Sounds right to me. When I was younger i pirated tons of games.. because I gamed allot and it would take me months to save enough for a new game. Now I have much less time for games, but I have way more money… So I can afford to buy games. In fact, I now own more games then I even have time to play!

I remember those Amira days getting games off of bbs and such. Now typically almost all games have demos and I try to see if worth buying. There are lots of free good games out there but the quality of some full retail games is still superior. Services like steam and live will expand and make piracy more difficult as everything including the OS starts moving into the cloud.

People who know about my torrenting habits are always surprised when I tell them I don’t pirate games because, well… I’ve been less noble about other forms of entertainment.

To me, games are just too important to pirate. Like you say, customers need to vote with their wallets. Game companies I’m a fan of (Valve, Bioware, and so on), I can’t justify pirating the games of because I want to give them my money. I want them to realize that people like their games and I want to reward them for having a superior product. Game companies I don’t like… well, I generally don’t like them because I don’t like their games, so I see no reason to play the games in the first place.

Kind of a weird policy, and certainly not a consistent ethical theory or anything, but it’s how I view games.

Luke Maciak wrote:

which was Polish AD&D clone famous for insanely convoluted and broken rules …
I think I still have some very, very faded copy of a copy of a copy of a Malkavian sourcebook somewhere…

Hrh… ever tried the “new and improved powergaming with rules” that’s sold as D&D nowadays?
Yeah, copies of copies… I remember the relief when the occasional coke-disaster flooded the table with stickyness and the upcoming rage when the ONLY COPY of some book get’s covered in not-really-but-under-the-right-light-bloodstains.
Well, that’s the reason I invested some more money and printed the last rulebook on plastic :)

Luke Maciak wrote:

Wait… What was wrong with Jade Empire? I actually really liked that game. Great story, interesting characters, fairly unique settings and a flawlessly executed twist in the third act. It wasn’t really a real RPG but I liked it.

I’m not into hack and slash games, and Jade Empire was very close to one : button mashing combat, lots of action and fancy animations, little strategy or preparation. The story is good and the setting interesting, but as with all recent Bioware games the good and evil paths differ so little that any choice made is of little impact, and the way through the game is one long straight road. I also remember it to be quite short, and with a rather awful shooter minigame.

@ Gui13:

Steam sales are so awesome that they actually make me re-buy old games that I once pirated. For example, I bought the entire Hitman series package, even though I previously shamelessly pirated half of the titles included in it. :P

@ Alphast:

Yep, same here. I’m perfectly happy to save-creep my way through difficult sequences, but a lot of game devs out here are like “no, we gonna use sparse checkpoints cause that’s how real gamers play”.

Also, it’s funny how most game reviewers out there don’t even mention important features like the ability to quick save. They will spend like 20 pages talking about graphics and fail to mention that the game has checkpoints spaced 2 hours of game play apart, and doesn’t let you save in between them. Ugh…

@ Zel:

Wait… What was wrong with Jade Empire? I actually really liked that game. Great story, interesting characters, fairly unique settings and a flawlessly executed twist in the third act. It wasn’t really a real RPG but I liked it.

@ jambarama:

Ugh… I saw that on Reddit the other day too… I don’t like to buy from EA on a principle, but now that they own Bioware I’m torn.

Oh, also it seems that non-Steam versions of DA2 stealth install Secu-Rom on your machine, even though BioWare promised the game was going to be Secu-Rom free. Fucking EA….

@ xWittaker:

Here is the thing: multi player and single player games cater to different needs and wants. They offer very different experiences, and they are not easily comparable. Multiplayer games have great replay value, but they deliver the entertainment in short bursts – single player games offer longer, more focused experience.

To me, they are both worth about the same – mainly because being antisocial as I am more drawn to single-player experiences. There are exceptions of course – I love TF2 and L4D even though I suck at them. :P Oh, and then there is WoW which I actually haven’t played in like a month or two….

@ Mr.Pete:

Oh man, we used to xerox entire RPG books when I was a kid. Granted, this was in Poland where the RPG market was very young. When I started with the hobby the only thing you could buy in Polish was Warhammer Fantasy Role Play and Kryształy Czasu (which was Polish AD&D clone famous for insanely convoluted and broken rules). Everything else were imports from UK sold at a premium price and in English. And the only way to get some of the more obscure supplements and/or rulebooks was to actually copy them from someone who traveled, or had family in Western Europe or UK. I think I still have some very, very faded copy of a copy of a copy of a Malkavian sourcebook somewhere… :P

Btw, this is pretty much how I learned English: Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Star Wars D6, Vampire Masquerade, Mutant Chronicles, Magic the Gathering, Middle Earth, The Wizards CCG, video games and Cartoon Network.

Ah the good old days. Everything changes but it always stay the same. Yea it is funny the people that buy the games are the ones they don’t care about. Don’t copy that floppy! I will only buy games off steam. Copy protection for the most part kills game performance and compatibility. With steam all you need is an internet connection and your golden. As an added bonus you don’t have to keep up with any disks. I also vote with my wallet. I have came to a conclusion that if I would not buy it then I am not going to pirate it. I will not only cut the cash flow from my wallet but their argument that they are losing money to software pirates. And if they stop making PC game the pirates will follow to the consoles. Focus on making good games and less on making good DRM and you will sell more. Yo ho fiddle dee dee I was a pirate.

The paragraph about not stopping gaming but “suddenly” receiving a regular paycheck is so much the story of my life.
Though I admit to having copied several games back then (what a blast when one of the friends went to visit relatives somewhere. That always meant new games!) I’m now a legal customer.
Same applies to RPG-books. While it’s cool to flick through a book someone else bought and brought to the table there’s nothing like the feel of receiving a package, opening it and sniffing that “new book scent”…
And with more time for work it means less time for gaming which means more money to spend on the occasional purchase…

@ Zel:
Netstorm, yay!
Try and take a look at DesktopDungeons.
Not much depth but terribly addictive with it’s mix of luck & tactics.

Multiplayer games on the other hand tend to require that you buy the game. Getting a cracked version of a pirated game to work with the official servers can be a real headache (and frequently impossible) leaving you with pirate servers that tend to be full of griefers, cheaters, etc. I also find that multiplayer games tend to last me a lot longer. I picked up heroes of newerth for $30 around a year ago after it left beta and I still play it regularly.

Rail games like mass effect, dragon age, resident evil, etc, just don’t feel like they’re worth the price. You play through them once and then you’re done (you could argue that you might play through once more for the opposing good/evil morality, but I find that to be just a gimmick). Best to just rent those kind of games for consoles and reserve my cash for multiplayer, mmo, and sandbox pc games.

By the way, thanks for mentioning those abandonware games Zel, and I have one more to add to the list. It’s an old magic the gathering pc game that I think is far superior to the newer one that was released. Gamespot game description here

A small community has been maintaining the game and making small updates. The installation instructions can be found

here

Multiplayer games on the other hand tend to require that you buy the game. Getting a cracked version of a pirated game to work with the official servers can be a real headache (and frequently impossible) leaving you with pirate servers that tend to be full of griefers, cheaters, etc. I also find that multiplayer games tend to last me a lot longer. I picked up heroes of newerth for $30 around a year ago after it left beta and I still play it regularly.

Rail games like mass effect, dragon age, resident evil, etc, just don’t feel like they’re worth the price. You play through them once and then you’re done (you could argue that you might play through once more for the opposing good/evil morality, but I find that to be just a gimmick). Best to just rent those kind of games for consoles and reserve my cash for multiplayer, mmo, and sandbox pc games.

By the way, thanks for mentioning those abandonware games Zel, and I have one more to add to the list. It’s an old magic the gathering pc game that I think is far superior to the newer one that was released. Gamespot game description here

A small community has been maintaining the game and making small updates. The installation instructions can be found here