The Secret History of Mac Gaming

Richard Moss, the writer of such famous articles as “It felt like robbery”: Tomb Raider and the fall of Core Design is currently writing his first book on Mac Gaming.  You can pledge your support by following this link.

Mac gaming welcomed strange ideas and encouraged experimentation. It fostered passionate and creative communities who inspired and challenged developers to do better and to follow the Mac mantra “think different”.

The Secret History of Mac Gaming is the story of those communities and the game developers who survived and thrived in an ecosystem that was serially ignored by the outside world. It’s a book about people who made games and people who played them — people who, on both counts, followed their hearts first and market trends second. How in spite of everything they had going against them, the people who carried the torch for Mac gaming in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s showed how clever, quirky, and downright wonderful videogames could be.

The work draws on archive materials as well as 60+ new interviews with key figures from Mac gaming’s past, including:

Craig Fryar, who is co-authoring several chapters (former Mac game evangelist, Spectre co-creator)
Robyn and Rand Miller (Cyan Worlds)
Patrick Buckland (Crystal Quest)
John Calhoun (Glider)
Andrew Welch (Ambrosia)
Ben Spees (Harry the Handsome Executive, Ferazel’s Wand)
Matt Burch (Escape Velocity)
Ian and Colin Lynch Smith (Freeverse)
Steven Tze (Freeverse)
Mark Stephen Pierce (Dark Castle)
Jonathan Gay (Dark Castle, Airborne, went on to design what later became Adobe Flash)
Bill Appleton (World Builder, Creepy Castle, others)
Steve Capps (Alice/Through the Looking Glass, Amazing, co-created The Finder)
Charlie Jackson (Silicon Beach Software)
Peter Cohen (Tikkabik/MacGaming.com, editor at Macworld 1999-2009)
Trey Smith (GraphSim)
Dave Marsh (Shadowgate, Uninvited)
Joe Williams (Delta Tao)
Brian Greenstone (Pangea)
Craig Erickson (Déjà Vu/MacVenture system)
Rick Holzgrafe (Scarab of Ra, Solitaire Till Dawn)
Chris De Salvo (MacPlay, Apple GameSprockets)
Ray Dunakin (Ray’s Maze, Another Fine Mess, A Mess O’ Trouble)
Cliff Johnson (Fool’s Errand, 3 In Three, At the Carnival)
Glenda Adams (Westlake Interactive, Aspyr)
Rebecca Heineman (Interplay/MacPlay, Logicware)
Eric Klein (former Mac game evangelist, Bungie)
Marc Vose (MacSports/gamedb)
Yoot Saito (SimTower)
Alex Seropian (Bungie)
and many more