
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« Reply #9 on: October 16, 2008, 12:35:15 AM » |
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We make 69% of our sells to Mac users.
We used Torque Game Engine who is cross-platformes.
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godsavant
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« Reply #10 on: November 07, 2008, 07:48:15 AM » |
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As a mac user, I can safely say that I am starved for games.
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Skofo
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« Reply #11 on: November 07, 2008, 05:14:13 PM » |
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Linux and Macs definitely need more games.
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If you wish to make a video game from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
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Radial
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« Reply #12 on: November 07, 2008, 08:39:59 PM » |
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I think that It would boost sales very noticeably. I don't know if this is true of not, but I heard that Steam actually proposed to Apple for a nice little marriage agreement that would let steam and all its games be available on the Mac; that would be really cool!
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neon
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« Reply #13 on: November 07, 2008, 08:59:08 PM » |
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in fact, i'm surprised that there aren't many games for mac, because mac architecturally is UNIX-based, giving it a lot of potential. also OpenGL is really powerful, and i don't know why it hasn't been used to make really nice mac games..
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Radial
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« Reply #14 on: November 07, 2008, 09:13:29 PM » |
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in fact, i'm surprised that there aren't many games for mac, because mac architecturally is UNIX-based, giving it a lot of potential. also OpenGL is really powerful, and i don't know why it hasn't been used to make really nice mac games..
unix chooses its friends XD |
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Developer
