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Emulation and the Video Game Industry
bshanks writes "Use of a Game Over: Emulation and the Video Game Industry is a paper which examines the business and legal consequences of emulators. The paper makes recommendations to video game companies on how to adapt to and profit from them rather than fight them." From the paper: " A decade ago, video game emulators epitomized the cutting edge of programming technology. Ten years hence, they are the subject of a heated debate over copyrights and the video game industry's future. Emulators, which provide conversion software that enables games to run on personal computers ("PC's") and other systems or platforms for which they were not originally designed, have become a staple among gaming enthusiasts. Several factors have contributed to the robust market for emulation..."
So that's what PC stands for! I've been confused for so long!
I'll stop ripping off software when they release Aliens Vs Predator: The Arcade Game on one of those nifty joysticks that you can plug into your tv.
There's a demand for anything retro, to be honest. Especially when we're dealing with things that you can't obtain anymore at all.
How to reduce demand for emulators and Roms? You can't. Best to make some pocket change from it. Either release EVERYTHING old at a reasonable price, (maybe like an I-tunes model? 99 cents for a NES rom, 1.25 for a SNES rom, a flexible price for a MAME rom?), or don't even bother and just public domain it all, if it wouldn't be profitable.
And before anyone suggests that I can check e-bay or a local game store and pick up used carts, I believe that in the big ethics scale of things, e-bay and used carts are lower on the ethics scale than just downloading it. (The best being ordering a shrinkwrapped copy directly from the producer/online, I.E Steam)
I tried to read through this, but it is awfully dense. It'll have to wait for later. But, one thing that I'd like to see clarified is this, and I believe the paper refers to it somewhat, but not in these direct terms.
Under certain situations you may make a copy of software you own. The copy is a backup copy, for use when the original fails.
Now, there are two problems here. If I go to a ROM site and download a ROM of a game I own, then I didn't make the backup copy. Is it necessary that I make the backup copy myself?
Second point is that the copy I made is for backup purposes. Even if you allow me that getting a backup copy from a ROM site is ok, then I cannot use it until my original fails. So emulation, while I still have an original working copy, appears to be prohibited.
Furthermore, it isn't clear how I am permitted to use the copy if and when the original fails. Should I use the image to create a new ROM to use on the original hardware? Or can I use it with an emulator?
Finally, suppose my original really does fail and that it is legal for me to use an emulator with the copy I made. Can I make a copy of the copy as a backup? That is, do all the rights granted to me with the original then get inherited by the backup? Or is the backup somehow a second-class copy, with limited permissions granted to me on how I use it?
This doesn't just extend to cartridges, by the way. Think about copying your old Commodore 64 games off of 5.25" floppy into D64 format. Yes, it's a backup, but can you legally use it with an emulator?
Lots of questions, and ones that I'd like to see cleared up.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Don't they mean "Ten years thence..."?
Hence = from now.
Thence = from then.
My all-time favorite RPG series has got to be Grandia. It's MUCH better-written than Final Fantasy (and just about any other RPG I could name except maybe Earthbound), I like the music more, the characters are works of art, and the battle system is actually fun instead of a mere punishment factor against leveling up.
Yet, my Playstation hasn't worked for years, and I went with Gamecube in the current generation, so no PS2 backwards compatibility for me. So I haven't actually been able to play the original Grandia in all that time.
This is why I was so pleased to find out about ePSXe, a Playstation emulator that can play actual PSX disks inserted in a computer's hard drive. As time passes and the motors inside of optical drives break down, ultimately this will be the only way to play these old games.
(Preemptive caveat: I know what the Sony guys have said, that the original PS format will live forever. My response is that no, it won't, there's no way in hell Sony will continue to allow themselves to be beholden to the original PS format forever, as the profit available for supporting then declines further and further they can and will abandon the old PS1 format someday, it's just a question of when.)
Sony, of course, sued Bleem!, the commercial Playstation emulator, to smithereens. Yet ultimately I think this worked against them, because the net (and debatable) sales loss from piracy was probably less than the potential sales gain from letting people play Playstation games on their computer for $50 bucks, the price of the emulator, instead of $150 bucks, the then-price of the PSX.
Interesting to note that now, five years later, I'm playing through Grandia on a free emulator instead.
I'm a personal fan of emulation. I love firing up an emulator and playing some of my favorite games of yesteryear.
The thing I like most about emulators is that you can save an assload of shelf space and wear/tear on your consoles by just putting everything on your computer. It's the same kind of thing with ripping your CD collection to MP3 and storing the original media away in a safe place.
The majority of emulation is done for older systems; ones that the manufacturers see no more income on. Same with the developers of the software. Those games went out of "print" years ago. The only sticking point is that some companies (like Nintendo, for instance) are re-releasing their older game libraries on newer systems as part of a "retro" line. The fact of the matter is that demand for these products wouldn't even exist if emulation never came to be. Emulation helps keep nostalgia alive. I know it helped me shell out money for the GBA port of Adventure of Link.
I think that emulation is just misunderstood. It's the whole scissors-can-kill-as-well-as-cut-paper argument, just with games.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
Some games are very frustrating, even if you use codes.
The best part of emulators is you can save the game state, then attempt the jump/kill the bad guy, and then die and start all over without having to play for an hour to get back where you were.
Last year my Yamaha DX7 music keyboard battery died. I didn't know it at the time but when the battery dies, all programmed sound patches and modes are erased, even the factory presets. No problem, I had made a backup years ago with DX Android on the Atari ST so I could just restore from those backups. I got the battery replaced but when I got the Atari ST out of the closet it would not boot. I guess I could have searched ebay for a replacement but instead I got the Atari ST emulator, STeem from http://www.atari.st/ and was able to restore the patches from the backups using it.
I have emulators for most of the computers I had previously owned. I still have the software, just would not have a way to play them anymore if it wasn't for emulators. Some of the ones I use besides the Atari ST that I had previously mentioned are:
Amiga http://www.winuae.net/
Atari 800 http://www.concentric.net/~Twist/atari800win/
DOS Games http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
Another Atari ST Emulator http://sourceforge.net/projects/winston/
I spend most of my at home free time playing emulated games. In fact, I've organized my living room entertainment setup around it. With a digital connections between my souped-up computer and TV/sound system, the emulator is actually better than the original system in many respects.
Emulation has brought so many other things as well, like translation patches for previously Japanese-only games. As an American, this is a must, as I can't even speak English that well. Would Square have released translated versions of older FFs if emulation hadn't shown there was a demand?
I'm also involved in tool-assisted timeattacks, and of course the tool is the emulator. It's a very fascinating hobby for retro gamers like me. It's simply mindblowing to watch the original Legend of Zelda finished in under 25 mins, or a difficult game like Ninja Gaiden run through effortlessly. Recently, Dragon Warrior was finished in under 20 mins!
So more on topic, I read some of the paper and was wondering how downloading any number of N64 games at this point in time hurts actual video game companies. No new games are being made or even sold, so the only ones losing money are the retail industry! Also, the figure they give computes to about $35 a game, a ludicrous price for all but a few N64 games. Of course they could point to Game Boy Advance which is actually losing money, since you can download the games and even play them on the actual system with a flash chip.
I think the game companies are much, much more worried about copied games than emulation.
The problem with charging any amount of money for things like ROMS, Movies, Games, Music etc. is that for the user who knows how to get these things for free, the price better be free or they won't use the service.
Because people would never pay for anything that they could find for free on the internet.
What's that? iTunes has sold how many songs? Over a hundred million? Why don't those people just download them for free from kazaa?
Seriously, though, there are a significant number of people who would be willing to pay a nominal fee (comparable to iTunes individual download prices) for convenient access to a good, playable copies of older games.
This thing is so full of mistakes and inaccuracies that it's laughable. For one thing, it implies that all emulators need a bios image to run software. Then it mentions someone called "MegaMan" on the UltraHLE team. The writer must not have known that the authors were Realityman and Epsilon?
I haven't even finished reading yet.
You can find emulators for more than just games, many of them emulate old computers(such as basalisk, an emulator for older apple computers), or even just parts of hardware such as Daemon Tools (implements a virtual CD/DVD drive for win32 as well as some older copy protection such as SecuROM, etc. Something like mounting an iso under *nix, but a bit more advanced.)
You can also find programs that "Is Not an Emulator" that enable one to play games among other applications such as WINE and its derivatives like Cedega and Crossover Office.
You also find general purpose emulators that are mainly used for playing games, such as DOSBox. Another emulator that is often used for playing DOS games under WindowsNT-based systems is VDMSound (emulates the older ADLib(cap?) and SoundBlaster, MT32 Roland and like devices)
Sorry for not providing any links, but it's getting fairly late here and I have to be up in 5 hours...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
this article is flawed in several ways:
for those that didn't read the whole thing, this is actually a legal whitepaper on how to subvert and take over the emulation scene. this paper shows very clearly how to close the loopholes in the law that make emulation legal. they lost with the DMCA, but they can get you using intellectual property law and copyright/trademark infringement. this whitepaper lays out exactly how.
many of the facts in this article are completely wrong (Snes9x was released long after nlksnes, esnes, and Snes96. one example out of many), and a large part of the arguement is that the ability to make any sort of device to play something you own is a "gray area". the fact is you could MacGyver yourself an emulator out of safety pins, a car battery, and a potato if you wanted to. ownership of property allows you to do whatever you want with said property.
issues aside, this is a good idea of what emulation fans are going to see in the next few years.
I'm also a big fan of the Grandia series, and I'm amazed that it's not more popular. As well as being witty and well written, it has the best combat system of any RPG I've played; it's fast paced but very deep indeed.
Anyway, I find that when I play it on the PS2, the original Grandia hangs occasionally in the midst of battle. I've always suspected that this was either a memory leak or a disc streaming problem, which I imagine a PC-based emulator would be less prone to. So, do you get random hangs (e.g. climbing the wall towards the end of disc 1) with the emulator?
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
1
a very interestingZelda64: Ocarina of Time
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
An interesting, if flawed, paper that at least stirs debate. A few points of my own....
1. I'm pretty sure the industry will be building stuff in now to hold back emulation in the future, so it may just be that the current generation of consoles are the last emulated.
2. To claim Nintendo are not making N64 roms available is not totally accurate. Although not yet distributed widely, it's I-Que console does just that today.
3. Gaming on PC's sucks.
or similar rom download site is all the instances where the rights are owned by too many people to make it fesable.
Firstly, there may be the need to get permission from the manufacturer of the console or arcade board to relase it.
Secondly, there may be items in the game that the company doesnt own (e.g. licenced games, BIOS roms, licenced code/art/sounds/etc)
Thirdly, the company may not have something it can release. (whilst there is MAME + starroms, there are many reasons including piracy and loss of controll as to why most companies wouldnt want their games on sites like that)
There is a chart in the article about bus width, speed and FLops of various consoles over the years. If I remember correctly, the Intellivision was a 16 bit bus, not 8 bit as stated. The chip, some sort of General Instruments processor, was in fact a 16 bit chip.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
At some point, you need to use emulation to replace old equipment that simply dies on its own.
I recenly procured a C64 w/disk drive and monitor and an Amiga complete with software. My hope was to replace my original C64 which is suffering from a bad SID chip (sound is terrible and paddles don't work correctly).
Much to my horror, the 'new' C64 also had the same problem. So despite my efforts to procure used hardware to run my old software, I was cornered by a common flaw in the hardware itself.
Everything breaks eventually. The drive motor in your play station will give out, your AtariST disk drives will stop spinning, and your Gravis Ultra Sound will decide to stop playing beautiful demo music. Even your old Atari and NES carts will eventually break down (it may take a long time).
There are too many legitimate uses for emulation, that I cannot envision a future where corporations can continue to turn a blind eye to the consumer-market demand for such a thing.
(Aside: the corporate market has existed for some time now)
This was written by lawyers to stir up the pot and incite RIAA/MPAA style action from the game industry. It's full of inaccuracies and falsehoods.
N64 sales impact for example... based on today's P2P stats, but applied to a console which is now DEAD? Average price of N64 game = $39? I think a more accurate calculation would be to assume the average price of an N64 game is $10 USED since that's what games people would be buying. So money is lost not ffrom Nintendo, but from used game stores.
Its on MARP :) :P
Well the 2nd half of Dracula got me, but that doesn't count
Dragon Warrior in under 20 minutes sounds like a feat. I spent many many hours to beat that.
I like the fact people can compete by posting their high scores on MARP. I like I can play games I couldn't afford back in the day. I like the fact theres a variety of games to pick from. I like the nostalgia, and the limits they had in making games for the time. I like alot about it. I got to go stretch my collection some more
God spoke to me.