Monsters and Mistletoe

In response to “The Vintage Game Preservation Society” from The Escapist Forum:
Steam’s release of the X-COM series potentially sounds the death knell for abandonware. The reason abandonware existed was because the maintenance of retail channels was prohibitively expensive, as there’s only so much shelf space and formats become obsolete.

Thanks to a third-party handling the technical side of it (DOSBox, which exists only because Microsoft can’t be bothered to cook up its own DOS emulator for its advanced operating systems), it is now possible for a publisher to release its entire back catalog for direct download, and the only overhead is a very minimal amount of disc space. All the up-front costs have been paid, and every sale is (almost) 100% pure profit.

Abandonware enthusiasts may celebrate this re-commercialization because it grants them the wish they’ve made with their sites, which is a good thing; indeed, seeing the swift and gracious deletion of anything that becomes available anew is exactly the sort of goodwill gesture required to avoid the perception of “they’re nothing more than pirates.” Staying on the copyright owners’ good side benefits everyone.

– SimuLord

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In response to “Be Still My Beating Heart” from The Escapist Forum:
I won’t say I’m surprised of the reactions. Two totally different cultures, and both try to measure the other with their own moral system….which is quite impossible and results in reactions like these.

Rather than being creeped out or disgusted by Japanese culture, I’m more fascinated and interested. It’s entirely different from what I got used to, and it’s quite the experience to learn about other cultures. If you really want to enjoy something from another part of the world, you have to turn off your moral compass and social boundaries. If you see Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! for what it is, a game, you may actually have some fun. (and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way)

Don’t condemn other cultures just because they don’t measure up to your “standards”. For you, it may be okay to play Dead Space with a grin on your face, blowing and stomping grotesque monsters to bloody chunks, spraying guts all over the place. For somebody else, it may be okay to grope teenage-looking girls. It’s not that different if you think about it.

– Playbahnosh

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In response to “Raiders of the Lost ARC” from The Escapist Forum:
I read articles like this and I wonder how financially lucrative this demographic even is for a game developer. It’s like people who still play Halo 2, you have a group of people who’ve spent so much time mastering a game that they’re no longer willing to master a new game.
At what point do you focus on supporting the pros instead of trying to move new product that can be picked up by new players?

It’s funny to compare them to Michael Jordan because he’s a good example of an athlete who tried to change games himself. And he came crawling, well maybe not crawling, back to basketball. Are the two pro players mentioned even good at other games? Competitive? Is it even a bad thing if they aren’t?

– L.B. Jeffries

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In response to “Hit Them Where They Live” from The Escapist Forum:
I’ll tell you the precise problem with /b/ – the precise problem is that it is a self-contained community. I’ve been led to believe that on the ARPANET, that is very much a Bad Thing. It is that very containment that has led them to believe that their absurd attempts at humour (or “doing it for the lulz”) have any comedic value whatsoever – “no soap, radio” if I’ve ever seen it in reality.

The results of this self-containment can be seen now that people are bringing /b/ to attention. These people, crippled by exposure to these absurd in-jokes, fail to realise that others don’t consider their humour to be anything better than a curiosity, and more likely just see it as foolishness. Better to have the anarchy of the notorious USENET than this sealing off, because at least those on the USENET had some chance at redemption, and if they couldn’t be redeemed, at the very least, they made a good psychological study on the ARPANET as a whole.

– RAKtheUndead

From a sociological standpoint, doesn’t /b/ sort of represent the perfect example of an entirely anarchistic ‘organization’? By that I mean, a group entrenched in anarchy in every way (a continuous and spontaneous state of flux, with relation to their prescribed methodology, ideals, and ways of relating with even one another, let alone the outside world), as opposed to 60’s activist groups that called themselves anarchist for blowing up consumer outlets and throwing blood on fur coats and stuff.

– teknoarcanist

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In response to “Grey Noon” from The Escapist Forum:
Mechanisms in place? You don’t mean DRM, which has been there for decades, do you?

If it can be played it can be stolen, end of. Always been that way, always will be.

And this comment page is full of RIAA grassrooters, apparently. “Feelings of guilt” for downloading movies, executives in music companies taking risks if piracy is gone, “virtually no independent music industry” and the reason independent music is dying is because of… piracy?

Eh, let the assholes burn. Which assholes? RIAA assholes, and their bosses, the Big Four. And Hollywood – and with them, MPAA.

Though, I don’t even care to pirate big business movies/music. I like independent stuff anyway, and I can buy high-quality DRM-free files online, no hassle. And somehow, whenever anyone there joins the RIAA/MPAA crusade, I somehow instantly stop being a customer. Hmm.

– insanelich

Good article. I’m pretty sure that soon there’ll be mechanisms in place to make it very difficult to steal music, games and movies. When it becomes inconvenient, people will go back to supporting the companies that produce it, which will mean they can invest more in new talent and make more risks. A lot of the reason why there’s virtually no independent music industry any more is because there is so much piracy – people literally cannot afford to start labels because everyone is stealing and nobody is buying.

– princess_stomper