Apple and Gaming

[wrylachlan]

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see an MX chip in an AppleTV - and if they can put an M2 in an 11” iPad it’s clearly thermally feasible. I’m just not sure Apple is ready to put an M series chip into a device that costs as little as an Apple TV. And the Digital Foundry review notwithstanding I’m not convinced that an A18 couldn’t get it done. Much/most of the insufficiency of the iPhone 15 is not necessarily down to the chip but to how it’s being thermally constrained. My assumption is that the same chip in a less thermally constrained package performs substantially better even with only 2 P-cores.

But rolling for a bit with the idea of an M series Apple TV - what else would you use it for? As noted above, Apple makes general computing platforms, not consoles. If Apple was going to stick an M series chip in an Apple TV (and likely charge more for it) they would want to talk up how that chip is used for more than just games.

Apple Intelligence would be a no-brainer - doing more on device. Maybe there would be some tie in between Apple Intelligence and more home control features. Would they think of leveraging something like the TrueDepth camera to mimic the Vision Pro’s gesture + eye focus tracking UI? It’s hard to imagine what other than games would drive you to put more processing power in the living room.

 

[gabemaroz]

Bare minimum (if you won’t make things better at least stop actively making them worse): rein in the F2P/P2W garbage.

How? There are free to play games on consoles as well. Big ones too. Fortnite for instance. Free doesn’t necessarily mean exploitative but at the same time Fortnite absolutely cashes in on ‘whales.’

 

[gabemaroz]

Windows became dominant in PC gaming without MS having strong first party studios

Fixed that for you. There was no alternative. Also see the history of DirectX.

 

[gabemaroz]

You gut the team and reallocate them throughout the organization. Why, because the product wasn't profitable? No, because the company sees greater value in those workers contributing to Windows or Office or the strategically valuable Internet Explorer.

Interesting thought, especially in light of the recent job cuts in Apple Books and News. Slightly off topic but I’m curious what kind of strategic shift that might prelude.

 

[gabemaroz]

Much/most of the insufficiency of the iPhone 15 is not necessarily down to the chip but to how it’s being thermally constrained.

This is the correct take. Most consoles have underpowered CPUs coupled with mid-range GPUs. Games are largely GPU bound unless they feature a lot of AI or physics. Thermal throttling is the biggest constraint on the iPhone.

The Apple TV had (has?) a fan for a few generations. Not sure if the current one does but it is neither thermally constrained nor battery reliant.

The reality is that any of the M2 chips and above, even with base RAM, are (theoretically) highly performant for a vast library of games.

A YouTube search for switch emulation on a base M2 MacBook Air shows excellent performance for much of Nintendo’s library (also an ARM based device).

I continue to reiterate that dogfooding remains the only viable path to ‘success’ for Apple in the context of the kinds of games the general consensus here wants to play.

 

[gabemaroz]

Valve has released only a handful of games in the last decade but seem to be managing Proton fine without it. Linux benefit’s from Valve’s work on Proton but otherwise isn’t even capable of first party development.

Every single game Valve has released has been best in class to the point that they are all recognized as some of the best games of all time. Some of those decade+ old multiplayer games still have sizable player bases, larger even than modern releases (Sony-published Concord for instance).

If Apple had created even one or two games of Valve quality…

Valve has also been working hard to make Linux viable because they have one trait they share with Apple - controlling the full stack. Institutionally, Valve hates the current OS monopoly on gaming hardware. Everything they do on Linux is an absolute win for end users.

 

[CommanderJameson]

Every single game Valve has released has been best in class

Ricochet.

()

 

[charliebird]

Every single game Valve has released has been best in class to the point that they are all recognized as some of the best games of all time. Some of those decade+ old multiplayer games still have sizable player bases, larger even than modern releases (Sony-published Concord for instance).

If Apple had created even one or two games of Valve quality…

Valve has also been working hard to make Linux viable because they have one trait they share with Apple - controlling the full stack. Institutionally, Valve hates the current OS monopoly on gaming hardware. Everything they do on Linux is an absolute win for end users.

Just yesterday I was reminded of Artifact. Valve does some really cool stuff but they've also had their fair share of disappointments.

 

[galad]

Valve has been working hard to recreate Windows on Linux, they didn't actually improve the native games situation. But it could work, if Linux even get a viable market-share, maybe someone will make native Linux games.

 

[gabemaroz]

Just yesterday I was reminded of Artifact.

Fair enough. I guess they get enough goodwill from me on their hits that the misses don’t even register.

Valve has been working hard to recreate Windows on Linux, they didn't actually improve the native games situation.

Mostly DirectX but same difference. I don’t foresee native Linux games now or really ever much in the future. But a Windows compatibility graphics layer is better than where it was a half a decade ago.

 

[gabemaroz]

All the Resident Evil games on Apple devices were updated today to require an internet connection upon startup.

Software piracy is also absolutely rampant here, meaning that the competitive landscape is especially fierce – to the point that it influences sales and people discount the value in games that aren't 'free' to play. If your game doesn't have some sort of persistent online verification method, it's going to be a tough sell.

Someone at Capcom lurking and taking notes.

 

[CommanderJameson]

All the Resident Evil games on Apple devices were updated today to require an internet connection upon startup.

Both players will be furious!

 

[Brad Oliver]

Also, I'm afraid that Apple and Valve aren't in a friendly relationship these days.

It almost feels like a miracle that Apple and Unity are still not at each others throats.

 

[galad]

On a different topic, to break the usual circular discussion, Godot has got a Metal backend: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/88199

 

[kenada]

There’s also a new attempt to implement Direct3D on Metal. It can already play a few games (including FFXIV).

https://github.com/3Shain/dxmt

 

[dspariI]

There's already D3DMetal in Crossover for 11 and 12. That might not be available to general WINE since it comes from Game Porting Toolkit and probably a result of Codeweaver and Apple's collaboration of GPT.

 

[kenada]

There's already D3DMetal in Crossover for 11 and 12. That might not be available to general WINE since it comes from Game Porting Toolkit and probably a result of Codeweaver and Apple's collaboration of GPT.

I doubt Codeweavers and Apple collaborated on GPTK. There’s no evidence for that. The architecture is at odds with the direction Wine is going, and I doubt the initial release would have been a massive 20k+ line patch against an older distribution of Wine from CrossOver.

The actual patches for GPTK support in Wine are not very big. I’ve been keeping them updated trying to get them merged into the Wine build in nixpkgs (of which I am one of the maintainers). If Apple had written these as PE DLLs, fewer (or possibly no) patches would be necessary. One of the challenges lately is Wine has been making changes to internals that GPTK hooks, which are needed for ARM64EC support in Wine. I’ve been able to keep it updated, but it’s possible that GPTK may stop working on newer versions of Wine in the future.

GPTK also has issues. It’s updated whenever Apple feels like it, and there’s no way to give feedback. It’s also ostensibly for game evaluation, so it’s not even certain whether or how Apple would accept feedback. For example, Black Myth: Wukong causes the OS to crash when played with GPTK on macOS 14 and 15 beta. It’s apparently fixed in the macOS 15.1 betas, but the framerate is erratic, and there are rendering glitches. I tried it with the Visions of Mana demo, and the shadows constantly flickered.

According to the last update, Codeweavers will be supporting DXMT going forward. It already works with a few games (I’m looking forward to updating my FFXIV derivation to use DXMT instead of DXVK and contributing the changes back needed to make it build in nixpkgs). If it can take the place of DXVK, that means there will be a responsible developer and community who actually care about games working and running well on the platform.

 

[gabemaroz]

A great start would be getting Valve to open up Steam.xcodeproj, and click the button that makes ARM code come out.

This thread kind of inspired me to go back and redownload Steam on my MacBook Air M2. I went through the entire list of games in my library that are marked as incompatible due to 32-bit deprecation. All of the Valve originals are absolutely DOA, but I've got more than a handful of games that I thought were no longer playable that run just fine.

Library is about 100 games total, 80 of which were Mac compatible up until Catalina. It's about a 40 / 40 split post-Catalina. Of those 40 labeled incompatible, about 10 of them run fine – most of which seem to be built in Unity. Interesting if nothing else. Obviously not worth the time for someone at Valve to go back and relabel them. And by the same token, they are older games so the developers don't seem particularly phased either.

I'll throw the list out there just for posterity, search engines, curiosity, whatever:

• Crewsaders
• Dangerous Duels
• Death Squared
• Forced: Slightly Better Edition
• Mekazoo
• Party Panic
• Stikbold!
• Torchlight II
• Totemori
• Wand Wars

However, some games that have no such label but are actually incompatible:

• Samurai Gunn
• ibb & obb

 

[Chris FOM]

I don’t know that this actually means anything, but it sure feels representative. Touch Arcade is closing down. I know it’s about the economics of websites in general but it’s hard to look at the mobile gaming market and ask who wants a website about that? And given that TA was about trying to find the good stuff there, has there even been a more Sisyphean task?

 

[gabemaroz]

I know it’s about the economics of websites in general...

I mean Anandtech also recently shut down. I think this is more representative of the consolidation in the ad market (Google / Facebook duopoly), the universal pushback from users against that advertising, and the inability of websites to monetize as a result.

The gaming aspect is germane but not primary. Also something, something, something – tech layoffs, economy, etc.

 

[japtor]

Feels like a lot of stuff has moved to or at least has a presence on YouTube or other video platforms, probably where the viewership/ad revenue is...but doesn't seem like Anandtech ever had that, and looking for Touch Arcade they have a channel, but their "recent" videos are anywhere from 11 months to 4 years old.

 

[gabemaroz]

So Balatro dropped on iOS today, both a paid version and Arcade. Anyone else about to see a productivity nosedive?

 

[wrylachlan]

So Balatro dropped on iOS today, both a paid version and Arcade. Anyone else about to see a productivity nosedive?

Played it for a few minutes and realized I’m just done with the whole rogue-like schtick. There’s a great sameness in the whole dopamine manipulation pattern that I just don’t need in my life.

BUT

What I really came to talk about was when I fired up Balatro to try it my phone went into Game Mode. Why would you need game mode for a pixelated card game???

 

[gabemaroz]

The Love2D engine is clearly pretty inefficient because the battery drain after even a few hours is intense.

Played it for a few minutes and realized I’m just done with the whole rogue-like schtick. There’s a great sameness in the whole dopamine manipulation pattern that I just don’t need in my life.

I think the proliferation of rogue likes is the developer response to the way that Apple Arcade and the subscription services monetize themselves. Developers are paid by monthly hours played.

A game with solid mechanics and infinite replayability pretty much perfectly suits that. Build a good loop and then let the random number generator do the heavy lifting. Profit.

 

[kenada]

What I really came to talk about was when I fired up Balatro to try it my phone went into Game Mode. Why would you need game mode for a pixelated card game???

If it’s like macOS, Game Mode is triggered by how the application goes into fullscreen. There’s no way for applications to request it explicitly. Balatro (or its engine) is probably following the recommended pattern, which will result in triggering Game Mode.

Edit: And have your game’s metadata put it in a game-related App Store category. If you follow the pattern but lack the setting in your app’s plist, it won’t go into Game Mode even if you follow the pattern for fullscreen.

 

[wrylachlan]

A game with solid mechanics and infinite replayability pretty much perfectly suits that. Build a good loop and then let the random number generator do the heavy lifting. Profit.

But these rogue-likes aren’t just an infinite replayability loop. Chess has an infinite replayability loop. Dominion has an infinite replayability loop.

What these games do is different. They’re constantly getting you to replay while feeling a little bit more powerful. It’s tapping into a very specific ‘I’m badass’ dopamine receptor. When you first start playing them it feels great. But I find that after playing a few games that all have that same basic conceit - Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Vampire Survivors, etc. - it starts to feel really manipulative to me.

I know this is a totally different genre and I’m comparing tiny little games to a classic, but contrast to The Witness. In that game you gain precisely zero ‘new powers’ over the course of the game. The ‘I’m badass’ dopamine hit comes from actually progressively getting better at the puzzle solving. Something about that just feels infinitely better than the rogue-like play loop.

Is it possible to generate that same feeling in a randomly generated rogue-ish way? The original rogue did it…

 

[Louis XVI]

But these rogue-likes aren’t just an infinite replayability loop. Chess has an infinite replayability loop. Dominion has an infinite replayability loop.

What these games do is different. They’re constantly getting you to replay while feeling a little bit more powerful. It’s tapping into a very specific ‘I’m badass’ dopamine receptor. When you first start playing them it feels great. But I find that after playing a few games that all have that same basic conceit - Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Vampire Survivors, etc. - it starts to feel really manipulative to me.

I know this is a totally different genre and I’m comparing tiny little games to a classic, but contrast to The Witness. In that game you gain precisely zero ‘new powers’ over the course of the game. The ‘I’m badass’ dopamine hit comes from actually progressively getting better at the puzzle solving. Something about that just feels infinitely better than the rogue-like play loop.

Is it possible to generate that same feeling in a randomly generated rogue-ish way? The original rogue did it…

That’s why they have both chocolate and vanilla ice cream. I love Slay the Spire, and really like Monster Train. It’s early, but so far I’m finding Balatro to be enjoyable, too. And I fucking hate Myst-type puzzle games, which apparently The Witness is. Maybe I’m just not smart, observant, or patient enough to figure out the puzzles myself, but I find that kind of game just endlessly irritating.

So I’m really glad that we have games like Balatro for people like me, and The Witness for people like you. It doesn’t really matter if the roguelikes don’t appeal to you, or the Mystlikes don’t appeal to me, as long as there’s something out there that we can each enjoy playing.

 

[gabemaroz]

They’re constantly getting you to replay while feeling a little bit more powerful. It’s tapping into a very specific ‘I’m badass’ dopamine receptor. When you first start playing them it feels great. But I find that after playing a few games that all have that same basic conceit - Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Vampire Survivors, etc. - it starts to feel really manipulative to me.

I don't think the issue is power fantasy. Chess is a strictly skill based game. There is no element of randomness. On the opposite site of the spectrum, a slot machine is a strictly random game. There is no element of skill.

The random element is probably what frustrates you and attracts others.

First, and we are getting a bit meta-analytical here, randomness has benefits and detriments in game design. Second, and I'm paraphrasing James Carse here, there are two different kinds of games – finite and infinite games.

"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."

I would say that Chess is firmly in the former and rogue-likes fall closer to the latter. However, and I'm doing Carse (a religious scholar) a bit of a disservice here by summarizing an otherwise excellent book, since there is only one infinite game (life itself), I could understand how the latter kinds of games would be off-putting because they are a poor facsimile of real infinite games.

 

[wrylachlan]

It doesn’t really matter if the roguelikes don’t appeal to you, or the Mystlikes don’t appeal to me, as long as there’s something out there that we can each enjoy playing.

But I do enjoy playing them. A lot. That’s sort of the point. I enjoy playing them in the same way I enjoy crushing a bag of Cheetos. It’s fucking awesome. Then 10 minutes later I’m like “Yuck, I ate a whole bag of Cheetos… why the fuck did I do that?”

My contention isn’t that these games are unenjoyable. They’re enjoyable as hell. My contention is that the enjoyableness comes from an addiction mechanism that isn’t healthy.

We often complain about the ‘soak the whales’ issue with microtransactions. But this soak the whale mechanics are really built on the ‘addiction to progression’ mechanism that is core to these rogue-likes.

 

[wrylachlan]

The random element is probably what frustrates you and attracts others.

I specifically called out both a deterministic game (chess) and a game with significant randomness (Dominion). It’s not the randomness I’m focused on but the ‘progression addiction’ piece.

 

[Louis XVI]

But I do enjoy playing them. A lot. That’s sort of the point. I enjoy playing them in the same way I enjoy crushing a bag of Cheetos. It’s fucking awesome. Then 10 minutes later I’m like “Yuck, I ate a whole bag of Cheetos… why the fuck did I do that?”

My contention isn’t that these games are unenjoyable. They’re enjoyable as hell. My contention is that the enjoyableness comes from an addiction mechanism that isn’t healthy.

We often complain about the ‘soak the whales’ issue with microtransactions. But this soak the whale mechanics are really built on the ‘addiction to progression’ mechanism that is core to these rogue-likes.

I reckon I just don’t view games like that at all. As long as you’re not hurting anybody and are able to function adequately in other aspects of life, play whatever makes you happy; you don’t have to eat your spinach.

Take Slay the Spire. I’ve put literally hundreds of hours into it, and enjoyed every minute. I’ve also managed to have a successful career, a fulfilling family and social life, and I’ve put into effect a wildly audacious retirement plan. So was Slay the Spire addicting? A waste of time? Like eating a bag of Cheetos? I’d say definitely not, because it’s been fun and relaxing in the same way that, say, drinking a glass of wine and watching an old Star Trek episode might be.

I don’t think people need to demand more of our leisure time than, well, leisure. If you want something different or more challenging, that’s fine, but I don’t think there’s anything inherently unhealthy about relaxing with a game of, say, Slay the Spire.

 

[Bonusround]

There is something exceptionally satisfying about conquering a game as designed by its creator(s), knowing you have shared the same or similar experience with all players. Other, more adaptive experiences can of course be enjoyable, but for me lack the same sensation of coming eye-to-eye with a designer or design team.

As always IMO, different strokes, etc. etc.

 

[Honeybog]

Put me down in the “I don’t get it” camp. I’ve played Balatro a few times, but I can already tell I’ve got a handful plays left before I get bored with the randomness and starting over from scratch and uninstall it.

I’ve apparently played 26,001 games of solitaire on my phone, so I’m pretty confident I’d like this game way more if it was just poker dice* without all of the roguelike silliness bolted on.

*Actually, I’m positive I’d still be playing MotionX Poker if it didn’t die in the 32 bit purge.

 

[ham bulu]

Y‘all got me curious so I gave that Balatro shabang a try. Turns out I can still smash a bag of Cheetos … who am I kidding, make it three and a half.

 

[japtor]

In general I'd say the good roguelites are good cause the base conceit is fun, and the randomness* can keep things interesting. For me it's always been more about surviving, where badassery can come from both learned skill or fun boost by chance, or some combination of both. Even within the chance elements, there's still space for skill in understanding overall systems and integrating everything learned with whatever new/chance elements you gain or run into.

*the extent and quality of the "random" output can be all over the place so it's not like you can damn the quality as a whole.

Anyways tried Balatro a bit, it's fun. Has the inherent chance element and strategy of card games along with the power up options which are clear/tangible and add it's own strategy element. Seems like there's more I haven't delved into like different decks...but don't really care enough to look into it yet. For myself it's a decent way to kill time but not finding it particularly addicting...probably cause for the most part I've never really been big on min-maxing and upgrade systems as a gameplay mechanic, outside of a few exceptions.

I guess another thing common with other (but not all afaik) roguelites is just kinda...a goal for indefinite survival? There's balance there with the chance elements and difficulty scaling, but generally I don't care for the grind and luck involved to keep replaying consistently. Different games can be better and worse in all these ways of course, for me I feel like the core gameplay mechanic itself is probably the primary factor whether I'll stick with or bounce off a game.

(Let's make chip analogies a thing. For me Balatro is more like those alternative/organic chips that taste ok but also kinda funky enough that I can take it or leave it.)

 

[Vincent Hanna]

Tried it for two minutes and was so offended by the poor interface design I deleted it on principle.

 

[byrningman]

I saw that the whole team at Annapurna Interactive quit in protest of some kind of corporate restructuring. That’s about a dozen people with an outstanding track record in recent years of identifying indie devs and making their games successes. If Apple wanted to give their gaming strategy a boost, they’d be well advised to hire them. The fact that the quit en masse suggests that maybe somebody has already reached out to them (I doubt it’s Apple).

 

[wco81]

Sweeney recently said that AAA games with huge budgets aren't selling.

Well Fortnite is probably one of the reasons other games aren't selling, sucking in a lot of gaming spend by selling in-game stuff, not really requiring a lot of continuing game development, either from SW engineers or artists making game assets.

He probably highlighted it because a lot of those AAA games use Unreal Engine and he gets a per-unit royalty on sales.

Sure there will always be AAA blockbusters but that business model, spend 9 figures to develop and market AAA games, may be disappearing now.

So maybe it's too late for Apple to invest in AAA games, even if they wanted to.

 

[gabemaroz]

So maybe it's too late for Apple to invest in AAA games, even if they wanted to.

Narrator: They don't want to.

I think the release pace for AAA games is going to slow dramatically to be honest. Sony and Xbox have had a few showcases recently with almost nothing new on deck for first-party games. Lots and lots and lots of remakes or remasters though, which have been farmed off to other support studios. Same for Nintendo with the remakes / remasters.

 

[Dano40]

There will be new games in the future. There’s too many people and too much talent in the industry there may be a brief lull but new companies and new people will rise to the top. It’s similar to the world of AI.

There are so many people with talent that want to get into it. They will find ways to get through the cracks and advance in short, they won’t take no for an answer.