TheMightyEthan

Finally got my fiancee to watch Firefly with me, and she really likes it, so I got this so we can finish it up after we get through the series.

It's different than theft because with theft you're being deprived of something. Someone pirating the game who wasn't going to buy it anyway (again, assume for the sake of argument, I acknowledge the practical problems with this assumption) doesn't take anything away from anyone else. So I still don't see how the dev/publisher/whatever is actually hurt. And numbers don't matter. Even if it's 500,000,000 people pirating the game who weren't going to buy it anyway, NONE of those would have been sales (with this assumption which, again, I acknowledge is not an accurate description of the world, but I'm trying to argue the theory) then there haven't been any sales lost. Whether or not the pirates have a "right" to play the game (I agree that they don't) is a completely separate issue from this question.

You guys completely missed the point of my question: I'm trying to ask how it hurts you. If we assume, for the sake of argument (again, I would like to reiterate that I don't pirate games, I either buy them or don't play them), that I would not buy the game anyway, then how is it hurting the developer if I pirate it?

IMO something's only wrong if it hurts someone else. I have never had it satisfactorily explained to my why me pirating a game/song/movie/whatever that I wasn't going to buy anyway is hurting the developer/distributor/whomever. If I'm not going to buy it either way, then whether I pirate it or not the developer still doesn't get my money; they're in the same position either way. I'm not talking about people who pirate all their games just because they can, and who would normally buy it, because I do know people like that, I'm talking about the situation where I would in fact not buy it regardless.

I'm blind. In other news, I've decided to cancel my preorder. I've got plenty of other games to play, and as much as I loved Dead Space, I find I don't actually enjoy playing it all that much.

Well and I could definitely see pirating it to demo it, deciding it's not worth the money, but still finishing the game anyway. Maybe it's something I'd buy for $15 but they're charging $50. That's another thing I took issue with in the video: they listed a bunch of flaws with a game that might make someone not buy it, and then said "but if you pirate it and play it, obviously it's worth playing despite the flaws." Their logic their is flawed. For one thing, there's a cost consideration that enters into it: sure, it may be worth playing if it's free, that doesn't mean it's worth paying money for, or paying more than a couple dollars for. I pirate less than just about any PC gamer I know, so don't take this as justifying my own behavior, but I do subscribe to the philosophy that if I wasn't going to buy it anyway then I haven't hurt the developer by pirating it.

That's a weird thing to have an option for, seems like they'd just make it one way or the other. *Edit* - I just checked, and at least on the demo it's not an option. Did they announce a change for the final version or something?

Legally it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. It is illegal though, which I think might have really been your point anyway. My issue with the "write a letter" thing is this: If I pirate a game to demo it, it's because I'm considering buying it. If I enjoy it enough, then I will buy it. If I just write the dev a letter though, that means I'm not buying the game, and they're not getting a sale from me. Honestly, I imagine devs and publishers would prefer that I pirate the game and then buy it, than that I write them a letter and not buy it at all.

I'm still debating on Homefront. Looks cool though. I'd be getting it on PC, so I might demo it first.

How is meeting them on here any more "meeting" them than on Kotaku?

Because if it's inefficient it uses more power than necessary and so ups your power bill. At first I read this as a GeForce 6800 and I was like "why the fuck did you buy such an old card?"

Apparently Ico is going to support 3D, and as a result it will only be at 30 fps (when it does the 3D it's two sets of 30 fps, for 60 fps total). I don't know why though they didn't have it run in 60 fps if you're playing in 2D and then drop it to 30 fps when you're in 3D. Still though, even 30 fps is fine as long as it's locked to that. It's when it fluctuates that it gets irritating.

Yes, they are supposed to be flickering, what I mean is that without v-sync they flicker at different times on different parts of the screen, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, in my experience it's not that "PC gets the shaft" so much as "PC version isn't as much better as it could be." Even with Dead Space, now that I'm playing with a controller it's superior to the console version (though I'm still pissed I can't turn on v-sync, it really looks weird when there are flickering lights).

I would have felt much more sentimental about mine, but I bought them both used anyway, and the boxes and stuff weren't in the best shape when I got 'em.

So this is a thread for shitty ports. It can be anything, from not optimizing the engine to not making control concessions. It's not for any shitty games, though, just games that were crapped up in the port process. I'll go first: Dead Space on PC. This game clearly was not designed with a mouse and keyboard in mind for a control mechanism. Different controls are spaced out across the keyboard so that the letter they use makes sense (I for Inventory, M for Map, etc) but the key location does not. Additionally, the sensitivity you set for in-game aiming also affects your mouse movement on the menus; so when you turn up the sensitivity to try to get some kind of reasonable control response it makes it so the menu is almost unusable because the mouse is so touchy. It's bad enough I've actually switched over to my wired 360 controller, making Dead Space the first shooting game I have ever voluntarily chosen to use a controller over a kb/m. *Edit* - Also, even if you're playing with a controller, the controls menu still only shows you kb/m controls, so I have no idea htf to reload. *Edit* - There's ALSO extreme input latency whenever v-sync is turned on. This isn't my computer not being able to run the game well, it's a problem that everyone has.

Finally someone agrees with me about the Halo campaigns! Though I would say the rise started with 3. 3's campaign wasn't as good as the first one, but it was better than 2.

That's... weird...

I sold my copies of Ico and SotC and my PS2 as soon as they confirmed the Team Ico collection.

Yeah, I know that they wouldn't actually produce all the fuel in one giant field. I was just trying to further illustrate how little space is really needed for it.

You could do that in Texas though and probably no one would notice. Or eastern Russia...

So, I just did the math, and assuming their 800 barrels per acre per year thing is accurate, we would need to grow this stuff on about 46,000 square miles to supply the world oil demand, which is about the size of Pennsylvania or just a little less than the size of England (not the whole UK, just England itself). So this stuff really does have the potential to solve world energy problems.

They still hand out AO ratings, it's just the vast majority of the time devs/publishers won't put anything in there to get them an AO, and if they do get an AO they'll take stuff out to get it down to M because none of the consoles companies will allow AO games on their consoles, and Walmart won't sell AO games.

QFMFT. Assuming you're referring to MK64, that is. I find I'm the opposite on the rest of it though: campaigns (whether singleplayer or coop) tend to hold my attention much longer than multiplayer. There are some notable exceptions to that, like Starcraft, Monday Night Combat, and Tribes if you want to go way back. But two of those are multiplayer-only.

Sounds awesome. And the fact that it pulls the carbon used to make the fossil fuel out of the air means the whole cycle is carbon-neutral, which is even more awesome. By burning gas made with this stuff you're not adding any carbon to the air, cause the carbon in the gas came out of the air in the first place.