Mac games

Mac users, unite.

I want more game choices. PC user's can get every game offered but mac users aren't even offered games by BF that come in both Mac and PC versions, e.g. Herod's Tomb.

Why ??

BF has more Mac games then other sites and I really appreciate that fact but Mac users should be able to get the same games that PC users get when it has also been developed for Mac users at the same time.

Julie, that sounds like a reasonable request to me. I suggest you contact Customer Support and ask why they aren't offering both ... when both are already available.
good luck

hi cesse47

I did it I dropped a line to customer support about the inequities between mac and pc users. Now I hope they don't drop me from the bf game club. Thanks for your suggestion contact to them. xoxjulie

Good for you. Other MAC users have expressed similar feelings...hope you'll share their response when you receive it. good Luck

Hi Julie,

That was one of the main reason I got rid of my Macbook, well not just the games, but several different applications. At the time I was doing a degree on line and while most of the portions of the "classroom" were compatible, there were some that were not. In those cases I had to use my husbands OC. Same thing holds true for my nephew (different online school0. They explained to me in so many words that Apple does not make it easy for a PC type application to be easily used on a Mac. It requires a certain amount of agreements, and if I remember correctly, money. Game developers, software developers don't always think that it's worth the time, money or effort.

At least that's what I've been told.

Lisa

I will be happy to let everyone know what bf tells me. I know it takes more effort and expense to have games mac compatible but Herod's Lost Tomb has already been developed. The cost for an agreement between Iwin and BF is the reason BF hasn't offered it to Mac players I would hope BF would pay and if they couldn't cover their cost raise the price for the game for everyone. Mac players should have as many choices/games as possible, as it would help build up the need for more games and applications to be developed.

I'll be interested to hear what they tell you Julie.

Lisa

I've been asking for over a year. Never got an answer. We are second class members. I do not understand why they can't spare a PC game once a month to give us one of the Exclusives. I'm past frustrated and getting irritated and ready to dump the club just because we can't be treated any better. All of the contests, special deals, exclusives all favor the PC people. Would be nice to have even one game that the PC can't have just to feel as though we are valued at all. Right now, I do not feel that BFG cares at all whether it has any Mac people. I have never gotten any resolutions to any problems with games other than free coupons, and never gotten any answers at all as to why we don't get a few more exclusive games. Shows me they really could care less.

Hi mac users and other interested parties, I did get a response from bf and am posting it here for all to read:

Hi Julie,

Thanks for writing in! My name is Chris and I am part of the Customer Support Team at Big Fish Games. I understand that you would like to know where the Mac version of National Geographic ™ presents: Herod's Lost Tomb is, and why there are more games for PC in general.

More games are made for PC then on Mac in General because of differences in the ability to write programs for each platform. The reason there are more games out there for PC users is because it is easier to write games, I am not really sure about the technicalities, but that is my understanding of why it is that way.

As you have mentioned, there is a Mac version of National Geographic ™ presents: Herod's Lost Tomb out on the web. It is an Iwin game, a competitor site. Since it takes a bit longer to write a mac version of a game, the Mac versions tend to be released later then the PC version. As a result of a contractual agreement we are not able to sell the Mac version. The customer support department does not get news on upcoming releases, and I have no way of knowing when the Mac version will be out.

The promotions for any games on Big Fish Games are for both versions of the games, unless those specific games are not offered on both platforms. If the code or promotion is not working on the Mac version of the game, please contact anyone here at customer support, and I (or anyone here) will be happy to help you with that promotion.

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At least we got a reasonable answer and it looks like the only thing we can actually do is keep asking for more mac games and to be informed when anything new pops up in the horizon.

I hope this helps to understand why we don't get the games we really deserve.

But now about the "promotions" like Octoberfest were there was only 20-30 something games for mac and over 70 for pc users to choose and buy from the "qualifying" list, BF can certainly come up with promotions that would and should be fair to all club members.

Julie

I am so frustrated with the lack of Mac games. I don't think BFG realizes how irritating it is to be a game club member and not really have a selection of games to pick from.

You all are blaming the wrong people. The fact of the matter is, the Mac percentage of users is only about 5% of PC's. Apple does not make things easy for people trying to write programs for the Mac. Maybe you ought to place that frustration with where it belongs, with Apple. In general there are far fewer games available for the Mac, just take a look in an Apple store sometime.

Lisa

LisaB19 wrote:You all are blaming the wrong people. The fact of the matter is, the Mac percentage of users is only about 5% of PC's. Apple does not make things easy for people trying to write programs for the Mac. Maybe you ought to place that frustration with where it belongs, with Apple. In general there are far fewer games available for the Mac, just take a look in an Apple store sometime.

Lisa

Ok, most of this statement is just untrue. Actually, the percentage of Mac users is around 14% in the US. And I suspect if you took out all the cash registers that run Windows, that number would go up. And it would skyrocket if you took out office/business computers. And have you forgotten that the Mac is the number one computer on college campuses?

Also, Apple makes it very easy to write software for the Mac. All the tools you need to write software come free with the Mac. To get the same thing for Windows, you are going to spend quite a bit of money. If you take the time to look at the Mac software market, there is a very large part made up of people who make programs for fun, just because they love using their computers. And quite a few of those programs are free.

Yes, Apple historically has not placed much of an emphasis on gaming, preferring to focus on music/movies/etc. But, there are signs that that is beginning to change. Take a look at the marketing strategy they are using for the iPod Touch for one example.

And do you really think that the Apple Store carries every piece of software available for the Mac? (Hint: It doesn't.)

While, the lack of games Mac users receive is part of the problem we have with BFG, it is not the whole story. It is that the ones we do get come out quite a bit later than the PC versions, sometimes months later. Confounding the frustration is that quite often, a Mac version of the game comes out from Reflexive or some other studio, and for whatever reason BFG can't seem to do the same.

What would make this a lot better is if BFG would just tell us what games they are working on, when they might be coming out, or even *gasp* release a game with Mac and PC versions simultaneously. There are plenty of other game companies that do that.

rascalb wrote:...There are plenty of other game companies that do that.

Okay, I'm confused.

If you know that some other site has the Mac version of the game you want, why don't you just buy it there? Is there some kind of rule in cyberspace that I don't know about that says you have to buy all of your games from the same place?

I mean, if I want to buy tahini, and the store in my town doesn't have it but the store in the next town does, I just go over there and buy it. I don't constantly go into the store here and complain because they don't carry tahini.

To the person above who said there is not a wide selection of games available for Mac, I have to say I hope nobody reads that post & believes it. That's like the exact opposite of the truth. And as for the Apple Store, I have never seen one before that was NOT stocked to the ceiling with tons & tons of software especially games. I just had to say that because it's absolutely not true that there is not a lot of Mac software out there like this.

Good point Julia, but i recommend you contact a support you may get help & deals. Or even good offers. But i do have to thank BF over and over again as they offer a bunch of games to us, and new ones everyday! BF can't get any better!

eleanor1183 wrote:

rascalb wrote:...There are plenty of other game companies that do that.

Okay, I'm confused.

If you know that some other site has the Mac version of the game you want, why don't you just buy it there? Is there some kind of rule in cyberspace that I don't know about that says you have to buy all of your games from the same place?

I mean, if I want to buy tahini, and the store in my town doesn't have it but the store in the next town does, I just go over there and buy it. I don't constantly go into the store here and complain because they don't carry tahini.

Let me expand on your analogy to try illustrate my point. What if you had a club card membership with the store in your town. You would want to buy from that store in order to receive club card points.

There are those of us that are Game Club members. They get credits towards games for their membership fee. So, yes, they could buy the game at full price from another site, but they would rather use their game credits to get the game from BFG.

rascalb wrote:
Actually, the percentage of Mac users is around 14% in the US.

It's still not very many is it ? That still leaves 86% of PC users. It doesn't make good business sense for developers to convert their games to be played on a Mac and I'm sure this is why there are many that just don't do it. Developers want to make money, they're not in the business to be "nice" to the minority.

Personally I would never in a million years buy a Mac. There's not a good enough selection of games for it, a Mac is astronomically expensive (here in France anyway and I'm sure it's the same everywhere) and it's not fully compatible with a lot of software that IS for the Mac. Where I work they have a Mac and when I use Firefox on it I can't tell you the number of times that it's stopped working and I've had to reboot the computer. I've never had that problem on my PC.

I can understand why Mac users are frustrated, but it's not reasonable to expect the same number of games for the Mac as for a PC. It takes longer to convert a game to be Mac compatible so to expect the games that do come out for the Mac to come out at the same time as the PC version is also unreasonable. Companies would lose money doing things that way.

I am a Mac user and it seems to me that the clue to the reason why we aren't getting Mac version on BFG at the same time as they come out on Macgamestore, Reflexive and Playfirst is in the reply from the BFG customer service rep.

There seem to be contractual obligations that prevent them from offering these games to Mac users on BFG. That's all I can figure, cause I can't figure why else Build-a-Lot 2 is offered on other Mac games sites, as well as a host of other Mac games, but is not offered here.

I originally had a once-a-month plan here, but have since reduced my membership to a once-every-other-month because of this. I appreciate that BFG offers a new Mac game every week or so, but if it isn't in the genre I like then I have to usually wait 5-7 days for a new offering, while other Mac game sites continue to offer new games every day or so. This is very disappointing.

I can purchase them at other sites, but the cost of the game is twice what I pay for here, $20. vs. $10., so all I can do is wait and hope they get the game I like... someday.

Aprilfool_fr wrote:
It's still not very many is it ? That still leaves 86% of PC users. It doesn't make good business sense for developers to convert their games to be played on a Mac and I'm sure this is why there are many that just don't do it. Developers want to make money, they're not in the business to be "nice" to the minority.

Personally I would never in a million years buy a Mac. There's not a good enough selection of games for it, a Mac is astronomically expensive (here in France anyway and I'm sure it's the same everywhere) and it's not fully compatible with a lot of software that IS for the Mac. Where I work they have a Mac and when I use Firefox on it I can't tell you the number of times that it's stopped working and I've had to reboot the computer. I've never had that problem on my PC.

I can understand why Mac users are frustrated, but it's not reasonable to expect the same number of games for the Mac as for a PC. It takes longer to convert a game to be Mac compatible so to expect the games that do come out for the Mac to come out at the same time as the PC version is also unreasonable. Companies would lose money doing things that way.

That 86% of computers you refer to are not all in the market for games. A very large part of that are computers in corporate offices where they are not in the market for games. And remember that Macs are the best selling computers to college students. That is a market that should not be trivialized. Oh, and Linux users are in that 86% as well.

Macs are not astronomically expensive. If you spec a Dell or HP desktop to the same level as an Apple desktop, the Mac is the same price or cheaper, in the US. Also, while I know each of our computing experiences is different, I have been a Mac user for decades and I have never had the problems that you speak of. I have many Mac friends who use Firefox and love it.

Also, it doesn't take longer to develop a Mac game. It takes longer for BFG because they allocate a smaller percentage of resources to the Mac development team. Other companies divide their resources more equally. And as to the companies that do, just look at Blizzard. Every computer game they have released from the original Warcraft and Starcraft games until the present World of Warcraft were released for the Mac and the PC simultaneously. And they certainly aren't losing money.

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