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BoyCott Advance
RyuuzakiTetsuya writes: "Boycott, the popular(or not so popular) Gameboy emulator has a version for the GameBoy Advance game system. You can get it here Now. What REALLY gets me is that the system isn't even released in the US and already it's emulated!"
Why would it have to be released in the USA? As far as I understand, this is a French made emulator of a Japanese handheld game console. What does the USA have to do with anything in this story?
For some games. For other games the author may well not have signed away all rights. When I use to work at Microprose (at, not for, I was in the same building, doing CoinOP games for what was in theory some sort of spin off) people still did bring in independently written games and negotiate some of the resale profits for themselves. Of corse the games tended have all graphics and sound replaced, and a lot of extra debugging, and sometimes game code slapped in by the Microprose folks, but the original author still got a per-box cut.
And that ain't the only thing. A lot of game companies are pretty small, and profit share, or have employee stock ownership. Some of the big ones do as well.
Even the giants that don't really do any of that do still have room in the annual salary review for you to say "I was a big part of Jane's F-16, and it sold X copies, so your raise had better be at least Y% or I'll go work for FOOCORP", and yes that X is altered based on exactly how many copies are bought, or not.
Don't delude yourself, even at MEGAGAMECORP there is a team of real people behind each game, and if the game was any good they worked real hard on it (except for the team slacker - and at least he got the short end of the stick during the nerf fights). Their future at MEGAGAMECORP depends in large part on how well the game does. Even if they did it as "work for hire" and have no legal direct ownership.
Note that I said ethical, and not legal.
Certainly, using an emulator to play games you already own is ethical. Using an emulator to play games one does not own is probably not ethical, though. If you wish to refute this point, please use a logical and not an emotional argument--the kinds of reactions I get when I point this out can be rather emotional and confrontational. A confrontational reaction is the reaction of someone who is knowingly doing something against their own set of ethics and values.
Here is where I draw the line: Playing an emulated game is ethical if it is not possible to buy the same game online or at a store. For games that can only be bought used on ebay or at Funcoland, the area is a little more grey--the original company is not making any revenue on Funcoland and ebay sales, so it is probably still ethical, if somewhat less so.
This in mind, it is ethical to play most Atari 2600 games from the early 80s. The only exception to this rule is playing games which have been made on "Activision Video Games Classics" (A $20 game that gives you a 2600 emulator and a handful of old 2600 games). It is also ethical to play most PC games form the same era.
It is ethical to play a good portion of 8-bit Nintendo games. However, this is moving away from ethical behavior (as I defined it above), since some Nintendo games are re-released as Game Boy and Game Boy advanced games.
As the game systems get more advanced, the ethics of playing the game in an emulated environment become a darker shade of grey. I personally draw the line at eight-bit non-portable video games. In a few years, I will probably move the line up to 16-bit video games.
If one makes it a point to purchase any game which they got an emulatoed copy of and found they enjoy playing enough to play the game for more than, say, 10 minutes, this makes the emulation use far more ethical.
The important thing to realize is that these ethics can not be drawn in shades of black and white. There is a large grey area, starting at playing an otherwise forgotten 2600 game which one never purchased, to playing on an emulator for a Game Boy advanced a game to see if the game is worth buying, to playing a game on a Game Boy advanced which the person in question has no intention of buying.
Another factor, of course, is the income of the person in question.
Food for thought.
- Sam (time to sleep)
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Did you guys even read the website before saying that it only runs a few "homebrew demos"? Ok the screenshot page only has pictures of these demos but the actual emulator runs most current games. There are still a few graphical errors in some games and sound is not emulated properly yet but this IS a full blown emulator and the GBA has been emulated. Mario Advance and Mr Driller 2 seem to play pefectly on it. At the moment you need at least a 700mhz to get decent speed out of it and the whole point of the GBA is lost as you cant take your computer on the train but this emulator is fantastic for the development scene as it allows you to test your own created roms without needing to either buy a Nintendo Dev Kit (circa $8000) or a pirate flash backup rom (which arnt even out yet). I really dont think an emulator such as this is as damaging as say UltraHLE was to Nintendo. As I said before the whole point of the GBA is lost and apart from the development benefits the only real reason for using it is to check out games before you actually buy them. Weavus
So are supposed to boycott the gameboy advance or this emulator.
I await my marching orders, sirs.
"And like that
I think Im going to go run and download emulator so I can experience crappyish graphics with an awkward keyboard/mouse set up to play almost no games or demos and be chained to my desk with it. (Unless, I had, say, a laptop) WHAT FUN! :D
1. The GBAEmu ( first every AGB emulator ) was out about Nov. 2000, that is 5 months before the release in Japan. It had only few features emulated but some amateur developers already were coding little demos
2. A friend and me released the very first game for the GBA, BombOAMan, in January. That was still 3 months before release in Japan. A WHOLE game. If you don't believe, check out www.agbdev.net/Nokturn/ for about 4 games and more than 10 demos which I coded.
3. Someone said emulation would be better as soon as the GBA in US will be released. That's completely wrong. People said the same before the release of the GBA in Japan - and after release PLAIN NOTHING happened except for the fact that the scene got a bit neglected because some were only interested in the system, and the scene was the only way to really play ( at least crappy ) games and demos.
4. We GBA amateur developers are STRICKTLY against ROM distribution! Whenever we see a site holding ROMs, we write Nintendo a short mail and they close the site. Our channel in IRC ( #gbadev on efnet ) has always the topic "No talk of Commercial ROMs" and if someone dares to talk, he is banned/kicked immediately. So PLEASE do NOT put us and the ROM scene together! If you want Nintendo to sue anyone, let them sue the ROM sceners, not the amateur developers. Maybe you don't know but a great % of GBC coders were once amateur developers like us.
Sorry for a harsh tone from time to time but it was really too much what I've read here.
Thank you very much,
- Nokturn
http://www.agbdev.net/Nokturn/
Nokturn@agbdev.net