The Brad Hole

It's now official: I've accepted a job at Apple to work on the OpenGL team, and I'll be leaving Aspyr. I'll be starting my new job on July 16th. It's both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Looking back on it, almost everyone who I worked with at Westlake back in 1999 is still around and doing Mac game ports. Glenda works for Aspyr now, as does Duane Johnson, Mark Krenek and John Butler. Phil Sulak and Ken Cobb went to MacSoft but we still keep in touch. I've worked indirectly with Mike and Ted at Aspyr since around that same time as well, and of course directly when I moved to Aspyr in 2003.

This is a boring way to say that I've thoroughly enjoyed working with these folks all these years, and that leaving Aspyr for Apple is one of the hardest decisions I've had to make. How do you leave a job you like with people you enjoy?

It boils down to the lure of the so-called "Mothership". I've been an Apple fan for nearly as long as I've known about computers, so there's a bit of fantasy fulfillment in making this change. I'm not as confident as the people who hired me that I'm qualified, but I'm willing to give it a shot. If it doesn't work out or I turn out to be the "Special Olympics" member of the OpenGL team, my pride is such that I'd have no hesitation begging Glenda or Mark for my old job back at Aspyr. :-)

The downside to taking this job is I'll have to relocate from Phoenix to Cupertino. No sugarcoating it - that's going to really suck. In fact, when I first started talking with Apple early this year, I didn't think anything would even come of this because of that (and my piss-poor interview). But here I am, obsessing over relocating with Beth and working out the grueling details of selling our house and getting everything to San Jose and into a place that's ready for 2 dogs, 2 cats and a ton of our junk. Clearly sacrifices will have to be made and junk eliminated.

And as God is my witness, I'll make sure the Universal Binary KOTOR patch has been approved by our Support team for release by the time I leave in 2 weeks. ;-)

Posted by bradman at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

I started porting games to the Mac seriously in 1997. I'm 36 years old now and I've been doing it for 10 years. Technology changes fast: OpenGL didn't exist on the Mac back then. Many third-party game developers were doing Mac games in-house - and a few years later many of those same companies exited the Mac market as fast as humanly possible leaving just the die-hards like myself. A few of the same people are still working in the Mac games industry, and many many others have come and gone.

But one thing hasn't changed much.

Mac gamers have seen one "miracle press release" after another vowing to restore untold glory to Mac gaming. We had companies in the late 90's who would gleefully announce 6-8 ports in-progress that would vanish as the companies folded. We had the entry of a company made up of seasoned Cocoa veterans (who better to work on OSX games?) and several ports later, they exited Mac gaming. We've had a company offer up their own custom DirectX library for the Mac - ports will be revolutionized! And since the Intel introduction, we've seen a flood of press releases touting one great new revolution in Mac gaming after another. They're coming fast and furious now from people eager to cash in on the Mac's growing market share.

But you know what? There are no miracle cures for bringing games to the Mac. You just have to be smart, work hard, don't over-promise or commit yourself to things you can't deliver. The state of Mac gaming has been such that it's easy to get excited about each new development like it was the second coming of Christ, and it's equally as easy to develop a sense of bitterness as each one fails to live up to the hype. This, I think, is my biggest fear as a Mac gamer. Each miracle solution that fails to deliver just continues to harm and prolong the status quo of the Mac game market. We have enough battles to fight as it is without having to sift through gushing press releases touting some semi-plausible miracle.

I welcome any and all new Mac games and Mac game developers, but don't treat Mac games like a fad to be exploited and then thrown away. As a developer, I'm smart enough to know better when a company starts talking out of their ass. Diplomacy - and a love of my job - prevents me from calling bullshit when I see it, unfortunately. But as an end-user, it just breaks my heart each time the promises fail to materialize.

Please stop breaking my heart.

Posted by bradman at 02:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)