Whatcha Been Playing?

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

RE: Cass

I've heard a lot of very, very similar stories from folks I've met online in recent years, even people in my own country. So I have more than a few anecdotes.
- I once shipped a copy of The Witcher 3 to someone on a small Dene reservation in the Northwest Territories. He sent me a really nice note thanking me for free shipping, because most companies - Amazon, EB Games, etc. - either won't ship there or charge exorbitant prices for shipping. Imagine, every game doubling in price because of the *shipping*.
- I have a friend on Discord who is trying her best to be a retro game collector in Croatia. Similar to Cass's story, she can't even consider a Switch because the system alone costs as much as her monthly income. She still PC games on a CRT monitor because that's all she had growing up. But apparently Doom Eternal in 4:3 on a CRT is actually an amazing experience. She was excited the game was easy to pirate, because she wouldn't have been able to play it otherwise.
- On a forum I used to post on, I knew a guy from Venezuela who would always be all over those "free Steam key" threads. Apparently in Venezuela, there is a maximum (monthly?) spending limit on international purchases. His family would run that up importing things like clothes and household goods. So even if he had the money for Steam games, he wasn't able to buy them. There are many, many people out there who rely on charity and piracy just to game.

So long story short... It's kind of in really bad taste to infer anyone is somehow a cheapskate for not paying arbitrarily high game prices. I'm lucky, I live in Canada and I have a good income when I can stay employed. So I can afford games. But even in my position of relative luxury, I can't afford to drop $80 on video games willy-nilly. I rely heavily on sales, price drops and rentals to keep my hobby going. Many people are in worse positions.
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Not being able to afford something is not an excuse to pirate it.

You will never convince me otherwise.

Because this is my living you're talking about.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Flabyo wrote: April 14th, 2020, 4:27 pm Not being able to afford something is not an excuse to pirate it.
I agree when it comes to new stuff. Although it is a bit of a different scenario when it comes to old stuff that isn't being sold as new anymore and only goes for odiously inflated prices on the second-hand market, isn't it? I'm staunchly anti-piracy, but I can't really fault somebody wanting to play NES Ice Climber and looking for another option when the only available official version costs 300€/$/£ on ebay, none of which rewards the original developers directly.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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KSubzero1000 wrote: April 14th, 2020, 12:50 pm
Magical_Isopod wrote: April 13th, 2020, 6:12 pm I'm far, far more likely to spend $80 on a physical thing I can resell than $40 on a digital license that has no value.
Honestly, I feel the same.

The tangibility of physical games is of massive value in my eyes. It's not even about the potential of re-selling them, since I don't think I've sold any game in over a decade by now. Maybe if we ever got to the point where digital games qualified as the actual property of the buyer as opposed to glorified licenses tied to publisher's empty promises, I might change my mind on that. For now, I have no issue paying MSRP for a physical game that I'm looking forward to at launch. Whereas I don't really feel comfortable paying more than €20 for any digital game.


PS: And yeah, Cass brings up a good point. Not everybody is going to have the same options to pick from.
Honestly, I feel like some country or another needs to consider legislation around the resale of digital games. For one, a license should not be something that can be revoked on a whim - and if a storefront or download server goes down, it should absolutely not be illegal to obtain the game through alternate means.

Like, purchase and transfer of paid software licenses is neither impossible nor new... Companies and contractors do it all the time with professional software like AutoCAD. The key is tied to one PC, and it needs to be deactivated on one PC to be re-activated on another. You can't just reuse the key infinitely; I've tried, believe me. XD But you can sell that software to another party by either selling the PC with the software on it, or passing the key along. The technology is there, and it works. It's been there since the freaking 90s. But gaming has not adopted similar measures. It can. It doesn't want to. That ought to change. We ought to have marketplaces - Steam already has one up and functioning - for selling game licenses. And why not?
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Flabyo wrote: April 14th, 2020, 4:27 pm Not being able to afford something is not an excuse to pirate it.

You will never convince me otherwise.

Because this is my living you're talking about.
Well do you gear the prices to income so that people in poorer countries can pay what they can afford? Because if you don't, you're kind of creating your own problem.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I'm 99,99% sure Flabyo isn't the one deciding the pricing of anything, Iso... :|

It's pretty clear where he's coming from considering how deeply entrenched piracy has become when it comes to this particular hobby. For every gray-area case there are at least several cases of folks casually grabbing pirated copies off the internet because they have gotten accustomed to it and think that enjoying the content somebody else created without paying for it is the most natural thing in the world. Devs need to get paid and that money has to come from somewhere, after all.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Devs should probably be focused more on greedy publishers than the poor in directing their ire. Someone is definitely removing income from the pockets of devs, but it's definitely not people who couldn't afford the games in the first place. It's no different from when a factory worker blames immigrants for his/her low income when the executives are making tens of millions in bonuses.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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See, I totally agree with the notion that the primary responsibility lies with the greedy publishers. 100%.

But the one element you're not addressing is that it's not only the people who are too poor to afford games who resort to piracy. Plenty of folks who can afford them pirate them anyway because they've gotten into the habit of doing so. And I know I'd be pissed at those if I worked in the game industry myself.

Complex issue, really. Bit of empathy goes a long way.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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KSubzero1000 wrote: April 14th, 2020, 4:56 pm See, I totally agree with the notion that the primary responsibility lies with the greedy publishers. 100%.

But the one element you're not addressing is that it's not just the people who are too poor to afford games who resort to piracy. Plenty of folks who can afford them pirate them anyway because they've gotten into the habit of doing so. And I know I'd be pissed at those if I worked in the game industry myself.

Complex issue, really. Bit of empathy goes a long way.
Those people suck. My dad lives in a $1.3 Million home, and he and his wife both each make more than I do. He pirates ALL his movies and TV with one of those Android boxes. In fact, the only people I see with those boxes tend to be wealthier people - middle class types. When I'm at the homes of poorer people, they actually buy stuff. So those wealthier people, they suck. My dad sucks.

But I take TREMENDOUS issue with the assertion that poorer people somehow don't "deserve" games because they can't afford them. Like, Flaybo will happily work on a PC with parts made by Chinese labourers that are paid like crap, then turn around and say the people whose labour was exploited to make those parts cheap don't deserve the games created on that PC. You've indirectly taken money out of someone else's pockets, and you shame people in much less fortunate positions for doing the same? That's absurd to me.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Magical_Isopod wrote: April 14th, 2020, 5:14 pm Those people suck. My dad lives in a $1.3 Million home, and he and his wife both each make more than I do. He pirates ALL his movies and TV with one of those Android boxes. In fact, the only people I see with those boxes tend to be wealthier people - middle class types. When I'm at the homes of poorer people, they actually buy stuff. So those wealthier people, they suck. My dad sucks.
I agree, and a big thumbs up from for me for being consistent about this. :thumbsup:

Magical_Isopod wrote: April 14th, 2020, 5:14 pm But I take TREMENDOUS issue with the assertion that poorer people somehow don't "deserve" games because they can't afford them. Like, Flaybo will happily work on a PC with parts made by Chinese labourers that are paid like crap, then turn around and say the people whose labour was exploited to make those parts cheap don't deserve the games created on that PC. You've indirectly taken money out of someone else's pockets, and you shame people in much less fortunate positions for doing the same? That's absurd to me.
...I take your point, especially in regard to the electronics manufacturing conditions that so much of modern western living standards are based on. That's fair. Horrendous practices that nobody seems interested in actually improving.

The only issue I have with your argument is that, when pushed to its logical conclusion, it could easily be applied to pretty much every other consumer product on the market. Is it okay to break into the local bowling center at night under the justification that their fees are too high and that the material used to create their shoes isn't being ethically sourced? I dunno, that seems a bit absurd to me as well.

In that scenario, the bowling center employees are the equivalent of ordinary game devs. Yes, the industry they are a small part of is very imperfect, but they are still providing a valuable service. And if any would-be customer is interested in that service, then it stands to reason that they should be compensated for their work.

Ultimately, video games are still a semi-luxury good. I'd prefer if we found a way to reward hard-working developers and cater to customer groups of various nationalities and socio-economic statuses without completely throwing the basic concept of monetary exchange out the window and declaring a giant free-for-all.

The two biggest issues in my book are the greedy corporate publishers who ruthlessly exploit their various workers and the convenience pirates. Maybe we should focus on those first.
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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The Chinese government deciding that its people aren’t allowed to play most video games has got sweet fuck all to do with me.

You have a view of the industry where all publishers are greedy and all developers are downtrodden and want everyone to play their games for free really.

It’s not like that. It’s not even slightly like that.

I’m done talking to you.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Good to see classism is well and truly alive in some darker corners of the internet, very good.

Anyway, I picked up FF7 on Steam - the original game - and I'm working on playing with mods... Holy heck do they ever improve this game! There's an incredible amount of detail in the backgrounds alone that I never even knew was there, and yet it's suddenly crystal clear with the mod support. All the Lego models have been replaced with more accurately proportioned ones, the battle models still run at 20 fps but have significantly more detail thanks to upscaling...

There's a really great mod application specifically for FF7 called 7th Heaven, and it's very, very easy to use. I've never really dabbled in modding before... My only major attempt was with Fallout: New Vegas, and that was beyond frustrating. Never got it working quite right. But slow download speeds aside, 7th Heaven was a joy to work with, I highly recommend it.
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Stanshall
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Stanshall »

No great interest in entering this particular debate, but I am pissing myself at the Cane and Rinse forum being described as a dark corner of the Internet.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Yes, not really clear why anyone who felt that way would lower themselves to hanging around in such an insalubrious place.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Pretty sure that was meant to be sarcastic, guys.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

KSubzero1000 wrote: April 14th, 2020, 10:09 pm Pretty sure that was meant to be sarcastic, guys.
The "dark corners of the internet" portion was, yes. :P
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I've restarted Resident Evil 3 on easy as I've screwed myself over with a save state which leaves me with one handgun bullet and locked in a room with two hunters who must die before I can progress further. Googled it and I'm 3 rooms from the final boss fight.

Hang on is this the right thread ;)
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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DomsBeard wrote: April 14th, 2020, 11:09 pm I've restarted Resident Evil 3 on easy as I've screwed myself over with a save state which leaves me with one handgun bullet and locked in a room with two hunters who must die before I can progress further. Googled it and I'm 3 rooms from the final boss fight.

Hang on is this the right thread ;)
What a nightmare! I had a similar problem with a code Veronica boss fight. Those were the days!
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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On the BitSocket podcast they used to do a feature called 5 minutes in heaven where one of the duo would play a game for 5 minutes and give his verdict.

It’s a pretty funny concept and in the world of gamepass it is entirely possible to give multiple games a whirl to see if they float your boat.

I’ve played a few games this evening and most of them you know what you are getting into within a few minutes and can make a judgement rightly or wrongly. The last game I put on was Devil May Cry 5 which after 5 minutes I really didn’t enjoy and thought I’ll leave this one. However another 5 minutes and a few skill unlocks and I’m getting A ranks and loving it. Incredibly strange how a few minutes can change so much so maybe I’m just fickle.

I do find Gamepass to be an incredible product for the consumer but I worry and fear what it does for developers. I hope they get adequate compensation.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Simonsloth wrote: April 14th, 2020, 11:19 pm What a nightmare! I had a similar problem with a code Veronica boss fight. Those were the days!
That almost sounds like the tyrant on the plane?
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