Farbror

..and these guys are supposed to give us Psychonauts? Action based Puzzles? Somehow reminds me about something I recently read on Adventuregamers.com...

Okay, so what do we like so much about Adventure Games? Don't say "Gameplay!" beacuse guess what, there is no gameplay in adventure games. At least not in my definition, if someone asks, I'll explain why. No, the answer is of course the believable characters that we can identify ourselves with, the living breathing world that we know exists somewhere out there, the satisfying story that we both want and don't want to happen in reality. That's what we like! We don't particularly like being thrown into a locked room and then try and get out of there using only a spoon and some stickers, no, what we like is that we HAVE to get out, otherwise we cannot advance the story! That's what we like about adventure games! Why cannot we have these elements in other games? Beacuse in "most" other games, the "story" is just a way of moving the gameplay forward, from level to level, to give some weak excuse about all the fighting or shooting. In those games, people don't play for story, they play for the gameplay. Adventure gamers don't play for the gameplay, they play for the story. But we can have those elements, we just have to make the stories better, be it by cutscenes beetwen levels or through clever scripting, it's just that those who plays those kinds of games doesn't care, and we who care, well, we're to few to be cared about. Interesting question, is Beyond Good and Evil an adventure game? What do you think?

It is at these moments I am happy that posts here do not add up to post count...

The thing with LucasArts and All the Great Games they Used to Make is that, yes, partially, you have to blame those guys in charge for not making adventure games (Yes, adventure games. That's what I assume when you guys say Great Games) but for a good reason. They don't sell. And that's the only thing those guys care about: money. All right, so it's not a good reason for you, but hey, we live in capitalism, who listens to you? Second, I think all the Good Adventure Makers who used to work at Lucasarts have quit (And many got fired ). Tim Schafer and Ron gilbert, neither works there, but they're both arguably the best adventure creators ever. I think that's why Lucasarts aren't making Great Adventure Games anymore. Beacuse they're literally not what they used to be.

Heh, I have a friend of a friend of a friend (I think) who got drafted into the army, but he didn't like it and claimed he was gay. So he got sent home, but three month's later, he got a letter from the army saying that he was to join the army again, but now in a company consisting only of gays! HA! I don't know if it's true or something. The second friend could be lying.

I actually played this today, before you made the post. It's quite funny, but I think the trailer is better, at least if you've played the original King's Quest games. I would have enjoyed it more if they had just focused on making a parody of KQ, but now they tried to make a silly parody of KQ. Kind of funny in a way, but I would have prefered the other way. God, how I loved all those silly ways to die in the KQ games. They were so stupid and clumsy, it felt as if the characters were like mister Bean. A typical way of dying goes something like this: You enter a room. The room is empty, except for a broken mirror. You walk towards the broken mirror, EXAMINE it and notice nothing suspicious. If you try to PICK UP MIRROR SHARD or something similar, the character bends over, picks up a piece of the mirror, somehow clumsily cuts himself in the wrist (You can't be very bright if you cut yourself in the wrist while picking up a single small mirror shard), the pixelated blood is flowing and you are informed of the characters death via the familiar "Restore, Restart, Quit?" window. I may have exaggerated it a little, but you get my point. I loved those games.

Apperantly, the game is quite underrated...

I feel bad now, Marek. How could I have missed that piece of news? In case anyone is wondering, I'm not a Nintendo hater, I do in fact own a Game Boy Advance and I love most of the games they make, but it can be hard when they are so stubborn about this whole "Online" concept and keep messing up their Image so it seems so "kiddy". I do not think the are kiddy , but I can actually understand if others do. Speaking of things being kiddy, it's a huge difference on games being childish and games being childish. I mean, look at Harvest Moon. The Game(s) have relatively "kiddy" graphics, the gameplay isn't very challenging, its no blood, no gore, no sex, drugs or anything like that. Therefor, many people automatically assume that This game was made for Children, I will not find it Funny. But that is not true! Harvest Moon (And Animal Crossing and practically any other similar game coming from Nintendo) are all very entertaining, both for kids and adults alike (as anyone who has ever played the games can tell). But many people refuse to realise it. Their loss, maybe. Then the other kind of kiddy. That's those kinds of games that were actually made for kids and kids only, like all those pokemon games with little or no plot and/or gameplay which mostly contain of pictures of happy pokemon. Those are childish, ni the sense that I and ninty percent of the population above fifteen find no enjoyment in playing them. But the rest! Harvest moon and Super Monkey ball! Those aren't childish! Those are fun! Huge difference, people! Oh, and the reason Nintendo currently got so good third-party-support on the GBA is propably beacuse they dominate the entire market for handheld.

Is that really true? Beacuse then I see no real reason to get the PSP, except for better graphics and movie/mp3-stuff.

I think demos are important. You'd be surprised to see how many reviews out there that says a lot about the graphics and replay value, and then lefts you there wondering "Yeah, but what's the GAME like?". Demos allow you too check that out. Reviews tells you if a game tastes good, but a demo let's you taste small crumbs yourself. God, I Hate those kinds of demos that allows you to play a full game for a limited time period. I remember downloading a 200 MB demo, I thought, and then discovering that it wasn't a demo, it was the entire freaking game, but I could only play it for a half hour, then I had to register. What's the point in that? Do they actually expect me to try out all features in only thirty minutes, to get a feel for the game, to check if I like it? If not, then why include the whole game? I would have been much happier if they had made a demo containg only a third of the features or a super tiny map or something and allowed me to play forever, so I could have gotten an impression of how the game was like instead of feeling frutration and stress over having to try out the game in only 30 tiny minutes.

Oh, yes, that's an important difference. Hardware with "extras" sold separately are rarely popular, not only beacuse it's clunky to go out and buy extra stuff, but the developers rarely put in good features for the "extras", beacuse they want to lay their work and effort on things they know everyone want to enjoy. Extras aren't a high priority. Yes, all features should always come with the initial hardware. Would X-Box Live have been that big if the online components hadn't already come with the console? And the DS is certainly something I'm keeping my eye on. Comparing to the PSP, I think the DS is superior (So far).

Oh, and speaking of weird tycoons...

As a game creator, Nintendo is very good. However, as a console-creator, they are not the best. Their inability to get third-party deals rally hurts them, and while their "innovative hardware"-thing sounds good on paper, they usually fail where it counts. Take the GameCube-GBA link stuff. Yes, true, we've seen some quite fun stuff, like Four Swords and that Pac-Man game, they haven't really done any serious stuff with anything else (Okay, they have, but I'm too lazy to check it up, and it still isn't far enough). But the DS looks kinda neat. I hope they just use their harware this time...

I don't suppose it's on the internet or something?

Yes! The Tycoon Genre is still great!

What's this trailer Mixnmojo and Gamespot are talking about?

Noonne has yet managed to explain how downloading good games (or bad games for that part) helps the good game survive. True, the stupid people out there will buy the bad games, but you're not really helping by downloading the good ones. Let me quote myself: Shortly, if you feel that something isn't worth it's price, don't buy it, buy something that is, and if you so desperately want it, then it should be worth paying all those money for! And the whole "Weren't going to pay for it anyway"-thing, I see no logic in it at all. Just like any other consumer-commodity, you should only get to use something if you pay for it. To expand on the scissors above, you don't either say "I wasn't planning to pay for these scissors anyway, could I have them for free?" Of course you don't. Why is games so different?

All right, I´m on vacation, and using one of these super-expensive hotel-computers, so I´ll try to be short. First of all, as I said, All I´m tryuing to state here is that Piracy is immoral, and if you do it, I can´t stop you or convince you. Oh my God, there´s really nothing here for me to say, everyone else is saying it so good! Piracy is worse than I used to think! Ha! In your face, pirates! Okay, that was childish, sorry. Gah, stupid german keyboard, all the buttons are misplaced!

Well, my point was that I do consider downloading games as stealing, and why I therefor believe that John in fact was stealing.

Yes, but it is the information you are stealing! Those zeros and ones, you are not allowed to use them, beacuse you haven't bought them! True, nobody loses their ones and zeros if you copy them, but my definition of theft also includes "Getting something, without paying, you shouldn't have gotten if the one distributing them say that you must pay him/her to get it". Which is exactly what you do. Edit: Okay, that didn't sound logical, let me change it. "Getting a commodity without paying, that the disttributor of the commdity wants you to pay for." Sounds better now, I hope.

This fascinates me too (And I'm not sarcastic)! I blame it on marketing. I Hate marketing! No. I firmly believe that 90 % of the people, when given a choice of getting a game for free or paying for the same game, will choose the "free" option. No matter how the publishers distribute the game, as long as people can get everything for free, they will take it. Well, that ruins the whole point! "I don't think the game is worth paying for, therefor I won't buy it, and since I won't buy it I might as well download it and play it anyway!" The whole point with not buying the game is that you shouldn't get to play it, it's how capitalism works! Why not just accept it? And as I've said before, all my arguments are about moral, IF you don't consider yourself a person with moral, then I can't convince you. And I Hate people without moral. True. My blunder. I apologize. I would really want that last part to be true, but unfortunately that's not the case. Developers have to eat too. They also want money. And if Good Developers create Good Games, they will still be viewed as Non-Money-Making-Developers in the eyes of publishers if most people pirate their game. If, however, you choose to support the publisher for choosing to work with such a Good Developer by buying the game, then the Good Developers will gain money and respect in a business where money is everything, so that they will have an easier time making games in the future, without Evil Publishers trying to make the game more "mainstream" (Bad) so that they will sell more, beacuse it has already been established that games made by the Good Developers sell good!

If I don't want bad games, I simply don't buy them. If I think that this game is quite good, but still not quite good enough for it's price, then I don't buy it. I do not go and download it. The main argument for anything people do is beacuse they can. As long as people can download games for free, as opposed to pay for them and get the same thing, they will choose to download it. Sad fact. Other sad fact, yes, many people who buy bad games are not aware of the fact that they are bad, which results in people buying bad games, so that publishers realise that they can keep creating bad games and reach the same result (In other words, recieve the same amount of money). But I fail to see how that justifies piracy. No, but I believe that "rammed down everyones throat" is rather, shall we say, exaggerated. As I said, if I see a game that I consider mediocre, generic, unfinished, overpriced crap, then I simply refuse to buy it. I know, sounds hard at first, but is quite simple once you master it. And I also do not download it, for reasons in previous posts. How does downloading games force the prices down/remove the bad games? That's what it seemed like you, mister b0b, tried to say, but I don't see why. Could you explain further? Yes, bad games being bought instead of good games is certainly a reason good games fail. But how does downloading the good (Or the bad, by the way) game from the internet help the any of the games? Ah, yes, publishers and marketing. I believe we have found our common enemy. I personally believe that the world would be a much better place if neither existed, or at least if they were forced to tell the truth. But as it is now, bad games exist, they're being bought, and downloading anything isn't helping anyone. Learn to tell the difference between good and bad games, buy only the good ones, and leave the rest! What's so difficult? Edit: Uh, please ignore the "d" in believed in that part about the publishers and marketing. I still believe it, and probably always will. Edit(AGAIN!): OH, you are being ripped of, you say? Well, simple as always, refuse to buy the game! There's no reason to download it, except for being egoistic.

Here we go again... "Hey, I'm just playing a game here, it's not like I'm hijacking cars or something, I just want to have some fun, like everyone else." Let's split this in three. "What I'm doing isn't really that bad.","I just want to have some fun, does it bother you?" and "Everyone else does it, why can't I?" First part Does it matter if what you are doing is a little illegal or much illegal? It's still illegal! Just beacuse it's a little less illegal, doesn't mean it's okay. Yes, it's not likely that the police will come hunting you in a wild car chase as long as there are murderers walking among us, but that doesn't justify anything. Let's say your foot hurts after kicking wall really hard. It doesn't hurt too much, but it still hurts. Now someone hits you in the head, hard. It hurts a lot. You're head feels terrible, you barely notice the pain in the foot. But does it make the foot okay? No! Second part Oh, you want to have some fun? And you don't want to pay for it? Well, sorry to disappoint you, mister, but there are thousands of cheap ways spending your time withouth paying anything at all. Some people run in the woods, others play scissor, rock, paper with theír friends, others make paintings. Games are by no means a right, it's a privilsege. Food is a right, fresh water and a place to sleep is a right, but playing Doom 3 certainly isn't. Third part Well, people are stupid. And just beacuse many people does something, doesn't mean it's okay. Those people are stupid. If "everyone" started killing each other, or suddenly bought lots of schampoo, you wouldn't do it, right? You're not a lemming. "It's got all those copy protections that makes the game unplayable, I want a cracked copy." Do you know why the copy protections are there? That's right, so that you can't pirate it! If people would just stop pirating games, then the developer could stop spending time and resources on making ridiculous CD-keys or other ways to make sure they get paid and could focus on making good games. And if you think the game is unplayable, well, again If you don't think it's worth paying for, then don't pay for it, and make it without it! There's no reason to steal the game just beacuse that version isn't perfect. It's still theft! There's no justification in this argument. "Well, you're right, it is highly immoral, but everyone else does it, and frankly, I don't care." Everyone else does it, I think I covered that above. And I covered that you do have moral above. So you should just stop pirating games right away. And if you still claim that you have no moral, if you do claim that you didn't care when two planes flew into World Trade Center, if you don't care about thousands of people starving in africa, if you don't care about the hundreds of developers out there who have to worry about wether their game will sell or if "everyone" will pirate it so they loose their job, if you claim that, then you are evil. In that case I hate you. As a last resort to people who still don't get it, I could always tell you the story about the ice cream. True, it wasn't my story from the start, it was the software pirates who used it to "justify" their immoral practice. It used to go like this, before I modified it: So far, so good eh? Well, I think it's time for my modified version, "The Ice Cream" v1.2. And finally, a quickie, that we've already seen, that noone has been able to argue against, and that will never be beaten. Chepito, I love you. I know, capitalism sucks. But so does democracy and people in general. But it's not really like we've got an alternativ, right?

All right, I'm going to revive this month-old topic now, and if you don't like it, sue me. First of all, all arguments I'm going to use here are moral ones. If you don't have any moral, then leave, there's nothing I can do for you, you poor freak. Second of all, I strongly recomend reading what Vgmusic.com's FAQ has to say on the matter. It's probably the best FAQ on the entire Internet. Here. Now, there's two kinds of software piracy (basically). First, there's those who downloads old C64 games on their emulator so they can play with their memories and enjoy the old days. I don't really have any problem with them, at least not at the moment, so let's tackle those later. The other kind of piracy is the one I believe most of us consider a "problem". It's that kind, where peoples (Especially people in my school) only reason to enter a game store, is to check what's new in the game world, then they go home, fire up their favorite p2p-software, and downloads the latest First-person-shooter available. When I confront them with it, they always have numerous and at first glance good but if closer examined worthless arguments. "Hey, I only do it to check out if it's good, if it is, then I'll buy it, otherwise I promise I'll never touch it again. " "Well, Farbror, what I'm doing here is actually good for the industry." "It's not technicly illegal, you see." "Oh my freaking God, dude, it's not like anyone will notice if I buy it or not, and anyway, the only difference is that Bill Gates makes more money, the programmers won't get a raise or something if I buy it." "Hey, I'm just playing a game here, it's not like I'm hijacking cars or something, I just want to have some fun, like everyone else." "It's got all those copy protections that makes the game unplayable, I want a cracked copy." "Well, you're right, it is highly immoral, but everyone else does it, and frankly, I don't care." Quite a selection they have, eh? These are just handful, so let's take them one by one, and If you can come up with anymore I'll crush them like bugs under my giant heels of morality later. "Hey, I only do it to check out if it's good, if it is, then I'll buy it, otherwise I promise I'll never touch it again. " I hate these. Not beacuse I have anything against the argument really, but people, especially software pirates never seems to do what they say. The whole problem with this argument is quite similar to Kavka's toxin puzzle: Can one intend to drink the nondeadly toxin, if the intention is the only thing needed to get the reward? You see, when I pirate has díscovered that the game is quite good, and actually worth paying for, they suddenly realise that it does not matter to them if they buy the game. They already got it! Yes, true, they intended to buy the game, but things change quite quickly in the piracy business. After this, it is common that the pirate in question resorts to another argument. And if they don't like the game? Well, 90% of them will just burn a copy of it anyway, "Just in case I want to play (and pay for it) later". Yeah right. A variety on this argument new to me I saw on this forum was this: Okay, so the game is worth playing, but it's not worth so much you want to pay as much as the publishers want to, therefor you should get to play it for free withouth the creator of the game recieving any money at all, just beacuse they're overcharging a little. Ah, I love logic. Here we reach a phrase I will repeat many times: If you don't think it's worth paying for, then don't pay for it, and make it without it! It's capitalism! It's what the world is built on! If you feel that these scissors are to expensive, then you don't steal them, do you? And you don't walk up to the counter and say, "Hey, could I get these scissors for free? I mean , they're so expensive." or even "Hey, could I have these scissors at only 5 dollars instead of 50? I mean I think that's what they're worth." You wouldn't do that? You would go and buy some other pair of scissors! You wouldn't for the world ever touch those scissors again, you would let the forces of capitalism do their job and force the scissor-company into bankruptcy! But if it's a game, then you see it all as an excuse to steal it! What's so different beetwen scissors and games? "Well, Farbror, what I'm doing here is actually good for the industry." This one comes in many flavors. One here on this forum is this one: Again, it's capitalism. Obviously, since people are buying the "unreasonably priced" games, they don't think they're unreasonably priced. If that was the case, they wouldn't buy the games now, would they? The majority disagrees with this. Oh, and you are not really doing this whole "Downloading-games-for-free-without-the-hard-working-creators-recieving-a-dime" so that you can play free games, you are actually doing it to make the world/game industry a better place, this "Free-game-stuff" is just a nice side-effect, but not really the main cause. And if that really was the case, then I suppose you've got an alternative to all this "capitalism"-stuff? Yes, of course, planned economy, why didn't I think of that, I wonder why we don't use it? OH that's right, it doesn't work. People tried it in Russia, but it didn't work. Silly me. Protests are done with name lists, arguments, debates, ideas for alternatives. Not by doing the opposite of what you're supposed to. The system works. Just follow, and you'll see that it works. "It's not technicly illegal, you see." I shouldn't really be arguing about this, since it's probably really different from country to country, and I don't know a freaking thing about laws, but as I said, all my arguments are moral ones. If you would find a loophole in the law that suddenly made it legal to rob banks, you wouldn't go out and rob banks, would you? No! Of course not, you are a human being, you have morals, you don't do something just beacuse you are allowed to, do you? You know how to tell the difference between right and wrong without carrying a whole freaking law book and calling your lawyer every now and then to check if it's okay to steal that old ladys purse. What's so different from game piracy? All right, I'll make a stab at the illegal thing. Anything I say here may or may not be true. As far as I know, when you buy a game, you only buy a license to play the game. You don't only buy the CD-rom with the ones and zeros. If you just download it, then you got the game, but you haven't got the right to play/install it or anything like that. As far as I know. "Oh my freaking God, dude, it's not like anyone will notice if I buy it or not, and anyway, the only difference is that Bill Gates makes more money, the programmers won't get a raise or something if I buy it." It's not about that. It's not only about money to the developers, even if that plays a big part too. It's about respect. It's about you thinking: "Wow, these guys have worked hard to make this great game. They are really super." How would you think if you were a developer and everyone said "Wow, your game is great, but I don'twant to honor you or show you some respect or something for making it. You see, I only care about the game, as long as I can play it, I'm happy. I don't really care about you, mr. Developer." Respect, Dude! What? Only 10 000 characters a post? Stupid Idle forums...