Native Support, Bootcamp, and GPTK

by Rian

As much as I appreciate native Mac supports in PC gaming, there is something to be said about the overall quality of the support. Some games are simply not optimized. Its performance is either subpar or some advanced settings are simply unavailable for native versions. Some games run into glitches that are unique only to Mac players. Bugs are bound to happen differently on each platforms, but it becomes problematic when the game chooses not to address it. Some games even drop the ball on cross play and cross progression, in order to release their PC version first.

Optimization in the PC gaming is always the hot potato, and frankly, I do not have a definitive solution to the problem either. If I were to hazard a guess, poor optimization on the PC side is usually the result of ‘adding a supported platform on the product description for the sake of sales’ coupled with ‘faster hardware comes in for free, while optimization is not’. The latter part is crucial: both Mac and PC have been becoming increasingly powerful, and the community behind the PC gaming scene is not shy to pressure both the developers and gamers to take advantage of the latest hardwares. To put it simply, for every game a gamer purchases on PC, there is hidden cost of “upgrading” your gaming PC should you wish to play the game as advertised.

Let us assume the player chose the path of compromise. That’s not quite the end of the story. Some games simply don’t run on macOS, or run so poorly, one might as well emulate the Windows version. That’s where the GPTK and virtualization comes in. Compatibility softwares such as CrossOver is already taking advantage of GPTK, and there are abundant, albeit anecdotal, evidences of players enjoying PC games on Apple Silicon with the help of such toolkits and softwares. For obvious reasons, regardless of how seamless the experience is, it is inherently the same solution. Instead of upgrading parts, Mac gamers are upgrading their whole machine —possibly with trade-in—, as modularity in PC and Mac works differently; on PC, “modular” means each component can be swapped out, whereas on Mac, “modular” means a machine can be replaced and the end user won’t notice it.

This leaves me with troubled Bootcamp. Currently, only Intel Mac has any hopes of running Windows natively. I find it baffling Microsoft is yet to release ARM Windows just like its counterpart, x86. As I am writing this, only authentic method of downloading the ARM version of iso is to be a member of Windows Insider program. Even if Microsoft were to change the course entirely, it doesn’t change the fact that Mac supported games have performance issues on average. Bootcamp may have enabled the ‘one laptop to run them all’ business, but fundamentally, many Mac versions of apps and games are second thought after a primary market. We need more games that run acceptably well, like Lies of P.