Why Go Multiplatform?
The people over at Wolfire games wrote an article about their experiences selling a multiplatform game and why it’s important to target multiplatforms. I couldn’t agree more, failing to support mac and linux users is a big mistake which will cost you in lost sales and marketing. As a mac user here are some of the reasons why you should support OS X and how you should go about doing it.
The most obvious reason to support OS X, especially if you’re writing against OpenGL or using Slick, is that it’s easy to do. In another post I’ll show you how to integrate this step into your build environment so that you literally can click a button, but suffice to say that all it amounts to is copying some files to the proper place. For so little work why not bring your game to a new market?
And on that topic it’s important to understand that the mac market is different from the Windows market. They will expect more from you, which I’ll touch on below, but they are also more likely to purchase software. Good shareware is generally successful on OS X and there are many examples of people selling applications ranging from desktop widgets to complex text editors. With that in mind it’d be a terrible mistake to ignore mac users. In fact, from the sales data published by Wolfire games, they acheived 50% of their sales selling to mac users!
Additionally, mac users are generally very active bloggers, twitterers, etc. Leaving them out means you lose a lot of potential word of mouth advertising. If you want your game to go viral then you need to put it in the hands of the influential users; oftentimes this means mac users.
Finally, many mac users are talented programmers and designers. What this means is that if your users are really passionate they will do work for you. For instance, Wolfire games have found that their users generate mods, ports, and additional fan content. This is good to have in and of itself, of course, but it’s even more valuable as it helps generate new buzz for you and your game.
It seems like the case is pretty clear, if you leave out mac users you are leaving money on the table. Arguably, even more important, you’re losing a lot of potential buzz and marketing which will impact your current and future projects. So let’s see some more indie games on the mac!
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Hello, my name is Alex Schearer. I grew up in New York and currently live in Seattle. 