Tikkabik

If you've been checking Macworld since last week, you'll notice that EVE Online has really dominated the game news I've been posting there since last week.

Obviously the Fanfest I went to in Reykjavik had a lot to do with that. I was very excited to have gone and really enjoyed my time there, that's for sure. But it's a lot more than that, too. For the first time in a very, very long time, I was exposed to a group of commercial Mac game developers who aren't overly cynical about the marketplace, about Apple or about their audience. They're not approaching the market with naîvety or unrealistic expectations, either.

I mean this as no criticism to the people with whom I work at other Mac game companies in any respect. They have a great deal of very good reason to act and feel as they do. But for the first time in probably five or six years -- yeah, it's really been that long -- the focus was not on what Apple had done, or not done, to support game developers, or how Mac users seemed bound and determined not to buy games for their computers, or problems with Leopard, or Tiger, or OpenGL, or this, that or the other thing.

It was purely about the product. A lot of that had to do with the environment itself. This Fanfest brought together thousands of players who live, breathe and sleep EVE Online. So the focus was on the product. And this was all about getting the product out to two brand new markets -- Linux and Mac users -- who up until now haven't been served.

That was a really, really refreshing perspective, and it was exactly what I needed to get my head back in the game. Literally and figuratively, as it turns out.