Gaming on OSX

February 3, 2025

Since December of last year I've been exclusively on OSX. I bought an M4 Mac Mini ostensibly for music recording, but I installed Steam and GOG to see what's available. OSX Sequoia at least has a "game mode" when you start a game and supports the Playstation 5 controller without any issue, so Apple is at least acknowledging the existence of games on their platform. I've gone between OSX and Windows a couple times before, largely depending on what I was doing music-wise. There was a period of time when I was really into film scoring and using Logic Studio 8 (that's another blog for another day) , and I first tried out gaming on my iMac. Things were pretty barebones, there were some ports by a company called Aspyr, notably X3 (crash-prone) and Star Wars: Empire at War (kind of meh), and my beloved Team Fortress 2 (awesome). I also messed around with bootcamp a bit which was my first experience with widescreen gaming, notably sinking a lot of hours into Galactic Civilization 2 which was incredible at the time. However as my interest in the music for picture world waned and I realized that I wasn't going to move to LA and try to make it in film, I drifted back to the PC.

State of the Backlog

According to Steam, I have two hundred and forty-eight games purchased. Of that number, only twenty-nine work on the modern Apple silicon computers. It's a weird cross-section of modern games, indie games, random blockbusters, and old games that have been patched. For example, I can play Borderlands 2 but not the first game nor the Pre-Sequel. I can play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but not Human Revolution. I can play X-Wing and TIE Fighter, but not X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. Both Rebel Assault games got ported in 2020 for some reason, and I can play Descent and Descent 2.

What am I playing?

Since getting the new computer, I've been playing FTL: Faster than Light again which never seems to get old, and I've installed Everspace, Everspace 2, and No Man's Sky. I've put about seventy hours into Everspace and just finished the main game but I might take a break as the mini isn't a dedicated gaming rig and I noticed that graphically intensive games seem to really push the hardware and make the machine run quite hot. I had a Hershey's Kiss candy on my desk beside the Mac, and when I went to pick it up after about an hour of Everspace the chocolate had liquified inside the wrapper. I also fired up Stellaris and Cities: Skylines, but I was disappointed in the gameplay (especially Stellaris) and uninstalled them.

What am I not playing?

So most games don't work on Apple silicon processors. By my count I have another forty-two games on Steam that were ported to the old Intel Macs but haven't been updated to the sixty-four bit systems. Again, it seems kind of random which games get ported and I wonder what the business rationale for this is. Some of these games are positively ancient and I bought them for the nostalgia value, I can't imagine that much of a market exists for Terminal Velocity: Legacy but it still got ported.

Practice Time

In any case, less games is probably for the best as I have a big dad band show coming up in mid-March and the possibility of another corpo gig in April. I want to play baritone guitar instead of a standard six-string with the dads which will take some getting used to. The April corporate show is also a big one, at a proper venue in Toronto with a couple brand-name Canadian musicians guesting. I was told initially that I would not be considered for the second corp gig as they were going to undertake an employee "talent search" to find a new guitarist, but so far it sounds like this hasn't gone anywhere so I may have an in.

The Capsule

I still have to create my Atom feed. I keep putting it off because writing is fun and coding is not fun, but I know I have to get around to doing this or nobody will ever see my posts. I'll make myself get on it soon...probably.