The choice for us was very simple and stark. Do the game for PC first or not do it at all. The Digital Village is a new and tiny company spending investors' and partners' money on an extremely high risk venture. Nobody would have put up the money to do a game this complex and ambitious and wantonly ignore 90% of the market. I know because I asked. It wasn't even possible to develop for both platforms simultaneously. I know because that's what for a long time we tried to do. The cost overruns, the time overruns and the mushrooming data budget came very close to killing us, even after we had decided - reluctantly - to postpone the Mac version till we had the resources to do it. If we had Microsoft's money - if we had a millionth part of Microsoft's money - it would have been very easy to hire some more people, buy some more time and do what we liked. As it is, as soon as sales of the game on the PC platform start to bring in some money it will be possible to re-invest in a Mac version. If we had done it the other way round there would be no game and there would be no company and all the dozens of people who have slaved over this game for two years would be out of a job. Not for long, of course - they are a brilliant bunch of people - but all their time, effort and money would have been thrown away.

Of course this is very frustrating for me. If I want to actually play the game I've been working on for the last two years I have to go into somebody else's office and use somebody else's machine. I have a zillion Macs and not a single PC. So no one is looking forward to the Mac version more than me. It pains and frustrates me that Apple's market share is so low that we are forced into this position, but building Apple's market share is Apple's job, not mine. I will express my continuing enthusiasm for Macintosh technology loud and long and do everything I can to get people to share that enthusiasm, but I am not going to sacrifice other people's money, energy and livelihoods to do Apple's job for them. If Apple had been better at doing that job then this problem would not exist. And let me say right away, that while I am a great fan of Apple's technology, I have been very saddened and frustrated by the company itself. If you want to understand exactly what Apple has squandered over the years, how they have almost systematically set about alienating their developers, their distributors and their users through a mixture of arrogance, greed and incompetence, then you could do a lot worse than read Jim Carlton's book, which those people I know who work for Apple (or used to work for Apple - everybody I know bar one has resigned or been fired) say is devastatingly accurate. For those of us who love Apple it is a harrowing read. But if you find someone you care about shooting themselves in the foot the most useful way you can show solidarity with them is to encourage them to stop shooting themselves in the foot, not start shooting yourself in your own foot as well.

We hit real problems with the development of this game. The scale, complexity and ambition of the project looked like it was going to overwhelm the limited resources of time and budget that we had. As it was we went way over on both. The only way that the game - and the company - could survive, was if we concentrated on delivering the PC version first, getting that to market, and then doing the Mac version. If we had done anything else their would have been no game at all, probably no company, and a huge loss of money. So there was nothing opportunistic or cynical about the decision to get the PC version out first, it was sheer survival. To be honest, I find your judgment that I have 'sold out' to be both ill-informed and offensive, but I'm sure your heart is in the right place. If you feel frustrated, imagine how I feel. I've worked for two years on this game and don't possess a machine that will run it.

Best,

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