One on One with Glenda Adams, a somewhat monthly feature at Inside Mac Games, is essentially a conversation between two old friends talking about various Mac game related topics. The impromptu conversation deals with topics such as the strength of the overall Mac market, OS X, Apple, and more.

Tuncer: Aspyr recently released Prey for the Macintosh. Although this game didn't get much buzz, the people who have downloaded the demo have been writing rave reviews about it. Do you think it'll be one of those sleeper hits like Lego Star Wars?

Glenda: We hope so! I think it's a good FPS with some interesting twists, and we worked hard to make it polished for the Mac. I've been very happy to see the comments from people who are playing the demo- especially that the performance is good, even on some machines we didn't include in the official specs. Sometimes we'll have to drop official support for some Macs (like G4's for prey), even though the game may work OK in most cases. That usually happens when there are certain models of the lower end Mac we know won't work, or parts of the game that we just don't think are playable enough. But I'm glad people are getting a chance to try it out for real before it hits the shelves, so they can tell in the real world how the game will play (and find out it's fun!)

Tuncer: Well, now that Macworld Expo is over, what do you think of the iPhone?

Glenda: It looks pretty slick. I can't wait to actually hold one in my hands. Personally I won't be an early adopter, but I can see myself getting one after they've been out a while. To be honest, it's not the phone part that I'm interested in- I'd love to have it just for the web surfing, contacts & calendar, and watching videos/listening to music. Maybe they'll come out with a phone-less iPhone at some point.

Tuncer: A lot of people seem to think it'll be a great little gaming device as well since it has touch button capabilities. Do you think Apple will open up the iPhone to external developers so they can develop games for it?

Glenda: I think it could have some really interesting games, just like the DS and wii have shown some unique games based on their input systems. I really don't believe Apple will ever open the platform to widespread third party development though. I think they'll treat it like the iPod, and bless just a few developers to do games (or whatever else) that they sell themselves. I wish they'd come up with a happy medium- do like console developers, where they sell a dev kit and have to approve anything that gets released for the platform. It's not as wide open as the Mac or Windows, but it would at least allow developers that were willing to invest in the platform and had good ideas take a shot at coming up with unique software that Apple could ensure was stable and high quality. But I just get the feeling Apple wants to control the platform from end to end, so I don't know if that sort of console-like development approach will ever happen.

Tuncer: EA announced The Sims Stories recently, which I understand was developed internally by Aspyr Studios. Can you tell us a bit more about the game?

Glenda: It's a new addition to the Sims franchise, a standalone game (not an expansion) that focuses on a more story driven gameplay in the Sims universe, and has some special optimizations to make it play well on laptops. We've been very excited about it, and have been working on it for quite a while. EA is publishing the game, and Aspyr did the development. We've had a great relationship with EA and Maxis and it's cool to move it to a new level. The first game in the series is called Life Stories, and is just wrapping up. There are other games in the series planned, focusing on different types of stories (the second is about pets). It's been a great experience for us doing all the phases of game development in house- art, design, programming.

Tuncer: Is it safe to say that there will be a Mac version or is that something you can't discuss yet?

Glenda: We haven't made any official announcements, but we're a Mac company at heart, and any game we develop in-house certainly would be a natural to bring to the Mac (not to mention a laptop-friendly game like this would be great on all on those MacBooks apple is selling these days).

Tuncer: I talked to several developers at Macworld Expo last week and all of them seem to be upbeat about Mac gaming. It seems the Intel switch and the iPod halo effect are making more and more people buy Macs. And it seems people are buying more Mac games now. How do you feel about 2007 for Mac gaming?

Glenda: I think things are looking up. Our sales were up some last year, and I think we'll have more Mac games in the pipeline for '07 than we did for '06. We still have some issues to work on, like better retail presence and our Game Agent digital distribution launch.

The market still seems to be favoring the big hits (Civ 4, Sims 2, Call of Duty), but I'm hoping we'll see increased demand for games with less known brands, like Prey. If that happens it suddenly opens up a bunch more games we can bring to the Mac. The hardest thing about the mac business the last couple years has been the very good games we've had to pass on because they just weren't big enough brands to sell well on the Mac.

Tuncer: I know that we've talked about this before but do for see a time when ports will be done away with and we'll begin to see virtualization technologies such as Cider being used more and more. If "ports" to the Mac can be dropped down to a matter of weeks, do you see that happening?

Glenda: It's a big if (ports in a few weeks). The more we've dug into the technology of virtualization the more it becomes clear to us a workable solution that handles all games present and future just isn't in the cards. Virtualization may be a solution for some games, but there are big titles that push the boundaries of the OS that just can't be run through those layers and still end up with a quality Mac title, with little to no work. In the end, if it takes 6 months to port a game to native OS X, or 6 months to tweak your virtualization layer to get the game to run really well, what is the difference to the user? We see virtualization as a tool that helps us cut some dev time, but not a cure-all.

We're working to cut time to market in as many ways as we can. When I start seeing a flood of virtualized games come out that really only require a few weeks of dev time, I'll believe it's possible. But until then, my 20 years of programming cross platform games just gives me the feeling it's unlikely to be that simple.

Tuncer: Looking to the future, can you give us a status update on Star Wars: Empire at War?

Glenda: It's very close to done- we've been in heavy testing for several weeks and just recently knocked out some graphics bugs that were giving us fits. I think with any luck it'll be all wrapped up and in stores in February.

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