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Comment by bsenftner | Hacker News Reader

I was a teen game developer with my own games in Sears & K Mart nationwide for the US, for the Vic-20 and the C-64, and was invited as a representative of the independent games industry. When my involvement was ending, Apple then told me they changed their mind and was not going to support independent games for the Mac at all. But offered to waive that restriction if I paid them $30K and gave them full editorial control over what I published. Nope.

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It's wild how fast Apple pivoted from Woz just wanting to make a PC anyone could write and play their own video games on to "Nah we want full control of every last bit, fuck your indie games".

I think Apple marketing understands human motivation and the rarely acknowledged super strength of prestige marketing. Apple's marketing very much leans into every one of their products must be perceived as a high prestige item to own, or they will not release it. When the Mac was brand new, they cultivated and guarded that prestige like a hawk.

I'd wonder if especially at that point in history, trying to appear as a gaming platform would be a liability.

An early Mac was not a great gaming computer even by 1980s standards, and the last thing you want is Commodore or Atari running an ad saying "Apple's $2500 black-and-white prestige piece doesn't play games as well as a $299 C64/800XL". Not to mention the stink of the US video game market crash hovering around anything game-related.

If they pivot directly towards more professional workstation/publication/art department positions, nobody's making that point. (Now I'm thinking of the time "Boot", or maybe it was already "Maximum PC" by then, reviewed a SGI O2 and said it was impressive, but had limited game selections.)

Quickdraw was revolutionary, it had all the optimizations, and then all the code was in assembly. Things like classic arcade games were very much possible. I had a lunar lander game with side scrolling landscape, a dig dug clone, a variation on donkey kong, and a variant of Robotron. Apple thought that would attract the wrong impression, they wanted the design and typography crowd. Can't say they were wrong, to be honest.

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