My days of software piracy is over...Almost

Living Room
#1

To those who want to hear the ramblings of a 30+ year old man who started life with an Apple II…you can continue. The others can plainly pull a .357 from your jacket pocket and put it in your mouth scattering your brains all over the wall behind you. (The French can just go take a bath…I’m sure that would kill them.) Well…enough of the hatred/racist talk…Let’s get to business.

When I got an Intellivision back in the day…you kind of had to buy the cartridge to play the game. Piracy was not an issue…
until I got an Apple //c.

The Apple //c was OK (I begged for a c-64, but the folks didn’t listen…they thought “More expensive” means “better quality”. WRONG)

I played Taipan (the only game I wound up aquiring on my own) and Ultima III listening to “one night in Bangkok” and “we are the world” on the Radio…Then a friend of mine new a friend who had an Apple IIe and then after talking to him and others…we wound up collecting a bunch of games among us. For the years I owned that machine I purchased 4 Games…That’s it. Didn’t think twice about it either.

Got a C-64 then…copied games like crazy, but the games I really loved I would buy a copy to have the instructions and the original packaging…Maybe I bought around 20 games…Of course I got them well after their initial release date so I could get a discount.

Fast forward to today: I download only mp3s and feel I’ve wasted enough cash on 400 Compact Discs already (200 of which were taken by an ex-wife)…I will rarely buy a CD unless it’s a band I truely like…And those I’ve only recently listened to by getting mp3s…So bands will get my money that are based on quality and style as opposed to popularity…

But for software, I have recently changed my attitude about piracy. I do not like it. I don’t like the fact the game manufacturers charge a bunch of dough and then treat the users like junk…But if it is something I think I will like, I shell up the cash…Exept for certain programs.

Why the heck would I pay for an MS Office Suite when I can download it for free? If the program were $30…$40…Maybe even %50, I would pay for it. But at these prices they are now: SCREW THAT.

Has any game maker tried to sell games cheap with the possiblity of getting MORE profits by getting higher numbers of users to use them? I have not heard of that but hope that it is true.

It fits for the consoles as well: I will never buy a $50 game that’s on a 50c CD. If it was $20, I’d buy many.

Oh well…Guess the world has a way to go for me to catch up, or it to catch up to me. I’m not sure which one.

#2

snif a beautiful manifest… wipes away a tear

anyway , enough mocking …

There have been SOME software developers that tried to make software somewhat cheaper and/or use other methods of distributing.

The one i like best of today is still IdSoftware. NOT Activision , but plainly IdSoftware.

When they developed Commander Keen (i don’t think they were called IdSoftware then ,just started with Apogee) they made it a very adoring shareware. The game ruled, but since it wasn’t crippleware and couldn’t be bothered with newer levels i never bought it. Then there’s Doom and Doom II of which they even gave away the method on how to make more levels. And now the same thing has been done with Quake III.

I’ve bought Quake III for Linux at some computer conference. It costed me about $15 , comes with fully working Quake III and all the updates are FREE. Too bad Loki has been put out of business by bad management.

I think fairly the shareware idea had good potential in software , but it’s been a sport to crack them , get serial keys and whatever.
And you just can’t buy anything you want on software with a normal paycheck.

As for MS Office … i really don’t care… There are TONS of free Office suites out there. But since Mickeysoft has done such a good thing to commercialize every bleeding company , you just HAVE to have Word in order to communicate with 80% of the rest of the world.

The other 20% can handle ASCII , K-Write or OpenOffice perfectly , but also bought/copied MS Word , to communicate with the other 80% again. And there’s the infinite loop.

GPL may sound nice and mostly it IS , but don’t forget that it’s free. Which means NOBODY gets paid… not the designer , not the programmer , nobody at all. So it’s not a very good thing to do if you plan to make a living at writing or distributing software.

Same with Napster and its follow-ups. Beautiful idea , but grabbed by marketeers who feed you with popups over and over again , or hacked by other people to distribute illegal software everywhere.

What if Microsoft would say tomorrow " That’s it ! Everyone is fired and we close the company for ever !" A lot of panic i assume.

Do you know it costs Sierra Studios ONE MILLION DOLLARS to develop a game ? And if they sell it for $20 a piece , they’ll get a break even point at 50000 legally sold copies.

Thing is… try to make it easy and give lots of extras (flashy manual , updates , nice poster). The guys who made the Ultima series have understood that. You can copy the Ultima games, but you will not have the special map and the big manuals. (Yes they can be scanned and turned into a pdf , but that doesn’t give the same feel as a fabric made map). Make your product this way that people won’t bother to copy it , crack/hack it or distribute it.

The claims the warez boys are using are all CRAP. You are doing illegal business the moment you have it on your system. Not a 24 deletion time… and puhleeez stop the .nfo and file_id.diz crap. “We are cool 'cause we got game [xx] and we cracked it”. I’ve been into that world , and it’s not pretty.

Copying software is like speeding … It’s illegal and if you get caught the price will be high. But there’s not a cop on every corner. You take the risk , you take the blame. There are plenty of free opportunities and free software , but sadly… you will not be able to play Halo II , GTA IV or use Ms Office for free then as well.

#3

Croteam, the ones making Serious Sam, are selling copies of Serious for 300 Nkr, while other games costs 500 Nkr.
The level editor is also included on the cd, together with a manual. :slight_smile:

This game rulez in multiplayer co-op, BTW. :cool:

#4

Originally posted by Mr. Belvedere
[B]

Thing is… try to make it easy and give lots of extras (flashy manual , updates , nice poster). The guys who made the Ultima series have understood that. You can copy the Ultima games, but you will not have the special map and the big manuals. (Yes they can be scanned and turned into a pdf , but that doesn’t give the same feel as a fabric made map). Make your product this way that people won’t bother to copy it , crack/hack it or distribute it.

[/B]

Now THAT so beautifully put…I wore my Ultima IV Ankh around my neck throughout high school because I cherished it so much. (Actually, if I did that I’m sure I’d receive beatings not in line with the “life” that an Ankh represents)

I made sure my Ultima V Coin was in my pocket whenever I went to Vegas too… Weird as no jackpots were hit by me at this time, however I did see some moongates appear near Caesar’s Palace. But, I don’t think that was the coin as much as the 99 cent margaritas.

BadASCII

#5

Originally posted by BadASCII
[B]

Now THAT so beautifully put…I wore my Ultima IV Ankh around my neck throughout high school because I cherished it so much. (Actually, if I did that I’m sure I’d receive beatings not in line with the “life” that an Ankh represents)

I made sure my Ultima V Coin was in my pocket whenever I went to Vegas too… Weird as no jackpots were hit by me at this time, however I did see some moongates appear near Caesar’s Palace. But, I don’t think that was the coin as much as the 99 cent margaritas.

BadASCII [/B]

LOL :bigsmile: What’s junk to one can be a treasure to others.

What’s your idea then to motivate people to buy the games , besides making them cheaper…

#6

I think you are right, actually…I did HAVE to have that cloth map (which I sold on ebay for a decent price, actually…heh…) but back in the day…Whew. Cool game.

Honestly, I have friends who ask “WHY DO YOU KEEP THE BOXES???” I like to…I just do…Intellivision probably helped that, as it was a storage spot for cartridges… I agree completely that if the game is packaged with cool stuff: I’m there, dude.

I’d love a huge bad ass poster of some brutally evil looking creatures holding a severed head for some brutal future game that would come out…Ah, probably will never happen. Guess I got to stick to the real things in these old jars I got. :wink:

But seriously, if a game offered a good service/product enough… I do spend the money, even though I know I could just download it. Battlenet for Diablo, for example. While it lags, and you have to deal with Korean SOB’s, occasional crashes…etc…I have had fun on that. I don’t know if there is a hack for getting onto b-net, but the thing is I never thought of investigating in it because I liked it too much. (Playing with family / co-workers over the net is more fun than against the stinkin’ computer alone)

Low price is a must have. $30 and below is ideal, while I have been known to spend $40/game. That may be why I haven’t bought a PS2 or Xbox yet. All the good games are expensive and the crappy ones are the only cheap ones…Or maybe i could get madden 1998 for a good deal by now.

A good product, extra levels…the game I wish exists doesn’t. I wish I had some programmers at my fingertips so I could create the ultimate 1st person world-conquering bad ass real-time war game against people from all over earth. :frowning:

BadASCII

(I liked the old “empire” on the Amiga if you remember that game…but I did get that one as a copy as well. I don’t know why I brought that up, but maybe just to show the types of games that I personally like…M.U.L.E. too…

#7

I agree packageing is a cool thing but WarCraft III collecters edition is about 80USD and the regular game is about 60USD. I borrowed this game from a friend and i got pretty bored with it after i beat it the first time. The only reason I’d consider buying the collectors edition is to secure it away and wait till its worth something and sell it on ebay for much green.