TheMightyEthan

I know, but since it's releasing on a Sunday they don't offer release date delivery, because nobody delivers on Sundays. Seriously, Nintendo, Sunday is the WORST possible day for a release. Friday would be ideal.

Just went ahead and preordered it from Amazon. Signed up for the Prime trial so I got 1-day shipping for $4.

Ah, well that's promising. I'm so used to "coop" and "multiplayer" being two different things that this whole time I've just been assuming "multiplayer" = "competitive multiplayer".

Preordered from Amazon. Did the Prime trial so I got 1-day shipping for $4 (since it releases on a Sunday so release date delivery isn't available).

I do not hold high hopes for the quality of whatever multiplayer they come up with. *Edit* - Unless they just mean coop. That could be cool.

Yeah, I decided to preorder it. The only thing I'm waiting on now is to see if Amazon offers release date delivery on the preorder. Has anyone preordered a game at Walmart? How does it work?

What can I say? I'm a sucker for physics/gravity simulations. I'm a giant nerd.

lol "The good thing about their pricing is that they stay over-priced forever, so you don't feel cheated."

I'm pretty sure it's illegal at least in most cases to pirate a game even if you own it on another platform, I'm more interested in people's opinions on whether it's Right Wrong or Neutral. I'm torn on the issue. On one side I feel like as long as I paid them for the game in the first place the IP owner shouldn't care what system I play it on ultimately. At the same time, however, I recognize that porting a game to different systems requires extra resources, especially if the port is done separately after the fact, and that the IP owner is entitled to compensation if I'm going to make use of the results of that labor (subject to my discussion on sampling ). I also have a small but non-zero collection of games I purchased more than once for different systems, so I can't say owning it once means I wouldn't buy it again, though I tend to only do it if I find the second system's copy for ludicrously cheap *cough*Steam sales*cough*.

Just message me on steam if I'm online. I should be available this afternoon.

Okay, everyone's talked in circles, we know where everyone stands, no one's changing anyone's mind. So let's talk about something different but related: How do people feel about the situation in which someone buys a game on one system, then later, maybe years later, pirates it on another system? So I buy an Xbox game, then a year or two later it's released on PC and I pirate that. Does it make any difference if at the time of the initial release they categorically stated it would NOT be released on the later system? What if you buy a game on console when you don't have a PC capable of running it, but 5+ years later now you do have a PC that can run it, are you morally obligated to buy the PC version or is it acceptable to pirate it? Thoughts? I think I can guess what Yant and TN will think, but don't let that stop you from weighing in anyway. *Edit* - Also, assume for the sake of argument that I keep my original copy, don't trade it in or give it away or anything, so I still possess whatever ownership rights the initial purchase granted me.

For console games I agree with this 100%. All my arguments only apply to unrentable PC games. AFAIK right now D2D is the only place one can rent PC games, and as near as I can tell they only have 6. I also wouldn't count OnLive because of the problems associated with the playability of that service for some people.

Actually, at least at Walmart or Best Buy (I don't know what country you're in, or whether those stores are options for you) you can return a console game for the full price, even with the shrink-wrap off. With the receipt they'll usually refund you in the manner you paid, and without it they'll usually give you store credit. There's a time limit on that, but I don't think it's less than a couple weeks. Hell, if you wanted to be dishonest you could probably buy most games brand new, play through them completely, and then still return them for full price within the return period. After doing that a few times though they might get suspicious...

Games aren't any different. You can't know if you'll like a game by playing a demo (pirated or not). I passed on Arkham Asylum originally because I found the demo uninteresting. It wasn't until the game went on sale for $1 during one of the GFWL sales that I gave it another shot and fell in love with it. Just like a movie trailer or an excerpt, all a demo can tell you is whether you find that part interesting. I'm only arguing for a consumer's right to sample, not a consumer's right to experience the entire product before deciding whether to purchase it or not.

Not a big fan of caveat emptor eh? I agree that consumers should have a right to make an informed decision about a product. I think where we differ is whether or not a play test is actually required to make an informed decision. For many of you the answer is that a play test is necessary, for me it's not. If we want to break analogies down a little bit more I think that sampling a physical product that fulfills a need to see if it suits your particular needs is slightly different than sampling media to see if it fulfills your tastes. It's really easy to guarantee that a car will go when you press the gas pedal but it's impossible to guarantee that someone will find the car pretty. Most consumer protections do not extend to the preferences of individuals. Of course you can't guarantee that a particular person's subjective tastes will be satisfied by a particular product, but I don't see what that has to do with sampling. To go with your car analogy, the way you would "sample" its appearance would be to look at it, or look at a picture of it. Surely you wouldn't think it unreasonable for someone to want to see a car, or at least a picture, before buying it? As for other media, people sample it in various ways. For movies the public is provided with official "samples" in the form of trailers and clips, and I believe iTunes allows you to sample songs before buying them. If not, there's always the radio, or watching the official video on Youtube. Games have trailers too, but the fundamental difference between a game and a movie is that in the game the product is the act of playing it, whereas for a movie it's the experience of watching it. So while a trailer for a movie provides that experience in sample form, a trailer for a game is missing a critical part of the experience. There's no effective way to sample a game without playing it. The only reason my try-before-you-buy consumer right doesn't apply to tangible goods is because of the the fact that intangible products can be copied at essentially 0 cost to the owner, whereas to try a tangible good you must deprive the owner of something. I can't just open a bag of M&M's, taste them and then decide not to buy them if I don't like them because the M&M's I've consumed are gone, the bag is open and now no one else will want to purchase it, etc etc. I can't test drive a car without permission because I'm depriving the owner of access to the car, causing wear and tear on it, etc. Of course if the owner gives you their permission to try the product then everything's fine and dandy.

Yeah, whenever I mentioned rights or fair use or anything like that I meant its natural meaning, not whatever legal meaning it might have.

You're right, I only explain one side of it: that it doesn't harm the content owners because it doesn't deprive them of anything to which they're entitled. The other side is that consumers have a moral right to make informed decisions about their purchases, which includes a right to sample a product before buying it provided that doing so does not violate the rights of the product owner. Piracy to demo is fair because it allows the consumer to sample the product, gathering information with which to make an informed decision, in a way that does not violate the (moral) rights of the content owner (which I've explained above). Again, this only applies to the honest demo. Someone who pirates to own is violating the moral rights of the content owner and therefore is not using the product in a fair manner. I would also like to add that in a situation where the content owner provides an official demo then generally pirating to demo would not be fair use. The content owner does have rights to control the manner of use of the product, and while those rights are not absolute if the content owner has provided a reasonable opportunity for the consumer to sample the product then the consumer's right to sample has been satisfied. Basically the pirate-to-demo circumstance is a balance between the consumer's right to make an informed decision and the owner's right to control their property. If the owner provides a reasonable opportunity to sample then the consumer's right in that regard has been completely satisfied and therefore they do not have a right to forcibly sample more on their own terms. *Edit* - Again, the above disclaimer about all this being "in my opinion" applies.

I just meant "fair use" as in what the words literally mean: use that is fair. I know it's a legal term, which is why I included the parenthetical explaining that I wasn't speaking legally, merely ethically/morally: to avoid that confusion. The rest of that paragraph explains why I think that use is fair from a moral/ethical perspective.

Disclaimer: Read all statements about morality and ethics with an implied "in my view/opinion" attached. Also, this is all ethical/moral theory of piracy, any application to real-world events would need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. TN, the reason you and I will never agree is because I don't believe a creator has an *absolute* right to control their creation, though they do have a fairly strong right. However, I think piracy-to-demo (not piracy-to-own) falls into the category of fair use (ethically/morally, not legally). I believe people only have a right to stop other people from doing something if doing it hurts someone in some tangible way. The metaphysical injury of "they're using my creation in a way I don't want them to" isn't alone sufficient to create a moral right to stop them from using it in that way. Unless and until the creator suffers some tangible harm from the use they have no right to stop it. I do believe creators of intellectual property own their creation, however I believe its nature as intangible and effectively reproducible at 0 cost limits some of the ownership rights we generally associate with physical objects. I have the right to say "no you can't try out my laptop" because by its very nature if you're trying it I'm being deprived of it and thus suffering harm. But with infinitely reproducible property the person wanting to try it merely makes a copy to try, and the owner is deprived of nothing to which they have a right. IP owners though do have a right to profit from their creation, control the means of commercial distribution, etc. Trying out the creation is fair use, but simply taking it without compensating the creator is not. Obviously, however, there's no easy, cut-and-dried way to determine at what point the use stops being merely a "trial" and the user assumes the moral duty to either purchase the product or stop using it. There would be some clear cases, such as the person who pirates Civ V and plays it for 500 hours; obviously that is more than a mere trial, and that person has wronged the content owner. From a theoretical perspective would be whether the user was actually and in good faith sampling the product, or whether they wanted to have it as owner, but as has been well established in the real world there's no way to know that. I would simply say that while piracy maybe shouldn't be legal, as simply making it blanket illegal is the most easily applied in a real world in which we can't know the thoughts and intents and others, perhaps people shouldn't be so quick to condemn every single act of piracy as a moral wrong against the content owner, or say that piracy is always wrong in all circumstances. Maybe most acts of piracy would be wrong under my framework, or maybe not, none of us can know that.

Braid's aesthetics are almost physically painful to me. I'm not sure what it is about certain kinds of animation, but it actually makes me feel sick in my head to look at it. The animated sequences of Monty Python and the Holy Grail are the same way.

Sweet. *Edit* - And by that I mean sweet that you're feeling sick. Cause I'm a dick like that.

Yeah, I'm sure the next one will just be Xbox [subtitle], with no number.

But it wasn't shown legally, that's the point. It was only shown because of piracy.