Poll: How often do you play video games on your Mac?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: How often do you play video games on your Mac? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=446)

[zelmo]

Never. That's what I have a PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance SP, and PSP for....

[iGary]

Never.

Video games are like crack, I'd never leave the house if I had them. :eek:

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Went with "Occasionally" as I play CM4 every now and then... used to play a bit MOO through Classic, but since I busted classic and haven't bothered to fix it CM4 is enough for now (although I have a couple of games, among them Warcraft 3 and Civilization 3 which I'll give a try whenever I get the time... ;))

[tangerineyum]

Never. That's what I have a PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance SP, and PSP for....

Exactly! The last game I played on my mac was Nanosaur that shipped with my Tangerine iMac.

[feyd_ehway]

does solitaire count?
if not, no. my poor ibook can only take so much....
-feyd

[varmit]

I play on my PB:
Command and Conquer: Generals
Age of Mythology

My PowerMac I play:
Call of Duty
BattleField 1942
Ages of Empire II
Age of Mythology
Halo
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Spider - Man 2 (wasn't that great of a PC game either)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003
Unreal Tournament 2004

I'll probably get packs for C&C and when I beat that, I'll try out the pack to Call of Duty. I have already played Jedi Knight 2 on the PC and beat it. Same goes for Allied Assault packs. I'll do Doom III when I get a better PowerMac.

[Trowaman]

I own Starcraft and Star Wars: Galactic Battleground but neither has gotten any play for a few months now, closer to a year actually . . .

On another sad note, Metroid Prime 2, Prince of Persia, and Cubivore have all gotten 0-little play time on my game cube due to the fact that I have so many tests now in college trying to make some decent grades.

. . . I miss Samus :(

[csubear]

Only need one game

world of warcrack.

[wordmunger]

I'd be interested to see this question framed differently: hours/week spent gaming on a Mac:

0
2 or less
2-5
5-10
10-20
20-40
more than 40

I'd be in the 2-5 category.

[Spades]

Never. After all, World of Warcraft isn't a game. It's a way of life!

[bousozoku]

I play UT or UT2004 everyday. Usually, I'll play a Mah Jongg solitaire game while I'm waiting for something to finish.

[mcadam]

Never ever. Don't have a single game on my computer... exept perhaps if the chess, wich came with it, is still hiding around somewhere. Part of the reason is that I'm afraid I would get addicted. I'm very liable to things like that.

A

[yellow]

I'd be interested to see this question framed differently: hours/week spent gaming on a Mac:

0
2 or less
2-5
5-10
10-20
20-40
more than 40

I'd be in the 2-5 category.

As a beta tester.. 10-20. (sometimes 20-40)

[Yvan256]

Never.

Video games are like crack, I'd never leave the house if I had them. :eek:

Dude, what do you think the Nintendo DS and PSP are for? ;)

[rickvanr]

I'd be interested to see this question framed differently: hours/week spent gaming on a Mac:

0
2 or less
2-5
5-10
10-20
20-40
more than 40

I'd be in the 2-5 category.

That would be misleading though. I occasionally play games, but not every week. If it was the same scale, but every year... I might be 2-5, 5-10...

I have a console, so I only really play FPS on the mac.

[PlaceofDis]

i only play occasionally some Quake III Arena and Diablo II, both have been neglected as of late, but come summer ill probably get back into them both a bit more, oh and lets not forget Return To Castle Wolfenstien too!

[Lord Blackadder]

Well folks, a glance at the graph from this poll shows us why Apple lags in gaming. There isn't a large enough proportion of Apple's modest installed customer base into gaming to invest heavily in a non-productive activity. Thank you Apple - this encourages me to work harder. :D

I play a couple missions on Call of Duty a few times a week, and might fire up Warcraft 3 or Diablo 2 LoD every now and then.

[nagromme]

I game on my PowerBook just about every day. UT2004 mainly--a must-have, considering the endless free add-ons that create whole new games of every type. It's like a lifetime subscription to a wide range of 3D gaming for under $40! Complete with free online multiplayer and voice chat. Get UT2004, download Jailbreak, Chaos, Alien Swarm, D**nation, Metaball, Air Buccaneers, UnWheel, CarBall, Star Wars Troopers, Classic Domination, Aerial View, and a few dozen new weapons, vehicles, characters, mutators, taunt sounds, and map packs. Now just TRY to get bored :) All add-ons are cross-platform, plus there are tons of Mac-specific launchers and utilities to get the most from the game. The only thing missing is editing tools... which have been announced for Mac with the amazing new Unreal 3 Engine :) And other recent games are tapping into Mac creativity the same way. It seems that game makers are starting to realize that the maps and add-ons made by Mac users can help strengthen the game for ALL platforms. More importantly, some of them are moving away from Microsoft-only dev environments.

I also still enjoy Giants, Alice, AvP, Descent 3 and others, plus lots of great freeware/shareware (including some Mac-only favorites).

As for having a Windows PC for gaming... that's an OK option for some, and one I respect, but for me, no thanks. The only thing I'd be likely to use my PC for is map-building perhaps: the most important weak spot (for now) in the Mac game scene.

Here's why I don't game on Windows:

A) I don't want to troubleshoot, update, patch, or otherwise deal with Windows' shortcomings. Games are among the most intensive and demanding apps, yet don't get the same testing and debugging as, say, a Photoshop or Final Cut. That means games are finnicky enough already--I don't need to deal with Windows complicating that. This impression comes not only from my own experience (I do have a PC still) but from the people I know. IF you have the know-how AND desire AND time to troubleshoot Windows and keep it patched and up-to-date, and deal with bad side-effects of updates meant to fix problems, then a PC can make a fine game machine. If NOT, then you are taking the chance of problems you don't want to face. You MAY do just fine--and Macs aren't perfect either. No platform ever will be. But it's a matter of degree, and I have found keeping games running on PC to be a MUCH more frustrating thing than on Mac OS X. In the end, Mac ease-of-use and OS X stability benefit ANY kind of user--gamers too.

B) Mac has more great games than I could ever play or buy anyway. No, not all of them, and sometimes later--but that often means they come out more stable than the first, buggy PC release anyway. That can almost be a privilege! And if you want to brag about having the latest game the moment it's out (which does nothing to make that game more FUN), a PC won't help you forever either: In a year or two, the "latest" games won't run well enough to brag about on ANY computer from today! (Of course, for more money, you can keep upgrading any tower, PC or Mac.)

C) I like the simplicity of having all my "stuff"--music, work, photos, games--in ONE place. This is especially important since I'm a big portable fan and game on a PowerBook. (PSP is cool, but UT2004 on the road at 15.2" is cooler :D ) But even on the desktop, I'd rather have one do-it-all machine--and that's a Mac for me.

D) The money I spent on a PC is money I could have put towards a new PowerMac G6 :) I know that's what I feel about the last PC I bought--the PC that was nothing but trouble and has lost out to Virtual PC despite the speed. (I'll take VPC convenience over speed any day.)

E) My Mac is plenty fast enough to run the detail I demand at smooth framerates. Some people confuse FPS numbers with having fun, and with some games (Doom)--for the time being (while Apple/ATI/nVidia keep improving OpenGL)--those people may enjoy a PC more. Maybe the benchmarks will entertain them enough to be worth having a PC. I do have the desire to run at detail levels so high I can't tell the difference, and get framerates better than TV all the while--but that's a SECOND priority after having FUN. (And I suspect that the casual gamers, on ANY platform, far outnumber the people with standards as high as mine.) And 3D on the Mac is designed BETTER than on Windows--with the OpenGL layer separated off from the driver layer. That makes OpenGL available to all apps equally, simultaneously, and makes things like Exposé and Screen Zoom work great. It also prevents the kinds of hacks that Windows allows, which improve framerates. I'm willing to pay that price to get the benefits of better OS design. That's one of many factors that can make framerates on SOME games lower (but still great fun) on a Mac. It's a factor I hope Apple never changes. I don't want MS-style GPU hacks, and I don't want games taking over the whole system like they can in Windows. (But I am glad Apple is now hiring people to get OpenGL even faster.)

F) I don't want to support yet another Microsoft "standard"--DirectX. Linux and Mac are on the same side here. I'd rather see more effort go into true open technologies like OpenGL, OpenAL, etc., rather than into making Microsoft stronger and richer.

Now the reasons I WOULD consider a PC for gaming :)

A) Creating user-built maps and mods. The only ones I've made were for Descent 3, and the tools DID run well in Virtual PC, on a lowly PowerBook G3, textured OpenGL and all. But with newer 3D games, I just don't think the editing tools are going to cut it in VPC :D

B) To build a machine myself just for fun. I can see the fun in that hobby, and it's not all that doable with Mac. In the end, I wouldn't want to deal with the headache of it, and lack of support, and I don't have the technical know-how to do it right. But I can certainly understand PC-building as a hobby--or as a money-saver.

C) Surround sound is more widely used in PC games. Macs are lagging in this area for the moment--some games don't support it, or support it late via a patch, despite the fact that even PowerBooks can be bought with digital optical audio out these days. Surround sound in games doesn't matter to me now, and it will probably be a non-issue by the time I actually HAVE surround sound in my computer room. But it's cool, and it's something that some people do want.

As for consoles... a console is a great alternative for some gamers and some game types--but that's a personal choice, and there are good reasons why a console is NOT acceptable for some of us.

Sure--cheap and trouble-free! I appreciate that. But still no good for me. I want thousands of downloadable free maps and mods, backed by a strong community of user/developers. I want downloadable free demos. I want free Internet multiplayer--on broadband, wireless OR modem, whatever is on hand at the moment--compatible with thousands of players on multiple different platforms. I want modification tools--whether that means editing config files or real GUI apps--and the option to script my own. I want downloadable patches that add user-requested features and fixes. I want gaming on the road with a REAL screen, not a pocket device. I want to be able to run multiple apps along with my games--to add voice chat, use instant messaging or email to gather friends for a game, look up tips on the web mid-game, or simply to customize my input devices or GPU settings. (The "fixed" nature of a console platform is its greatest strength--but also a weakness.)

Most importantly... I DEMAND precise, natural mouse aiming. (I despise gamepads--that's a personal call, but first-person aiming with one is NEVER going to match the intuitiveness of mouse aiming.) I demand a configurable 100-key control board, which also happens to allow text messaging. I demand a sharp LCD screen that shows the detail of the tank across the valley AND makes text output readable without covering the whole screen.

Console games often look great--but a lot of that is BECAUSE TVs have poor quality. That masks a lot of defects in game graphics. An X-Box runs at 640x480, but you don't expect more from TV, you just enjoy the size. Plug your PowerBook into TV at 640x480 and you'll be amazed at how great it looks with a 3D game. TV blurriness hides the low res and makes low detail settings look like more than they are. It's a nice, natural, "movie-like" look, especially if you enable FSAA.

But much as I enjoy gaming from PowerBook to TV sometimes, a blurry TV just doesn't compare to a nice sharp computer display. I run UT2004 at full native widescreen 1280x854, and compared to that sharpness, TV is just a novelty--fun for sitting back from the screen. My next game machine will be a PowerMac G6 with at least a 23" display, and a GPU that makes an X800 look like a joke. I suspect UT2006 will run nicely :) And it will be much sharper and higher detail than console games.

Consoles are gaining some PC-like features... but they are far, FAR behind in terms of having anything close to what UT2004 offers on a Mac.

Not everyone has the same needs and wants that I do. Whatever you choose for gaming, have fun! And it's nice to see that SOME people on the poll are using their Macs for something serious :D

[lasuther]

I'm a big Blizzard fan. One disk has the Mac and PC version, so I can load it on my iBook and my Dell. Warcraft 3 runs fine on the system below, and I just started on World of Warcraft on the iBook. WoW is truely the greatest game ever. I'll buy any game from Blizzard because they make great games and seem to support the Mac well.

lasuther

[SPUY767]

I game on a rather regular basis, maybe 45 minutes a day. Doom III, UT 2004,2003, CoD, etc. I love mac gaming, with exception to performance, which is a great deal more than ample for me, I love how I can work in motion for an hour and a half, and fire up doom 3 right after and splatter some less fortunate individual on the roof. The thing is like best about this, and it really spanks PC gaming right in the groin, is the ability to install as much crap as you can imagine on a mac, and have it not slow down one iota.

[Jaffa Cake]

Pretty much daily for me. I don't have an especially large library of games (strangely enough!) but there are a couple of favorites I'll spend an hour or so on - Football Manager 2005 and Knights of the Old Republic are my current picks. If I were a more serious gamer though I'd probably invest in a Playstation or something, but my Mac is fine for my needs at the moment.

[Fiveos22]

Video games are like crack, I'd never leave the house if I had them. :eek:


Damn straight. I've fallen into that pit a few times, with Unreal Tournament, UT2k3, and Warcraft...but every time I've been able to bail out my sinking social ship.

Until a week ago, when Enemy Territory was released for OSx.

Now I'm addicted again.

[ziwi]

LOL - It can be an addiction ;) that is why I try not to get into it at all - so my answer is no....

[johnnyjibbs]

I voted 'Never' because there wasn't a 'Rarely' option. I have one game for my Mac: Sim City 4 - but I haven't played it much recently. I download the odd demo (UT2004 doesn't seem to work since 10.3.6) but I don't really bother. I don't even game as much as I used to, even though I do get the GameCube and N64 out for a blast every once in a while.

[nagromme]

A preview of what I'll be doing with my next Mac (actual in-game shot of "Envy"):

http://www.beyondunreal.com/image.php?src=staff/raptor/envy2.jpg

The engine is supposed to surpass Doom III. And the editing tools for "Envy" will be available on Mac!

[Mavimao]

I don't play many new games. The last one I played was Metal of Honor...and that was on my parents' PC.

On a mac, I use Emulators and play the ol' classics from the NES, SNES, Genesis (Master system) and Gameboy.

Nothing beats the addiction that is Mario/Tetris/Sonic.

[Eniregnat]

Never.

Video games are like crack, I'd never leave the house if I had them. :eek:

Woot! Exactly!
With FCP, Soundtrack, LiveType, M$ Office, iLife, etc..*I just don't have room on my tiny little 40Gb Pb. I manage all of the media for editing on separate drives, but there is just enough room for something trivial like a game. ADD asserts its self. Actually, I shouldn't have time for games. I am behind on one editing project, the GF would like to see more of me, I need to get back to working out, and I am behind on a dozen art projects and stories. Oh, plus school- I have to finish at least my BA. Games, they are crack!

HomeWorld 2 beckons from time to time.

I need caffine!I must resist... must get back to work...ignore Internet and games… must reach bioregenerative chamber or coffee house...


* I paid for these applications.

[Eevee]

I'd be interested to see this question framed differently: hours/week spent gaming on a Mac:

0
2 or less
2-5
5-10
10-20
20-40
more than 40

I'd be in the 2-5 category.


5-10/week playing Halo online on my PB. Embarrassed because I'm getting killed by 11 yr olds!

nagromme, so you play UT2K4 on your PB? What are you PBs spec? I'm thinking of getting this soon.

Like coffee, games are addicting!



---------
1.5 Ghz PB, 15", 2 gig RAM, 128 VRAM, 80 g HD

[aloofman]

My Mac games are limited to some creative shareware games that I've found occasionally. I haven't bought a Mac game in a store since OS X came out.

Frankly, I much prefer the console to playing games on a computer where I have to learn 20 buttons to play. That's why I bought a PS2 and Gameboy, so I wouldn't have to bother with playing games on a keyboard. That, and those two platforms have far more games I'm interested in than are available for the Mac.

[nagromme]

nagromme, so you play UT2K4 on your PB? What are you PBs spec? I'm thinking of getting this soon.

My specs are lower than yours. First-gen 15" AlBook, 1.25, 64 VRAM. I keep detail settings high but not maxed, and and run at full res. Certain maps are slow (playable), but they're the exception. If I run too many bots, the AI gets slow. 4 on 4 is fine. It runs at least as well as Halo if not better, I'm told. Go for it! UT2004 is more than just a game, it's a platform--with TONS of stuff out there for the downloading! Start at http://planetjailbreak.com :)

[wrldwzrd89]

When it comes to games, I'm all over the place. I have a Gameboy Advance SP, GameCube, and N64 (all of which get regular use), a collection of emulators and games for various older systems (these get used frequently as well), a Mac-only game called RealMyst (which I play rarely), and various shareware and Classic games (all get occasional use). The best category that describes my gaming habits is "Frequently".

[miloblithe]

I'm in the 2-5 category, but once I'm done with grad school I think I've earned a 24-7 week of Civ3. Let's see. That'd put me the the 150+ hours category.

[tersono]

To echo many others on here; Never - that's what my Xbox is for

[Eevee]

Thanks nagromme ! Will get it this Saturday.


Then I'll be in the 10-20 hr/week! :D Time to get the 23" LCD for my PB before I go blind! Ha..Ha.

[rickvanr]

so you play UT2K4 on your PB? What are you PBs spec? I'm thinking of getting this soon.
---------
1.5 Ghz PB, 15", 2 gig RAM, 128 VRAM, 80 g HD

I've played UT2K4 on my powerbook much better then I thought it would play. It was very playable, with little slow down on my Titanium Powerbook 1GHz, 512MB RAM, 64MB VRAM, 60GB 4200RPM drive

[risc]

I play World of Warcrack everyday on my Mac.

[wdlove]

I seem to be in the minority, but I haven't played any video games on my Mac. In my case the reason is that I have very poor eye hand coordination.

[SiliconAddict]

Never. That is what the PC is for.

[Covington]

I purposely "forgot" my video games at my brothers' house so that I could pass my classes. If I had the video games, I would never leave my room.

[Nermal]

I have WoW and was playing it daily, although I've stopped for a while because I have a big project to do (my prepay card has run out, so that's helping my break the habit!)

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy IX over the past few days, now that I've eventually managed to get it running on Mac (it's for PlayStation, but no PSX emulators for Mac will run the game due to its copy protection). The solution was to get the USA version which isn't copy protected.

[MattG]

Nah, I've got a PC for that. I've come to terms with it...PC for games, Mac for everything else :)

[eXan]

Playing 3-5 hours a day :D

mainly UT2004 :)

[7on]

I play once in a while.

not as often as I'd like (<-- visual communications major) but meh, when I do game it's mostly GameCube.

That and Zelda is my heroine.

[Eric5h5]

Almost daily...PCs are too annoying to bother with, I'm not really into consoles though I'll buy the occasional console port, and contrary to popular belief there are enough decent Mac games that playing daily is way too easy.

--Eric

[ham_man]

None, except for Solitaire. I had to ease into Mac OS X from Windows...:p

[brap]

Every now and again. Say, 5-10 hours/weekly, usually in big-ish blocks.

I've recently been playing Postal 2 through again, so my average is way over what it usually is... otherwise, it's OpenTTD. Planning on going through Doom 3 just to say I did it on my tiny little Powerbook.

[Fiveos22]

Almost forgot...

every single one of the Escape Velocity series...the greatest time killers of all. I must have played EV Nova for 48 hours straight after finals freshman year!

I don't know what would happen if they ever made another.

[painimies]

3 letters: CIV

[mad jew]

Up until ET was released for Mac I'd have had to say never but things change... ;)

[JzzTrump22]

Atleast once a day. But not for very long, and it's usually like tetris or something, just to kill time.

[GodBless]

Why play games? Macs were made for productivity.

[yellow]

Why play games? Macs were made for productivity.

All work and no play makes jesus a dull boy.

[~loserman~]

Why play games? Macs were made for productivity.

Translated as: Gaming on the Mac? We don't do it because Mac's suck at it.

[wrldwzrd89]

Translated as: Gaming on the Mac? We don't do it because Mac's suck at it.
Macs are GREAT at 2D games - the ones I like the most. Many of the ones I play are Mac exclusives.

[~loserman~]

Macs are GREAT at 2D games - the ones I like the most. Many of the ones I play are Mac exclusives.

Hmmm
Like what? The Apple Puzzle game? :)

A side note here....
The Puzzle Game is Back in Tiger as a widget. It is a picture of a Tiger.

[wrldwzrd89]

Hmmm
Like what? The Apple Puzzle game? :)

A side note here....
The Puzzle Game is Back in Tiger as a widget. It is a picture of a Tiger.
Too many to list. They're all for the Classic environment, however.

If you must have some examples:
Fungus (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/game/brd/fungus-20.hqx.txt)
Bert (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/game/arc/bert-11.hqx.txt)
Boingo Electro (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/game/arc/boingo-electro.hqx.txt)

These three are pretty old, and will most likely never make the leap to Mac OS X - that doesn't mean they aren't still fun to play.

[~loserman~]

Too many to list. They're all for the Classic environment, however.

If you must have some examples:
Fungus (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/game/brd/fungus-20.hqx.txt)
Bert (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/game/arc/bert-11.hqx.txt)
Boingo Electro (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/game/arc/boingo-electro.hqx.txt)

These three are pretty old, and will most likely never make the leap to Mac OS X - that doesn't mean they aren't still fun to play.

Ya my kids played the old classic games.....
My post was in jest.

[dhracer88]

Never. I use photoshop, ms office, ilife, but no games yet. When I have some $, age of mythology and the sims 2 are likely to find their way onto my hard drive. I do have a PS2, xbox, and (just found) Sega genesis. They're great dust-magnets :)

JM

[~loserman~]

Never. I use photoshop, ms office, ilife, but no games yet. When I have some $, age of mythology and the sims 2 are likely to find their way onto my hard drive. I do have a PS2, xbox, and (just found) Sega genesis. They're great dust-magnets :)

JM

SIMS 2?
Is there an OS X release?

Oh just checked I see it is currently in Beta...
Can't wait :)