Dunno, I can think of many cases where that might help
.Benifets to be a pirate gamer :(
- Thread starter ColdAsIce
- Start date
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Caporegime
Exactly what are you advocating? Either you have games so easy that everyone can finish them, or you only pay for as much as you can do. Should I ask Nintendo for some money back because I can't get star ratings on all the Grand Prix's on Mario Kart?
Shoseki said:
Firstly, you could never give a console away and expect to make the cost back on games. Secondly, Nintendo don't make a loss on consoles, nor have other companies historicall. It's only lately that people expect it, given the rather insane attitude of MS and Sony.
Soldato
codswallop. I bet if you named games without demos, and I named games with, you'd finish first.
and you can *rent* console games.
There really is no need to pirate an entire game in order to "try before you buy".
you can play the (more than likely available) demo, you can read reviews, you can watch trailers on gametrailers.com, you can watch zero-punctuation for a laugh, if you're on a console you can nip to the shop and rent the game, and you can download the demo from live.
Downloading a game in it's entirety to "try" is just a lame excuse.
Cheats, trainers, difficulty slider.
Soldato
It's true. I don't nick cars therefore I don't nick games. At the end of the day its the same thing.
Lol @ the pussyfooting around the pirating, I don't pirate games to try them, (well, usually I don't) I do it because I don't have the spare cash all the time to fork out, so it's either download it or don't get it at all.
That's all it comes down to, I buy PS3 games and some PC games (mainly Steam ones) but the 360 games come from elsewhere.
That's all it comes down to, I buy PS3 games and some PC games (mainly Steam ones) but the 360 games come from elsewhere.
I don't steal physical property, I download a fair share of things but I don't consider it anywhere near as bad as taking cars or sweets from the shop.
Soldato
tbh, when I was 18, I didn't have any cash to spend on games either, and I downloaded a ton of games.
My beef is with ppl like Shoski who actually try and moralize the theft, and make it okay - nay, appropriate. Shoseki, can you at least admit that what you are doing is wrong?
I wouldn't say it's theft more like forgery (yep i do it, some of them I buy, most i don't and a lot i never really finish just play for a bit then get bored.) or making a copy of a painting and then selling it.
What exactly is a game? The industry has confused the issue.
1) The story?
2) The mechanism of gameplay?
3) The environment and elements upon which the mechanism are applied?
Of course 1 & 3 are very much linked.
The bottom line is, that each part can be made scalable to allow players to focus on whatever it is that they enjoy the most. Myself, I see the enjoyment of the mechanisms upon learning them, then competing against others using them. In this case "PVP" is fairly irrelevent of the story or the environment in which it happens - it is more like Arena in WoW or Counterstrike. However, I also like to explore the story, in which the difficulty is fairly irrelevent but the environment and gameplay elements are important, and I enjoy individual "instances" of combining all three, with high difficulty, which means that completion gives enormous satisfaction that the majority of gamers appreciate - such as killing Lady Vashj in WoW recently. What I object to is :
1) Being unable to see the storyline/gameplay because something is too difficult.
2) Being stuck unable to play whilst I churn through storyline I don't care about.
3) Being unable to explore my skills at gameplay without it having negative effect upon the overall state of my game.
As a developer, I feel wholly justified in using cheats in games where I only care about the storyline in order to see it, and I feel justified skipping through dull dialog to get to the play in other games. None of the above cases are acceptable, and if I am not able to experience part of them, I don't accept that I should pay for them. If Blizzard decided, for example, to release a new patch that everyone had to pay for, but only the top 2% of guilds were able to actually experience, I don't think it would be justified to push everyone onto an upgrade path. Similarly, if they pushed a patch that improved PVP, those who are only interested in PVE would not be happy about having to pay for it.
Unfortunately, most games and their engines are not developed to answer these questions. They are developed with limited budget, with limited structure, and to be quite honest, limited expertise. I don't really care if the games' developer can code assembler for my graphics card if he has no concept of content management systems. In < ten years, we will start seeing the number of truly unique game engines reduce, the main differences between the consoles reduce (they are mostly reduced PCs as they are) and the focus will be elsewhere. Business models will also change radically, and the type of discussion we are having will be moot.
Soldato
Now we're just playing with semantics
I don't care what it's called, but I find it abhorrent that some people blatantly endorse it. Even when I did it, I knew it was morally wrong. As soon as I got a decent, well paid job, I started paying for all my games.
Uh, I have never pirated a game in my life. We have moved on from that. My background is as a graphics developer/long time console/PC gamer, all legitimate games.
EDIT : I am also trying to find things we can agree on concerning the business model that supports video games, because as a digital commodity it hasn't worked - it is far too easy to pirate.
Its not the same thing. Pirating games would be more like creating an exact copy of a car out of thin air then it would stealing someones car.
I hope spore is pirated to hell. It;'s going to need internet activation every 10 days. Not everyones got the internet. People play on laptops, people might take it on holiday. It's exactly these anti piracy BS which makes lots of people pirate in the first place.
The thing alluring about piracy is, well it doesn't feel as if you are doing something wrong/illegal.
If I went and robbed an old dears handbag I would feel pretty bad about it, downloading a game however and I feel no remorse whatsoever.
Anyway, I mainly download games I wouldn't want to buy in the first place, can be exceptions to this if money is in short amounts at the time but there's a few games on 360 this year I'll choose to buy.
If I went and robbed an old dears handbag I would feel pretty bad about it, downloading a game however and I feel no remorse whatsoever.
Anyway, I mainly download games I wouldn't want to buy in the first place, can be exceptions to this if money is in short amounts at the time but there's a few games on 360 this year I'll choose to buy.
Soldato
Shoseki said:
So which is it? You advocate pirating software, but have never done so yourself?
If you ever get a job in IT, you'll realise that we don't like sitting in front of computers all day for free
you're not actively, physically stealing something, but you're removing an instance where someone will get income for their hard work.
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I lost my connection to the internet over a weekend, tried to uninstall Steam. As soon as it loads, it tries to update itself, and won't let me uninstall until it is updated.
A problem indeed ^^.
Soldato
remove from the autostart list. problem solved. steam doesnt need 'installing'.
No, I am advocating that people in *general* should not have to pay for something they are not going to use/experience.
If you have a car, and they say they are going to put an expensive piece into the boot of the car that you probably won't notice any difference, why would you want to pay for that? But you acknowledge that you have a choice, we don't have any choice for video games.
Incidently, you *do* have choice with open source software, though there are other concerns there (support/maintenance being the main one).
I do *not* pirate software, games or anything else. I use open source solutions and pay for games (not that I actually enjoy that many games any more). I have ancient consoles (NES/SNES/N64) that are no longer supported and once they die, are dead for good - despite the fact that I have *paid* for a *permanent* access to the game.
This goes far deeper than "piracy". People would pay for a legitimate service that they would regularly use. I pay £8 a month for a WoW subscription that I get hours and hours out of. The old model of "value" for a video game, was 2 hours enjoyment for every £1 spent. But then, I became good at video games and could complete them in < a day...
[moralize]
But I wasn't going to buy said game, therefore the sale wasn't lost.
[/moralize] 
Now we're just playing with semantics
From a legal point of view its much more than semantics.
One will send you to jail, one will not.