In what can only be considered a whirlwind of events (for us, at least), Macworld 2011 has come and gone. For Aspyr and GameAgent, it was a two-day adventure to San Francisco and back that was incredibly fun and yet incredibly exhausting. Plans were made, plans were changed, and some plans were ditched entirely. As a Macworld rookie, I had no idea what to expect on the trip. All I knew was that I was anxious to see the city of San Francisco and the legions of Mac lovers that were sure to converge on the City by the Bay.  Below are a few notes and takeaways from the trip. Meeting fans on the floor without a centralized/static location is HARD. As many of you probably know, we had plans to hand out fliers with coupon codes and some special t-shirts that we made specifically for Macworld in order to promote Aspyr and GameAgent. The thoughts going in were that, not only would we get to spread the word to potential new customers and fans, but that are current fans would get some awesome swag and discounts for future purchases. All they had to do was find us and let us know they wanted to take a picture! Of course, that whole “finding us” part turned out to a bit trickier than expected. For one, we weren’t always necessarily easy to spot; it’s not like we had giant signs that said, “HEY, WE REPRESENT ASPYR/GAMEAGENT, AND WE WANT TO GIVE OUT FREE STUFF.”  Two, we kind of moved around quite a bit, usually migrating from end of the show floor to the other.  Part of this was just a desire to see all the cool stuff that various vendors were showing off; the other part was that we thought it would be immediately obvious who we were while walking around (what an EGO!). Wear your walking shoes. From what I understand, this year’s Macworld was smaller than it has been in the past. It was all condensed into one hall of the Moscone Center as opposed to spread out.  However, that doesn’t change the fact that visitors spend a lot of time on their feet! Between walking to and from the Moscone Center and walking the show floor, I’m fairly certain I had walked an extended marathon’s worth by the end of day 2.  If you plan on going next year, do yourself a favor and get some comfortable footwear. There is most certainly an app (or a case, or a screen protector, or a *name your accessory*) for that. Just, “Wow!”  If there was one thing that Macworld 2011 didn’t have (aside from an official Apple appearance), it was a shortage of cool apps, gadgets, and gear for all of your Mac and iOS needs (and then some).  Some of my favorites included the iFusion (a landline phone that connects via bluetooth to your iPhone, something my wife desperately needs), the sleek iPhone and iPod battery-extending cases by Mophie (they extend your battery life by 2-3 times, while still looking sleek and stylish), and the completely over-the-top-but-still-totally-awesome iGrill (essentially a fancy meat thermometer–I’m a sucker for cooking and kitchen gadgets). On a related note, people love their mobile iOS. The expo may be called “Macworld,” but I think at least 80% of the floor was dominated by iOS, whether it was apps, accessories, or some combination of the two.  Is a name change in order, to better reflect what the show is about?  Or would such a thought be considered sacrilegious by the Mac faithful? 3G =/= Wifi. I suspect there was a free wifi network available at Macworld, but for whatever reason, I was unable to find or connect to it with my phone.  Thus, given the sheer number of iPhones all located within a very tight proximity, it was little surprise that my 3G connection was spotty at best.  Unfortunately, this made it difficult to really do much reporting from the floor, such as any photo uploads. The good news is that now that we’re back in Austin (is it just me, or does Austin almost feel like San Francisco, Jr?), we’ve been able to upload all of the photos we took to a new photo album on our Facebook page.  Check’em out! Sushi Ran in Sausalito is freaking delicious. Go there. Now. Did you go to Macworld 2011? What did you think about the expo? About San Francisco? What are your lessons learned? Let us know in the comments!

Introducing our newest series, Week in Review, where we highlight the past week’s top stories involving Apple, gaming, and our own blog.

Apple

As Mac celebrated its 27th birthday and the new iOS App store ushered its 10 billionth download, Apple enjoyed a smorgasbord of press celebrating  its new efforts in security, product innovation, and sweet new campus advisor program for college students. The iTunes store also has a new available upgrade, which will allow iTunes to sync with the CDMA iPhone 4.

Gaming Stories

Sony finally released details about the “Next Generation Playstation Portable,” now known as the “NGP.” Bethesda announced release dates for RAGE, Brink, Hunted and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for XBOX 360. Arrowhead’s Magicka sold 30,000 digital copies in 24 hours after its release on the 25th.

Our Posts

User Review – Unreal Tournament 2004 Mac Quicksave: Macworld 2011 Means Discounts for Everyone!

So you already know that we’re rocking Macworld 2011 this week.  But did you know that Macworld 2011 attendees are not the only ones who get great Mac gaming benefits? From now through the end of the weekend (11:59pm CST, Sunday, January 30), we’re discounting the ENTIRE GAMEAGENT STORE by 11%!  Grab your most-wanted now, then meet us at the show for even more discounted gaming goodness and EXCLUSIVE GameAgent apparel!

Our first user review in some time comes courtesy Dwight Dickinson, friend of GameAgent and all around swell guy.  Below, Dwight takes a look at the classic shooter Unreal Tournament 2004 for the Mac.  Final verdict?  Well, I think it’s safe to say he enjoyed the game–read on to find out why! By Dwight Dickinson So this is my first review, but I figured I’d do an older game. I’ve played a lot of games, both on a console and PC. I switched to Mac in early 2006, and never looked back. I was playing a few games over the weekend, like Counter-strike and so forth and figured I’d take a look at an older game. I dusted off my Unreal Tournament 2004 and popped it into my trusty MacBook Pro. This game is truly an amazing game, even for it’s age. With all sorts of game modes, it’s really an awesome first person shooter! The assault game is like a vehicle-race sort of deal where the majority of the game is done using vehicles. It’s a simple team-based assault game where you must co-operate with teammates and have a dedicated driver, gunman and so forth to reach the objectives in the game. It’s strictly team/objective-based gameplay with lots and lots of bullets and special weapons like shock weapons and snipers. And if you don’t feel like playing assault? Well, go ahead and play death match (similar to Call of Duty), or Capture-the-flag. The possibilities of game modes are endless! Okay, so the graphics aren’t up to snuff, and the game is not as popular as it used to be, but playing the game is definitely a fun chance if your WoW server is down, or if Call of Duty 4 (from Aspyr!) is getting too hardcore. It’s cheap, and it’s good awesome fun! Third party maps really increase the fun you can have in assault maps, as maps are still being created today for the game! You’ll always find friendly people (from what I’ve seen), on the servers. It’s got the team-based play you want from Call of Duty, the explosions you want from Halo and so much more. If you want to get away from realistic games set in war zones, come play Unreal Tournament 2004 which is set in space, and involves much more strategic play, or just plain shoot and kill! I also cannot stress enough how much fun the vehicles are to drive. From regular ground-based machines, to flying space machines with laser beams and rockets- it’s truly a game to remember. The maps are huge, and the gameplay is fantastic. I’d have to say that, while I rarely get a chance to play this game anymore (due to Cataclysm, school and whatnot), it’s still a personal favourite and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. What’re you waiting for?! Go pick up this game and try it out! It’ll tide us all over until Aspyr announces their next major game hit (which I’ll be looking forward to!). Unfortunately, I have no screenshots of the game, since I’ve been THAT much into it! (Editor’s note: Added some visual imagery for you!) But the best screenshot would be to get it and try it yourself! (They have a demo on Google). Thanks, Dwight Dickinson FINAL: 4.5/5

Introducing… our new social media marketing intern, Rachel Burger! Rachel is a student at Agnes Scott College and will graduate in May with degrees in creative writing and Sino-American relations. As a second-generation Mac enthusiast and first degree gamer, Rachel’s favorite games include Fable II, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, Dragon Age: Origins, and World of Warcraft. As her career progresses, Rachel hopes to specialize in creative game design or advertising. For her first entry, we asked Rachel to take a look at the Mac gaming market, both current and past. Below, she explains why Macs have not always been considered gaming machines and what can be (and is being) done to change this.

The Market

As the Mac versus PC battle wages into the next decade, Mac enthusiasts continue to struggle with the dismal volume of computer games available to them. While most of the world’s most popular games are available only for PC, Macs have a serious disadvantage in appealing to their gaming consumers because when a new game becomes available, there is commonly a wait for the Mac release (Halo lost the Mac community because it was not available until two years after its original Windows release date). Because of the discrepancy in available titles, Macs are not typically associated with gaming.

In previous years, the computer market discouraged game designers from developing for Macs. In 2005, Apple only made up 4.6% of the PC market. However, now that Apple makes up 10.6% and has inspired unprecedented sales despite the unyielding recession, gaming companies have started to create multiplatform products (Blizzard, naturally, at the forefront of the charge).

Still, Macs are not the standard in personal computers, and thus designers continue to refuse to invest in multiplatform products. Fortunately, port companies like Aspyr began to address the Mac consumers’ gaming needs. Because of their efforts to produce award-winning titles (like Civilization V and Call of Duty 4) and crunching Mac release dates within weeks of Windows, Macs are slowly gaining ground with gamers internationally.

What about Boot Camp?

In 2007, Apple released Boot Camp to support dual booting with a copy of Windows (Windows Vista and XP were available at the time). The latest version of Boot Camp allows the installation and use of Windows 7 as well as the previous two versions of Microsoft’s operating system. While Boot Camp has its advantages, like tapping into the vast games available for PCs, it is only a patch for the greater problems that occur when playing PC games via Boot Camp. Gaming via Boot Camp utilizes limited graphics (dependent on PC compatible graphics drivers) and drains the battery quickly, not to mention that users still need to purchase a copy of the Windows operating system. For example, while running Civilization V on Boot Camp, graphics settings are barely tolerable and the game process is slow. However, running Civ V on the Mac is smoother than Pierce Brosnan in a suit. Playing games made for the Mac and on a Mac is going to remain the superior alternative to playing PC games via Boot Camp.

Macs as Gaming Computers

Macs are capable of being entertainment machines in addition to fulfilling their role as workhorses in many forms of development; they are known for their phenomenal graphics handling that allows for detailed, quick-running games. There are not enough gaming companies that take advantage of Apple’s innovations in personal computing. Until gaming companies develop Mac-compatible games in larger numbers of their own accord, increasing the availability of current titles through porting companies is the best way to change the perception of Macs as non-gaming computers.

Some of you have already heard, but just in case, here’s an OFFICIAL announcement: We’re going to rock Macworld 2011 next week, and we’re going to rock it hard. We’ll be patrolling the expo floor both Thursday, January 27, and Friday, January 28.  Our goal?  To spread the good GameAgent word!  To help us in this grand endeavor, we’ll be handing out fliers (in color!) that not only describe how great we are, but that also contain what we in the biz call “coupon codes for 15% off your next GameAgent purchase” (or coucofifperofyonegampur, for short). But that’s not all–we’re also handing out t-shirts! That you can wear! And they’re awesome! And because we’ve now got you on the edge of your seat, we’ll tell you how you can get one.  Just follow this easy, three-step process:

1. Find us on the Macworld 2011 Expo floor
2. ????
3. Profit

(We’re still working out the kinks in that second step…) And then, of course, is the grandest plan of them all: a Facebook-centric, mobile photo-infused social media marketing tactic that will reach levels of such incredible synergetic magnitude, it very well may blot out the light of a thousand suns.* Here’s how it works: Take a photo with us on the show floor, upload that very photo to our Facebook wall, and receive another coupon for 25% off your next GameAgent purchase.  Want to get even crazier?  Take a photo with us while wearing one of our amazingly awesome t-shirts that we’ll be giving out, and bump that coupon value up to 50%!  Boo-yah! Of course, this all ignores the constant(ly sporadic) reporting we’ll be doing from the show floor.  While we’re not hawking our own wares, we want to be the eyes and ears of those unable to make it.  So let us know what you’re most interested in!  Hardware?  Software?  Some combination?  Tell us about it in the comments, on our Facebook page, or via Twitter! *Our marketing team** indicates this may be exaggeration. **The marketing team is a lie.

New to this series? Catch up with parts uno, dos, tres, cuatro, and cinco! By: Luis Flores, Assistant Graphic Designer @ Aspyr Media So I was planning to buy a new generation console, and the Xbox seemed like a good option at the time. I didn’t have the money to buy one, so I would have to sell my N64, but who would want to buy an older console? The first thing I did was to go to a pulga to inquire about how much I would get for my N64 and all my games. As always, they offered me breadcrumbs for it. My parents suggested leaving the console to my granddad, who had a convenience store in a popular neighborhood. A lot of people went there on a daily basis, so maybe somebody would see it and buy it for their kids, hoping that they wouldn’t be aware that they would be buying a 5-year-old console. When we were little, we used to go to my grandparents’ house every Sunday, and all of my mom’s side of the family would be there. With time, my cousins started to go less often, so there was no real reason for me to go, unless I wanted to spend 3 hours listening to my aunts gossiping. Once in a while, out of moral obligation, I did visit my grandparents, and every time I did, I asked my granddad about the N64. It was always the same, “people show interest, but no one has bought it yet.” It was obvious that the damn console was not going to be sold. We were a little naive to think that people would buy it out of ignorance. (more…)

We’re going to MacWorld 2011!  We’ll post more info on what we’ll be doing and how you can keep up with us later in the week, but for now we have something gravely important to ask: Which t-shirt design do you like the best? We’ll be giving these t-shirts out at MacWorld and for other events, so let us know which design or designs float your boat.  Your style (and ours) depends on it! Update: We have a winner!

New to this series? Catch up with parts uno, dos, tres, and cuatro! By: Luis Flores, Assistant Graphic Designer @ Aspyr Media I know, I’ve been talking as if the Sony Playstation didn’t exist, while it was released one year before the N64. I don’t know if it was an age or geographical factor, but at the time I wasn’t aware of it. It’s also possible that Sony hadn’t fully entered the Mexican market yet. I remember that I later found out about it through my older cousin. She had a Playstation, and one summer we decided to temporarily exchange consoles. I would like to point out as a side note that it was very common to exchange games with friends and family, especially cousins. Of course you always did it with somebody you could trust, as these things were “expensive toys” as my father would say. I wonder if this also happened in the US… I know that Mexico is a more collectivist society and that you’re more in touch with your relatives and friends, so I would predict this would happen more often in Mexico. Going back to the Playstation, I did notice that the games were more oriented towards an adult audience. I played games like Resident Evil 1 and 2, and Silent Hill, the latter being the scariest game I ever played. In fact, I didn’t even play beyond the school level, I was so scared by those creepy demon children. Metal Gear Solid was also great; I loved how it was very cinematic (with opening credits and all), and that it was very meta (“connect your controller in port 2 to fool Psycho Mantis!”). Overall, I think it was refreshing to play games that were not cartoony; it was like discovering a complete new side to gaming. (more…)

New to this series? Catch up with parts uno, dos, and tres! By: Luis Flores, Assistant Graphic Designer @ Aspyr Media To an extent, having the N64 was similar to having the Super Nintendo.  We would still buy the games abroad, and every time my mom traveled to the U.S., I would ask her for one if there was a special occasion coming soon. At first not everyone in school had the N64 (mostly because of the short supply), and I remember that some kids would try to invite themselves to your house so they could play it. Super Mario 64 was the only game I had in the beginning, so if I invited a friend, we had to take turns, which was a little annoying. Every gaming aficionado knows that sharing reduces the fun factor by at least 40%. (more…)