Posts Tagged ‘Mac Games’

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More Mac games at the Expo, Part 3

This is the final Mac games post of my 3-part series (read parts 1 and 2). There’s a whole bunch of companies makings games for the Mac who were demoing products at Macworld 08, and I wanted to mention just a few more.

Ambrosia is soon to release a really great-looking game called Aquaria that was described as an “ethereal action/adventure underwater fantasy game.” A guy not employed by Ambrosia had logged so many hours on their demo this week that they let him show me the game. It looked gorgeous. You play as a mermaid trying to reunite her people, who are scattered across what looks like a vast system of underwater caves. Can’t wait to play this game. Ambrosia is also putting out Multiwinia, a sequel to Darwinia, later this year.

January 18, 2008 at 11:59 pm by . | 3 Comments.

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More Mac games at the Expo, Part 2

I’m very glad EA has returned to releasing games for the Mac, because they have some of the coolest titles that are available on the platform. I already discussed Spore at length, so I’ll concentrate on a few of their other games that are demoing at Macworld 08.

January 18, 2008 at 3:19 pm by . | 6 Comments.

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More Mac games at the Expo, Part 1

I promised more coverage of the game offerings here at Macworld 08, and I’m delivering. This is going to be a three-part series of blogs detailing the plans that various companies have for games on the Mac in 2008.

I’m going to start with Aspyr. You may remember from my last post on Mac games at the Expo that they specialize in porting games from the PC to the Mac. They’ve got a huge year coming up, as their new releases are all big gaming franchises being made available for the first time on the Mac.

January 18, 2008 at 1:16 am by . | 4 Comments.

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Make Your Own Mac Games

Macworld Senior Editor Peter Cohen gave a presentation at MacWorld Expo today providing resources for Mac users to learn how to make their own games. The sites that he suggested were mostly for the creation of simple games but provided some options for more advanced users as well.

Here are the five sites that Cohen suggested would be good for guys (or gals) interested in making their own Mac games:

January 17, 2008 at 9:59 pm by . | 1 Comment.

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Quote of the Day

I just walked past a couple of guys talking near the presentation rooms at Moscone West and overheard one say to the other:

“Having a Mac is protection from problems.”

This seems to sum up what people have been telling me all week as I’ve discussed with them my reasons for switching from a PC to a Mac. Even before I came to the MacWorld Expo, I was being told that Macs rarely require tech support and that they have a much lower security risk than PCs.

Of course, even Macs pose some problems. There’s a presentation here at MacWorld in about an hour on how to protect yourself from those risks. I’ll be missing out on it myself because I’m more interested in learning how to make games for the new Mac I’m going to get. But it’s nice to know that just getting one is a step closer to being more secure!

January 17, 2008 at 5:38 pm by . | 6 Comments.

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Girl Gamers at MacWorld

The first presentation of the Users Conference that I attended was this morning’s Vision Track presentation on the relationship between Web 2.0 and e-Learning. One of the things that speaker Nick Floro talked about was that educators can use gaming, especially interactive gaming platforms such as Second Life, to engage students who are used to dividing their attention amongst multiple things at once. (He explained how you can create classrooms in Second Life and use them to present video materials in a sort of online virtual interactive classroom).

January 16, 2008 at 3:32 pm by . | 1 Comment.

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Mac Games at the Expo

Mac gamers: the phrase is pretty much a contradiction of terms. Or at least it has been traditionally. There are actually some encouraging signs at this year’s Macworld Expo that the gaming industry is finally coming around to acknowledging Macs.

For one thing, there’s a grand-looking “Mac Games” pavilion. True, it isn’t quite bursting with game demos, but at least there are enough to allow for an entire Mac Games pavilion. They were all supplied by the few game developers that have booths at the Expo, so I’ll just describe the games by company.

January 16, 2008 at 12:03 am by . | 5 Comments.

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Super Sensory Overload

I spent several hours this morning wandering around the exhibits at Moscone West. The best description that comes to mind is “sensory overload”. There are so many sounds and sights, things to play with and people to talk to. I’ve just been going from booth to booth, trying to take everything in.

The Digital Photography stuff has captured most of my attention. There’s an exhibit of glamorous portrait photos when you first walk into the West Hall that immediately caught my eye. The bulk of my morning was spent wandering in the area around this checking out the different photo things that you can do if you know what you’re doing. The options range from simple services like getting your own photos made into useable postage stamps to more complex design applications that you can use on your computer. I’m still trying to get my mind around most of what I learned today as far as taking and manipulating pictures goes. And I’m starting to think I’d benefit from a more in-depth description at one of the presentations happening tomorrow or Thursday.

The rest of my morning was spent in the games section of MacWorld’s exhibits. I messed around with a few different games (Neon Tango, Sims) but spent most of my time learning about EVE Online. It’s a complex multi-player virtual SciFi world. I was under the impression that there aren’t too many MMOGs for Macs (World of Warcraft was the only one I really knew). Asking around a bit, I found that there are some but that EVE Online is, according to the people promoting it anyway, significantly more involved than any of the others that are currently available. I played for awhile but can’t say that I really grasped it too well. I suppose that’s a good excuse to spend some more time over in that area of the Expo!

For now, though, I think I need to go grab a late lunch. There is just too much information and activity going on here to keep running on empty. If lunch doesn’t refresh me, perhaps I’ll try napping in one of the MetroNaps machines that everyone’s taking pictures of at the front of the exhibit hall. They look a bit space-agey but I imagine they’re relaxing!

January 15, 2008 at 5:07 pm by . | 4 Comments.

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