alanschu

I am typically of the mind that we tend to be more tech savvy, and finding games is pretty easy for us. It isn't really a hard thing to do...as long as you have an idea on what you are doing. I think it's understated how effective "casual piracy" such as simply burning a CD after you buy a game and giving it to friends. Though I do think the increased popularity of P2P software for music is making this distinction less obvious, as people become more familiar with sharing files over the internet.

I'm willing to give it a look see.

I think a large issue is that people tend to be uncompromising with their performance and graphical fidelity. A game like Half-Life 2 can still be run on hardware from 5 years ago. Even with decent performance. You just won't have the graphical effects as someone that has a computer that is 1 year old. The funny thing is that games on the "Crap" quality today still look better than the older games on the best quality. Having said that, there is one thing that makes a 5 year gap problematic at the moment, and that was the evolution of the pixel shader. Some games do require pixel shaders (some people even get screwed over because the DX 9.0 PS implementation had a revamp shortly before the release of some graphics hardware at one point). The pixel shader seems to be the only deal breaker though. Though you could liken this to the impact that 3D accelerators had back in the day, where you could find games that required them.

I think this perspective is an easy one to take because we cannot see the perspective of the big business. The effectiveness of copyprotection goes far beyond the "well it gets cracked anyways" argument, and is pretty much a guess for anyone because any numbers that get shown from the corporation or copyprotectors is automatically dismissed, and AFAIK no "impartial" study has ever really been done. There's schools of thought based on theory, but the theory is typically only supported anecdotally.

If you bought it from Stardock, you should still be able to d/l the game and play it right now anyways.

Specs don't upgrade faster. Moore's Law has still been doing its thing.

And you call yourself a PC gamer....

Yeah, you could give yourself a really good challenge by building up a country in a particular way, and then right before the conflict starts up, load up the other side. I've never tried the coop same country though. I can imagine it'd be very useful for many of the majors, as the UK has conflicts on the home front, as well as Africa and India. Germany has a two front war, as does the USA. It sucks to miss some action on one part of the world while you're taking care of the details of an offensive in the other part.

Hopefully Stardock can pursue legal channels against Starforce for this.

Cue kirk vs spock music.

What do you F.E.A.R. the most? The fear you know? The fear you don't know? Or the fact that Allan is going here?

Pffft, I'm totally starting a 1936 game

Seems a little chilly for SoCal

Well, my point is just that, while I enjoy a good joke about the French, I find it's just a result of their performance in WW2, which represented a huge change in modern warfare. The only completely boneheaded thing they really did was Maginot line IMO.

I haven't played too many of them, but I loved Link to the Past, as well as Ocarina of Time.

If by cursing, you mean wishing me well and being exceptionally happy for me, then I agree

Just ****ing agree to disagree for pete's sake.

I was able to get Italy into the Axis shortly after the fall of Paris. I was also able to get Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria into my alliance as well. Unfortunately, thost damn British staged a coup in Yugoslavia, installing a not so Axis Friendly government. So I figured I'd make them pay and invade them. Ended up pushing right into Greece and helped Italy conquer it.

Haha, your avatar totally messes me up.

I liked it up until the point it decided it was actually an action movie in disguise.

I'm probably getting a new computer in the near future (when I get back from my vacation in the Domincan Republic "), so I'm going to put off on most games that are computer intensive. Not that my computer couldn't handle them, but I have plenty to enjoy in the meantime.

I think that was the problem as well. I usually check to make sure my quotes are okay, but it slipped my mind that time. As support that I'm not in his camp, earlier I was in a dispute with him about whether or not Doom was an improvement gameplay-wise over Wolfenstein 3D.

Heh, what did I miss?

Actually that could be a very viable alternative for multiplatform games. Makes a less informed parent's job much easier. Though we'd need blueray drives in our computers, and we still aren't at DVDs as the mainstay yet.

You misunderstood my post. When I was talking about the accelerator, I was referring to within the same game (in this game Mariokart). I understand that two games with completely identical control schemes can have very different gameplay. FPS games are a prime example. You're accusing me of something I didn't say. Citing games like Arena and Daggerfall and comparing them to Morrowind doesn't mean anything to me, because I never said if those games do or do not modify gameplay. I couldn't even attempt to claim that, as I haven't played two of those games. Never said that. Nor am I taking Battlewookiee's side. I just agreed with him on one aspect. I'm not saying games like Mario don't have advances... I didn't realize the quote markers were incorrect at the time. And I'm well aware that all it takes is one. Not that it matters because I can't change them now anyways.