During the five years in which I called New York home, there were two habits I developed and never seemed to drop. The first was to always wave whenever someone honked a car horn, the second was to yell at all stretch limousines, "I own all your albums!" I knew, of course, that horns only honk in New York to draw people's attention to an extended middle finger, but only now have I learned that rock stars don't actually travel in stretch limousines. They would, but they're all occupied by Macintosh game reviewers getting a sneak peek at the latest games from MacSoft.

I actually had quite a few questions lined up for product manager Al Schilling and marketing manager Cindy Swanson, but they had so much to show me that I was barely able to get to them. Instead we looked at a few games and we talked about even more.

In a previous report I talked about some of the new titles that MacSoft announced...the RPG adventure Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, the arcade/action game Beachhead 2000, the classic strategy game Risk 2, the Rainbow Six expansion pack Rogue Spear, and Wheel of Fortune with Vanna White and Jeopardy with Alex Trebek. I will certainly have more reports on these games as their development continues, as well as any of the other 13 titles MacSoft has licensed from Hasbro, many of which will be included in the Mac Kids' Pack.

But I was in a stretch limousine, you see, and I wanted to stay there a bit. It was comfy, and the MacSoft gang were an entertaining bunch, so I managed to come up with a few other questions to kill time until lunch.

One of my first questions was asked somewhat out of morbid curiosity. Having reviewed Bingo Bingo Bingo a couple months ago (somewhat negatively, I should add), I was compelled to find out how it has done. Sadly, it hasn't moved too well, but Al Schilling didn't seem upset about this. He told me the game was inexpensive to produce, and was mainly released to test the waters for a certain demographic. Older women are buying those iMacs, you see, and you can't rely on Unreal Tournament sales figures to see if those ladies are buying computer games. Al admitted that it's hard to make Bingo entertaining on a computer, but the company expects to do much better with comparable games such as Scrabble and Monopoly. If the games sell like they attracted players at the Expo, they'll no doubt do very well.

The multitude of games that MacSoft is lining up led me to wonder how they go about getting PC games. Do they seek out PC developers or do the games' original developers seek them out? Not surprisingly, this has recently changed. According to Al, MacSoft used to go knocking on doors. These days, with the promise (albeing still unrealized) growth in Mac gaming market, many developers come to MacSoft. In fact, they often have to turn PC developers away, the reasons for which can vary greatly. Happily, one of the main reasons for this is that many, and I mean many, PC games just aren't worth the effort. MacSoft realizes this and spares us the agony of, oh, say Phantasmagoria II.

And how do they decide upon what games to go with? Sales, either potential or proven PC, play an important role, of course. But other factors such as ease of the port (has the engine already been converted, for example), fan base (tapping the Star Trek fans with Klingon Honor Guard) and saturation of market (do we need another real-time strategy?) also come into play.

And finally, after they confirmed repeatedly that they can't get me season passes to the Minnesota Wild, I asked how they feel about Apple's current gaming "strategy." Surprisingly, the MacSoft gang is quite enthusiastic about Apple, stating that the situation has improved quite a bit over just the past few months. Wheras they can see why developers stay discouraged, MacSoft doesn't need Apple's direct help. What they need are more retail channels, and Apple has opened quite a few as of late, the latest of which are Babbage's and Circuit City. With more Apple presence in stores comes more shelf space, and more shelf space means more sales.

When I eventually left the meeting, I found myself making a bee-line for the MacSoft booth. After being with teased with what was to come, I had to satiate myself with what was already there, including the demo of Links LS and the recently released Asteroids. MacSoft has continuously brought us some of the greatest games the Mac has seen, and thankfully, they show no signs of slowing down. I have my have work cut out for me as I review all their games in the months ahead, but with their diverse line-up and consistant quality, I'm sure I won't mind it.

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September 09, 2010