Amentep

Who am I? What am I doing here?

I wonder, are there any statistics on this? I suppose it might depend on region, and such, but my limited experience in knowing people who pirate, they were all strictly middle-class people who had the money to buy the games, but found getting them for free allowed them to not have to spend money to play games so they could buy things they wanted they couldn't pirate.

Congrats TrueNeutral I'm waiting for the heel turn where, after gaining power, TrueNeutral changes his name to ChaoticEvil. Then the run in from the back. To quote the late Gordon Solie: "He was 'Pearl Harbored' from behind..."

Actually I misunderstood your post I asked my question on; re-reading and with this further discussion I see you're saying, regarding the big publishers - "they make enough money now to continue creating games, so the only loss is to their profit margin which doesn't (typically) get invested in game development but lines investors/owners pockets" whereas I read it as "they have enough money now to make games, it doesn't matter if they make any more money". So a total reading comprehension fail on my part. its still bs. most large publishers lose money on a majority o' their games-- is a handful of successful titles that keeps the light turned on. also, lining the pockets o' investors is what makes the whole system work. if a publisher makes investor no more money than the investor would see from an ordinary savings account or even mutual funds, what is the motivation to invest in riskier game publishing ventures? decrease money that would otherwise go to investors decreases investor motivation to be investing in games development and publishing. am sure you can see how that impacts future game development, yes? HA! Good Fun! Right, I don't disagree with you, but I did fail to understand what Sarex was getting at. In a very general sense, yes if a money making endeavor is making - generally speaking - the expectations for returns on investment such that future development isn't impeded the piracy is only impacting the company having higher that expected profits. The problems, however, come in when the company (for whatever reason - not just piracy) starts making less money in which case development of projects may be ended and the company may turn to chasing trends in an efforts to regain the former profitability. In general, one would think that piracy is probably less likely to effect the big companies because they have more opportunity to cover their losses with huge return profits, but I tend to think mitigating loss may actually change corporate thinking.

Actually I misunderstood your post I asked my question on; re-reading and with this further discussion I see you're saying, regarding the big publishers - "they make enough money now to continue creating games, so the only loss is to their profit margin which doesn't (typically) get invested in game development but lines investors/owners pockets" whereas I read it as "they have enough money now to make games, it doesn't matter if they make any more money". So a total reading comprehension fail on my part.

The theory I saw after the study came out had to do with the brain making more memory connections because more senses are engaged reading a book, turning pages, smelling paper & print, etc than an ereader which does some, but not all, of that.

Under your scenario presented "devs have salaries" Yes, as does every employee of the company. This money has to be achieved somewhere. "part of the money made from the game goes in to covering the cost of the next game" Which would be here. But if the game makes no money, how can it cover the cost of the next game? Nintendo famously had so much money after the SNES era, it didn't matter if the Nintendo64 was a success - they had plenty of capitol to keep working on. But after a while that model is just unsustainable, no matter how much of a cash reserve you have you will exhaust it if you continue to be unprofitable.

Those two do seem to be the same thing - you want some company to make money still in either case, no ? The distinction - to my mind - is that I doubt the average consumer cares terribly much who makes the game as long as its good. Ie, you're buying Call of Duty to play a hot game, not to support Activision. YMMV. They have enough to make games, that is my point, they don't have enough to meet their impossibly large numbers. How will they continue to have enough to make games if they've not bought in sufficient quantities to cover the cost of making them?

Who is putting the companies well being as their main goal? I think most people are anti-piracy due to self-interest. If the companies can't make money off of games, they have no way to continue to make games.

Ended up restarting FE:A and again had trouble getting seals from secret sellers. I think it must have something to do with the date the game is started and/or the date of birth of the main character.

I hadn't even heard of "Turn Down for What" before this. :/ Looked up the video on YouTube - v. strange.

Was having a dream about Sherlock Holmes investigating a supposedly haunted house. He'd deduced it was a criminal plot which involved criminals using a gas (similar to the Mad Gasser of Mattoon) but he hadn't revealed why they were doing it when I woke up with a pain in my shoulder; I think I laid across my arm as I slept and strained my shoulder. Ow.

I remember back in the days of the C64 knowing a lot of guys who'd buy one C64 game, then copy the contents of the disk to another disk and swap and share. Heck, some times they would get multiple games on a single disk. While there were attempts to stop the copying, they generally didn't seem to make a dent in anything. It was a lot harder to pirate the cartridge C64 games (which, I imagine, was part of the appeal to developers about consoles like the NES).

I tend to play whatever feels best to me in the system. I might play a wizard in one game but never in another just simply on how they are implemented. But then finding whatever feels best class-wise is part of why I restart the games so much.

Okay, I honestly couldn't tell if you were joking, or if you'd been misled about the artstyle of the portraits (which seem to match the character looks on the inventory screen) by a photoshoping job so erred on the side of seriousness. Understanding that it was a joke, I say "ha-ha!".

I understand indie games are indie games because their budget is small, but I don't think that justifies using people who clearly can't draw for crap, those soldier mugshots look hideous. I dunno, the ones on the website looked functional; maybe not spectacular but not hideous to me. Okay, how does someone using (photoshopping?) the botched restoration of Ecce Homo reflect on the art style of the game since, as near as I can tell, the game isn't using Ecce Homo in the game or Cecilia Giménez on their art team?

PrimeJunta made a bet offer a page or so ago regarding buying something or another as bet that he'd take the side of the game being released before midnight on Dec 31, 2014 and the other person taking the POE will release after that. Since no one has taken him up on the bet, he's indicating that you can put your "money where your mouth is" by taking him up the bet if you think POE will be delayed past that point. I think.

I think, technically, it is possible for some fairly early 80s stuff to be out of copyright (and some games may be out of copyright if not properly registered), but yeah most things considered "abandonware" should still be under copyright.

I understand indie games are indie games because their budget is small, but I don't think that justifies using people who clearly can't draw for crap, those soldier mugshots look hideous. I dunno, the ones on the website looked functional; maybe not spectacular but not hideous to me.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is still a squad-based tactics game. The only real choice is in matching character up in battle to develop relationships; the stronger the relationship the better stats that pairing characters up gives. A line of friends of equal level or so to the enemy is going to squash them (provided they have decent weapons and you allow for particular class weaknesses). Within the relationships are the ability to marry characters; married character's children from the future will appear in the present and can be recruited to make the army bigger and these characters have stats and skills derrived from the parents (and if the parent has been more than one class, they may have quite the skill list to inherit).

The COPs spoof was one of my favorite mini-games in SR2; it was sorely missed in 3 & 4 for me. The septic tank minigame...I never found it fun. Had trouble keeping the controls going correctly (but I sucked at driving anyhow).

Well that's pretty much it; DVD pirates (again excepting the collector-to-collector market) tends to be all about price point. "I have to see this, but if I go I have to take my wife and kids and it'll cost over $50 then there's all the food...or I can buy a $5 DVD from the back of this van no questions asked. The VOD and MOD markets in the US, though, have been slowly eroding the main DVD pirate market in my experience. If people can get what they want fast and cheap, the alternatives that are fast, cheap and low quality don't look as good. I think the same is true for video games; even now I think the online services (fast, cheap, safe, sales) have put a dent in "casual piracy" leaving only those who'll pirate anything, those who can't afford anything and those who have no legitimate means to get a game.

Well it certainly helps keep their name out there, of course. And if they want the Pillar's setting to become a multi-game setting (possibly even featuring different styles of game set in it), it probably can't hurt to demo it to other producers.

Well I guess not everyone in the world is as perfect as you. Seems reasonable enough that people would look more favourably at alternatives if they feel the 'legitimate' retailer is just screwing them. So they'd buy cheaper pirated DVDs, etc. My experience with people who buy pirated DVDs* is not that they're thinking "Yes, I am doing this to protest the outrageous prices for these movies before the ridiculous retailer mark-ups; I shall purchase the DVD from illegitimate means thus allowing me to strike a blow against the corporations who extort us all for high quality entertainment" so much as they're thinking "Oh, hey X-Men: Days of Future Past on DVD for $5! Now I don't have to go to the theater!". YMMV, of course. *this is excepting, of course the "collector to collector" market buyer who is typically trying to find movies that aren't available in their country through any legitimate means.

Well it looks interesting to me so far. Will look for more information to see how it shapes up.