No games for the Mac and gaming micro-content

When you tell someone you're buying a Mac and they throw the No_Mac_Game FUD in your face, they're being lazy. Someone, somewhere, at some time, told them that "Mac Games Suck" and that's simple idea to remember. FUD paints a world of black and white and the good news is it's all gray people. Rands In Repose: Silver Bullet: No Games for the Mac

I thought this was appropriate since I am (still) enjoying World of Warcraft. Pretty much all of Blizzard's games are cross-platform, and usually ship with one set of CDs as well. Actually, the guys at Electronic Boutique where I bought the game almost didn't want to sell it to me when I mentioned I was playing on a Mac.

I don't care to get involved in the FUD one way or another -- if I was really interested in playing games I would get an Xbox or a PlayStation.

Something else that I wanted to point out was the other company referenced in Rands' post: Bioware.

Their main products are based around the DnD role-playing system -- they've used it to development the fantasy-based Neverwinter Nights as well as the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. But both are platforms (with NN being more of one).

Neverwinter Nights ships with full development tools. You can make your own modules, including full scripting abilities, your own persistent servers, etc. etc. Every pen-and-paper RPG playing nerds fantasy.

And now Bioware has opened up a store. Small, high-quality, very inexpensive modules that you can play after you've finished the main "game". This goes beyond mods or add-ons for other games -- these modules are completely self-contained, and need only the original platform purchase to enable people to start playing.

Theoretically individuals could start charging for these modules as well. Gaming micro-content, which has been out of reach because of the now millions of dollars that is required to develop (and more importantly, market) a game.

I see modular sales like this as being another valid business model vs. online games like World of Warcraft that charge ongoing subscription fees.

Interesting times. I'm off to go summon some demons with my gnome engineer.