What? I saw Modern Warfare 2 more expensive here than a printer.

EDIT:

That's just rage talking.

EDIT2: And why the hell are you calling Dennis an addict of something

I didn't call Dennis a pirate nor an addict. I said if you..., which is basically hypothetically addressing the reader.

My opinions are my own based on considering the viewpoints of the authors and consumers. Of course consumers think they deserve it for free. It doesn't work that way.

I don't even watch the news, be it Fox or any other network.

I've always been relatively poor and went through my childhood getting considerably less toys and games than the peers around me. Throughout my entire childhood, I got maybe 20 games, and that's collectively between my brother and I, and including gifts from extended family. Generally only about 3 or 6 games per platform, and a platform generally lasted me 6 or more years. My parents never really liked me playing games, and additionally couldn't afford to get my very many games, so when I did get a game it usually had to entertain me for a year or three. And they did. I know a little bit about going without.

Now that I'm working and still living at home, I can afford to buy games for myself, and I do because it's something that I love. I'm not rich by any means. I make just under $CAD17/hour. When I move into my own apartment, which hopefully becomes available in the next month or two, I'll probably buy substantially fewer games. Even then, I only buy games that I think are really good and worth playing. I've only gotten 12 PS3 games in the 3 years since I've had a PS3. Add another handful of PC games to that. And I have plenty of savings that I could spent on more games if I chose to. I prefer to save my money and only play the games that really interest me.

It's like I said: if you can't afford the occasional game then you're living above your means. If a game is only fun to you for a few hours then you shouldn't be buying it. That's why they have video game rentals. Which, BTW, is the legitimate way to try before you buy. It's more expensive than just buying the game, but less expensive if you learn that you don't want to buy most games in the first place.

I'd consider myself an experienced gamer (playing for almost 20 years) and generally don't have trouble with games. The games that I buy generally last me at least 30 hours, but generally closer to 40 or 50 hours. Some of them probably last longer than that. And they're such great games that I can replay them time and time again and still enjoy them. Maybe that comes from going without throughout my childhood, but I can easily play the same games or listen to the same music repeatedly for months at a time.

Modern games aren't like the old repetitive games of the 80s and 90s either. The levels aren't just a matter of placing a couple of blocks differently. They're very complicated 3D worlds with increasing realism and distance. It takes years just to build a 40 hour game that modern day gamers like myself expect. So you can't expect to get 100+ hours out of most games. Games today are intended to be enjoyed like a movie. They aren't like Pac-Man where you did essentially the same thing 255 times before you could say you beat the game. Of course there were a lot of hours in older games like that, but it all looked essentially the same with difficulty increasing by the speed and effectiveness of your enemies increasing or the speed and effectiveness of yourself decreasing. They didn't have the capacity to give you a unique experience every level so they had to extend the games with little tweaks to make things different. I've never enjoyed repetitive games like that.

Wait, weren't games intended from the first place to be interactive, unlike books or movies? (Well, there's also those books where you choose a story.)

But it was a true achievement if you did it!

The best way to get that amount of time out of a game is by making it replayable or challenging. I think I've played Fallout 2 with more than 15 different characters. And the game was developed in less than an year.

Anyway, I won't nitpick any longer your rant about how great modern games are(ugh).

What happened to your hand? Looks like 2 big teeth, ouch!

Oh I think they have something similar here in Germany. I remember seeing an offer like that at Saturn. Still only works for people who have enough time to play.

Don't worry. I didn't take anything you said like that. I did get that most of the times you used "you", it must in fact have been a general "you", meaning not me specifically but rather "someone".
I'm also using that general you in this post a lot.

Whether someone perceives something as expensive or cheap, is purely based on the weight of that someones purse (assuming that heavier means there's more money in it, not stones or something else that's heavy but effectively worthless in the context of that figure of speech).

Wrong. You might already have decent computer from earlier savings or from times when you had the money to buy one or maybe got it as a gift from someone, a roof over your head and food in your mouth and after that no money left to participate in public cultural living.

So you may indeed be able to afford all your basic needs(warm place to sleep + food) and then still feel a need for something for which you don't have any money left. If in that case you can aquire that something without paying for it but also without depriving someone else of it (which is the case with making a digital copy of something|not the same as stealing, because with stealing you actually take something away from someone so it becomes inaccessible to that someone) you're not generating a loss for that other someone, because what that other someone could have gotten in return for it, didn't exist to begin with (your non-existant money).

What now? Do people pirate games just because they can, or do they pirate games because they're fun?

But they DO leave the games stale and untouched as soon as they realize that the games aren't worth playing. Sure there are Demo versions but those are usually crippled up to a point where it's impossible to determine whether the full game is actually any fun or not.
Most pirates I know use pirated copies as extended demos and they do buy the games they like afterwards (given they can afford them).

I think people pirate games mainly because they want to be a part of cultural living, yet can't afford to buy the games. Are only rich people allowed to have a part of cultural living?
Other people pirate games out of curiosity or for competition: crackers take pride in being the first ones to crack a new copy protection, it's a sport for them.

That's entirely your own subjective perception. I agree that the good games among todays games are indeed very good compared to games of similar genres from the eighties or nineties (but not nearly all of them).

It is the task of the original designers, QA, thorough testing, tweaking and balancing to do those iterations before the supposed triple A game is thrown out at the players.
Paying customers should not be (ab)used as betatesters.

Not comparable. Most projects in the depot where created by hobbyists for a learning purpose or for fun and without them being in it for the money.
Also, when a hobbyist game developer creates a clone of a popular classic, it is because the hobbyist developer is still learning the basics and/or is curious to find out whether he's capable of creating a clone of his favourite childhood memory or just doing it for the fun of development.
Reiteration is only one way, the cheapes of all ways, to improve something that is already there. Other ways are recombination, reinvention or the hardest of all to come up with something truly unique and new.

In any case except the last mentioned, it is just not right to complain if what you created doesn't sell and blame it on piracy. People are not stupid (though the industry would certainly love them to be dumbed down enough so they can sell the same crap every year with only minor adjustments), they see that that supposedly new game is basically the same old one in a new dress and they're just not willing to pay for it or even play it.

Even though I'm sure that's a general you there too, I want to say this: I could currently safely afford 10 new full price games a month without starving to death or not being able to pay any of my other monthly essentials but I'm not buying that many games.
Why? Because I don't think there are that many good games worth buying and also I don't have the time playing that many games.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that way. The problem that games aren't bought isn't piracy, it is, as I already said, a saturated market, lack of quality, lack of time and in most cases a lack of money on the side of those who play the games. I'll gladly repeat what I said: Money that isn't there, isn't a loss for anyone.
If you're in game development for the money and you think you're not making enough profit, find another industry to invest your money to.

Games have always been a field for enthusiasts, they're dispensable. If you can't produce good enough games that sell, you're obviously doing it wrong or there is no market for your games because people need other things first or already bought a better game from one of your competitors who were capable enough to produce a quality game that people liked and bought.

News just in: Most people actually ARE social beings who like to be a part of their community. That's essential instinctive behaviour. In past times, not being accepted by your tribe usually meant you had to make it on your own out in the wild and you'd probably be dead soon without their support.

They do enjoy the good games, they discontinue to play the bad ones. Neither way, if they couldn't afford the game to begin with, whether or not they play it through til the end doesn't matter, still the copy can't be considered a loss for the producer (and this is what producers are complaining about when they point their finger towards piracy, they say that every pirated copy is their loss and that's ridiculous and wrong).

Sounds like the average fairly young teen. Most teens(unless they have rich parents who give them a lot of allowance) don't have much money at their hands to spend on anything. I wouldn't be surprised if your cousin would pirate games.

Who said that only 5% of all games are good?

They shouldn't have to hand their works over no. They just shouldn't complain about piracy when clearly the real reason their games aren't bought is because they suck (and I'm not addressing the members of this forum with this but rather the money hungry producers who pay developers to develop crappy games, expect those crap games to sell and when they don't wonder why...).

Paying for what you don't enjoy is stupid. Also, it's not like pirates continue to use/play the stuff they don't like. They have no reason at all to do so. They buy what they like if they can afford it.

Being creative is a luxury pastime for most people. Most people are creative because they can. Nobody ever said you had the right or expectation to have the ability to be creative.

And that's the very root of the problem. The expectation that creativity can be industrialized, bottled and sold is totally fucked up. It works up to a certain point but as soon as the market is saturated and people get fed up with mediocricy, you can't expect to continue to sell anything that is not cream of the crop.

See. Don't you think most people think and act that way? At least the two of us do.
So crap games do go down with or without piracy, because they're simply not getting bought.
I can't stress enough how market saturation makes this even more of a "problem" to the producers, because people do have a choice to buy only the best games.

Disclaimer: I do not glorify nor endorse piracy. All I'm saying is that I think it's a bullshit argument to say that piracy is responsible for company failures in the games market.

I agree that somebody that can't afford to license intellectual property isn't necessarily generating a loss by pirating it. However, they are making it unfair to the people that did have to pay. They are probably also going to influence whether or not someone does pay. If you tell your friend (who say, can afford to pay) that you can get it for free, is he going to pay or is he going to spend that money on something else? Essentially, this is what it all comes down to. A "not really" lost sale can still result in lost sales. You can't guarantee that your actions won't influence sales unless you are sure to pay as soon as you're able and you don't enable anyone else that can indeed pay. Keep in mind that if you would have bought something had you been able to pay, but were left with pirating it, and were later able to pay, but had since gotten tired of playing it; you WOULD be affecting sales.

BOTH, if you want to nitpick.

Yes, indeed, only the "rich" are allowed to have a part of "cultural living". That's the way it's supposed to be. Those that aren't rich are supposed to work to get rich so they too can enjoy luxuries. Their work should help society and in turn everybody benefits. Nothing is supposed to be handed out. We all want to live in big mansions with sports cars and servants, but that costs money. There is a very good reason for that. People essentially only do what they "need to do". That might be limited to survival or it might be expanded to comfort or luxury. However one defines their needs, that is what influences their actions.

Take, for example, a rich snobby child who is born into wealth. What do they generally contribute to society in their lifetimes? Not much, if we're to believe popular media and popular opinion. They have everything they could ever want and generally don't need to work for anything (assuming their parents give it to them); and don't.

Compare that to an average child born into an average family. He'll generally need to find work and make a living for himself. If he wants to have luxuries in his life, he'll have to get a decent education and "move up the ladder", so to speak. A burger maker at McDonald's won't cut it.

This is what drives a collaborative free market society. If everyone was handed luxuries there would be no incentive to work hard. Modern "developed" societies would fall apart.

I'm sure murderers and rapists also consider their actions a "sport", but that doesn't make them acceptable. Besides, merely cracking copy protection in itself doesn't have to do any harm either. There is such a thing as "white hat" hackers. There's no reason there couldn't be "white hat" crackers as well. They could still enjoy the sport without actually hurting anyone (indeed, they could be helping the developers and publishers instead of hurting them).

If you were to take the time to track down and play every game released every year in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, you would find that the market has always been full of crap; or at least games that you don't enjoy. Not only does every individual person have their own differing tastes (which change), but anyone is free to produce their own intellectual property, whether or not they actually have talent or creative ability. It's inevitable that a lot of garbage is going to flood the market. It's up to you to take that into consideration before buying. Either that, or come up with a quality assurance strategy for the industry to use to filter works (that doesn't cripple the industry or innovation).

They're not abusing you. They just aren't gods. They don't know what you'll enjoy. If they did, they'd just make the one perfect game that suits everyone and never need to make another.

Art is like that. Does every musician just automatically know what the audience enjoys or do they take risks sometimes that disappoint? In order for the things that we truly love to be discovered, a lot of things we hate need to be produced. Beautiful art is largely discovered by mistake. Even so, ignoring the artistic side of gaming, engineering is itself a complex process that requires failure to attain success.

You may be an exception, but according to you you aren't even a pirate so nobody is accusing you of being the problem. The actual pirates clearly do enjoy the games and clearly do take pleasure in playing them. Why the fsck else would they do it? The truth is there aren't very many good games made in a year (it's probably a handful or at most two). I don't think that's changed at all since the gaming industry began. There never was that many good games. Maybe in the beginning there were more considered good because it was a completely new idea and people were easier to impress, but these days it takes a lot of artistic, intelligent, and skillful people to produce something "good". They're still people though and can't guarantee a home run every time.

He's not a teen anymore. He's only a couple of years younger than me, which should put him in his 20s. Regardless, nobody ever entitled teenagers to whatever they want. Did you have everything you wanted when you were a teenager? I sure didn't.

All of his life he's had tons of toys and luxuries, etc. Far more than I ever had. His family can either afford it or are living above their means. Could he afford to buy every song or album and every movie and every game? No, of course not. Does he need all of that stuff? No, of course not.

And I don't hold anything against my cousin. He's awesome. I just know that it wouldn't hurt him^[1] if he didn't have access to all of this intellectual property and it would help a lot of companies that produce music, movies, and games if he actually paid for some of this stuff.

A lot of pirates say they pay for the things they like, but how many do you think actually do? My guess is less than 15% of them. They already have it and are free to spend their money on whatever else they want. If that means getting name brand clothing so they can be "cooler" then so be it. They'd rather do that then pay for a game when they "aren't even hurting anyone by pirating".

So what you're saying is that entertainment should be abolished? Creativity requires time to grow and be expressed. If people have to work a full time job they aren't going to have the energy to be fully creative. Risk their house on releasing an album? Shit, no, they have a mortgage and kids to put through college.

The games that I think are good and worth playing are few and far between. I usually know this long before I buy the game. Why don't you? Why don't pirates? It's bullshit.

The arguments pirates give are reasonable. They just want to know what they're getting before they pay. Fine. Except that there's no way for anyone to know how much enjoyment they actually get out of a game or movie or album. They can, and human nature would encourage them to, lie. They can get away with more that way. The only thing that stands in the way is their own personal code of ethics, and we all know that the majority of people are not ethical. All you have to do is look at how many people liter, and cheat, and steal, and abuse one another. The law wouldn't be necessary if we could rely on each individual being ethical.

Absolutely crappy games are going to go down with or without piracy. It's the not crap games that are getting pirated 10000x more than the crap games that is the problem. And no publisher in their right mind would complain about sales for a crappy game because everyone, pirates and legitimate consumers, would tell them to their face how crappy the game is. They complain about the games that don't suck. The thing is that measures of piracy show a major increase for popular games, but sales don't show the same increase. Clearly, not all pirates that enjoy the games are paying for them. The majority are not (as we would expect; see above).

NZD$100 is only about CAD$70, which is about the same as I pay after taxes (CAD$60 + 13% = CAD$68).

I meant dollar. Fixed.

And if you ask my opinion, I'll say all RTSs suck. So that doesn't say anything for the quality of today's games. GTA IV and Uncharted are examples of recent games that are teh awesome. Maybe the genres that you enjoy are falling off of the map, but then there aren't very many RTSs released in a year so you can't be pirating too many games now can you?

What do you expect? I'm only 23^[2], you dinosaur.

They're repetitive on a much higher level. There is a lot that changes in a modern FPS from "level" to "level". Weapons are introduced with complex differences in fire rate, capacity, accuracy and range. On top of that, the levels themselves generally vary greatly. And gameplay is only part of the game. There is also a griping story that you get to participate in. Driving games are the same. It's the same basic actions that you control to drive, but the cars, conditions, and either streets or track are constantly changing. Driving physics alone leave you with a lot to experiment with. Games like Driver and GTA also offer you the freedom to choose how you want to drive. On the sidewalk like a n00b, 20 km/h like a grandma, or pedal to the medal, handbrake corners, etc. There are also variations of gameplay, like chasing people, getting chased by people, racing against time or other drivers, or transporting goods. In racing games like Gran Turismo, the skills involved in actually succeeding require lots of practice and are very enjoyable for those that like it. People love to joke about how boring Nascar is ("it's just a bunch of guys driving in a cirlce!"), but the actual enthusiasts that love it know that it's a lot more complicated and interesting then that. Modern games are repetitive in the same sense, but far more variable than say Pac-Man levels.

There are a lot of games that have fun gameplay that I continue to enjoy and all I want is more story to go with the gameplay (i.e., more "levels" or "missions"). Though there are enhancements, that's essentially what HL2 and GTA IV episodes are. The games are already great and players just want more of them.

This is no doubt an opinional matter, but I've never come across a game that has a story that could be considered anything close to gripping. In my case, it's probably because I'm more into literature than games (I probably spend at least ten times more time reading books than I do playing games).

Certainly some modern games I've seen (Mass Effect and Bioshock are two examples), have interesting worlds, but I find myself unable to form any emotional attachment with the characters. Game dialogue is also usually badly written and contrived, and in some cases poorly translated into English. This is one of the reasons I stopped playing RPG games, as they started becoming too dialogue driven, and the poor writing quality turned me right off. I prefer the Darklands/Pool of Radiance era RPGs myself.

To bring this back on topic, the copy protection in those games was much better than DRM as well. It was always physical - for Pool of Radiance, there were two cardboard wheels riveted together, the bottom slightly larger than the top one, with the top one having squares cut out of it. The game would ask you at certain points to match up two of the symbols and tell it which third symbol would appear in a marked square. Many other games would ask you to type in a word from the manual.

The PC platform is disappearing because of pirates. This makes absolute sense. Other platforms (predominantly consoles) aren't pirated nearly as often as PC and those platforms are thriving. Disputing this would be ridiculous. The technical challenges of developing for PC aren't much different from consoles (indeed, PC SDKs are probably more plentiful and mature). Many of us here have developed games for the PC, whereas far fewer of us have developed games for consoles. Developers have no reason (other than piracy) to wander away from the PC. I guess the "righteous" actions of pirates are a double-edged sword.

I can agree with you to some extent, although there have always been buggy games and I personally haven't noticed a significant change. What I have noticed is that PS3 games are often patched by the time you buy them (even if you buy it close to release) which suggests that they might be shipping an "unfinished" product. You can make the argument that it's a bad thing, but on the other hand it enabled them to ship it faster and also enables them to fix things that slipped by the testers later. I'm not sure there's a problem at all. Buggy or unfun games will suffer in sales as they should, as soon as people who have played them warn all of their friends and the Internetz.

World of Goo is an exception to the rule. It exists in a much smaller market space than GTA or FF. If there was as much competition for WoG as there is for GTA or FF then it wouldn't have been nearly as successful. 2D Boy essentially found themselves a niche market to exploit and they did it well. I hope they find themselves just as successful with their next game, but the truth is that the industry is a gamble for indie developers. One month you're getting by and the next month you've lost everything. Good luck raising a family with that kind of career. I can't speak for 2D Boy, but I bet if you asked them they'd say they've faced many challenges and continue to face challenges every day.

Take, for example, Counter-Strike: Source. The glock and USP have completely different characteristics. Similarly, the MP5 and UMP have completely different characteristics. As a general rule, at modern day levels of complexity, a seemingly minor change on the surface is a lot more complicated under the surface and can have adverse affects on the resulting gameplay.

The same is true of movies and books. The characters are still unique and have their own combinations of qualities and traits that sets them apart and ultimately drives the story differently.

I think that's pretty much what consumers want. It's definitely what I want. Give me a game where I can do all of the things I love in one. There are finite possibilities^[1] for game ideas (or indeed, story ideas). Sooner or later you have to just innovate on what's already been done. If you have completely new ideas I'm sure we'd all love to hear them. Until then, keep giving me improvements on the existing ideas.

It's the factorial interactions of umpteen jillion possible combinations of hardware that's the problem? An Xbox 360 has just so many screen modes, with some standard sound hardware, etc. And no half-done ATI graphic drivers. Also there's a recent problem with a new Nvidia driver shutting down the cooling fans when playing certain games unless you manually set fan speed to 100% in the control panel.

No, you believe it to be false. There is a difference.

When you are outnumbered by the people who are arguing against you, you really need to consider who is being close-minded.

I know that I am now repeating myself here, but don't they have to pirate the game first before they can play it and decide they like it? I know that for me, I usually like to play a game before I decide what I think of it.

I think the only "poor me" statement in this thread has been this one: I've always been relatively poor and went through my childhood getting considerably less toys and games than the peers around me

I know I certainly don't pirate because I'm a victim. I can easily afford to pay for games, I just don't as I don't feel the price for them is justified. Well, ok I do sometimes buy them, but not until they get to bargain-bin prices.

I don't buy into most of the righteous arguments for piracy either. I'm pretty sure most people who claim they are taking some sort of moral stand are just trying to make themselves sound good (though no doubt some people really do feel that way). My reasons for piracy are a blend of both the reasons that you and Dennis are claiming people are doing it for. I do think most games suck too much to pay the price they demand for them. If they were going for a reasonable price, I would buy more of them. But I also do pirate them because I can. If I didn't know that I could get away with it without any consequences, I wouldn't. maybe this makes me a bad person, but I don't think so. At least no worse than people who choose to drive fuel-inefficient cars or who drive around wasting fuel for no other reason than they think it makes them look cool, or people who throw reclyclables out with the garbage because they're too lazy to do it properly.

Back in the old country every single game I bought for my PSX was pirated In fact it was easier to buy genuine stuff for the PC than genuine stuff for the consoles, hah. Good old times.