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Engaging Debate on Piracy and Videogaming
koworld writes "WotR have put out a really intriguing issue on piracy this week. It has Jeff Minter arguing that piracy robs developers of their livelihoods and then a senior industry figure (writing under a pseudonym) offers the counter that piracy has done more to expand the overall videogaming market than any other factor. Just to round off the debate a number of insightful personal accounts of piracy and its effects are also included."
if im not going to buy them anyway, does anyone lose out?
If they had no value to you, you wouldn't want to copy them anyway.
Ergo, they do have value to you - which means that you should pay for them.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Some people don't buy certain games because they don't last long enough-- especially if they have multiplayer. Even if they do find them fun.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Jeff Minter was huge on the Amiga and Atari during the early 1980s
Hairier than Richard Stallman, and more bovine too. Just about everything I remember him writing has Yaks and Llamas in it
This might save you some money for 2 teenage gamers :)
please note though, I have yet to try it this service so this is not an endorsement... but the idea seems like such a good one (basically netflix for games) I am really just waiting till my next game to sign up.
meep
If you would pay for a title if you couldn't get a free copy, then you should (pay for it).
Making a copy of a game is only theft from the IP perspective, it costs the developer/distributer nothing. Choosing to make a copy of software/music/whatever instead of purchasing it does effectively cost the developer/distributer money.
That said, remember that even copying for evaluation or limited use is illegal. Be prepared to accept to consequences, or don't make the copy.
Try looking at free games. You'd be surprised how many there are. Of course most aren't worth playing, but that still leaves quite a bit.
Here's a few places to get started:
Remakes.org - remakes of many many classic games.
Freeware World Team - many categories including games.
Freestle freeware - small but good.
fullgames
world of free games
Feel free to suggest more / better resources.
P.S. So many console games drop to $20 if you're just willing to wait a year. The sports games are even cheaper if you don't absolutely need this year's updated roster. If you don't want to buy games at $50, just wait a bit.
Jeff Minter is LlamaSoft. He wrote a number of very classic games on a variety of 8-bit platforms, several of which are available as freeware from Llamasoft here, including Gridrunner, Attack Of The Mutant Camels, Headbangers Heaven, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver, Sheep In Space, Mama Llama, Batalyx, the Atari ST version of Defender II, Llamatron, Defender II for the Jaguar and , not a game as such, the Trip-A-Tron.
Jeff Minter was an 8-bit god, and as you might guess from the names and his long-term handle 'Yak' has a bit of a thing about ungulates.
At least around these parts, Grim Fandango is available in stores under LucasArt's "Classics" label.
how about coming up with great new ideas, thinking them through, and when they are ready releasing them.
...enough sarcasm. You're welcome to be a Blizzard fanboy, but please don't go round asserting they have any claim to originality. Blizzard have never come up with an original game concept. Ever. What they have done is made very good ripoffs of other people's ideas, sometimes even better than the originals. But "new"? Don't make me laugh.
Yeah. Because Warcraft/Starcraft weren't just ripoffs of Westwood's Dune II / C&C, oh no. And of course Diablo was a "great new idea", any similarities to the decades-old Rogue model must be entirely coincidental. And now they're making... whoa, look at this! They've come up with this amazing new idea of, get this, it's like an RPG only it's massively multiplayer and online! I wonder why nobody thought of that before?
I hate to slashdot them, but a really useful site is Cheap Ass Gamer. It relies on people posting deals, but so far I've had no problems with them (I got Rygar for the PS2 for $10+cheap shipping). It can save you a ton of money.
It may not be new, or creative, but they sure know how to make it good. That's the thing they do, make someone else's idea damned good.
It's more my experience that they don't drop to $20 so much as drop off the face of the earth entirely. The $10-$20 racks are full of crap I'd never consider buying at any price.
Final Fantasy X is $20 everywhere. Ikaruga's $20 online at bestbuy.com, and my local Best Buy (for example) has five remaining copies of Ico for $15. These are all arguably the best games in their respective genres.
The discount racks are full of low-quality stuff, but that doesn't mean the odd gem isn't there, just that it's not that easy to find.
I have such a "preview edition" myself - at least it was clearly labeled on the product bundle that it only contained five missions out of the fifteen or so.