Jumplion said:
(damn, after looking back, I typed a helluvahlot, didn't I?)
Myah, we both did, dunno about you, I have a tendency to long posts, let me explain what I mean better
Jumplion said:
Vrach said:
Of course, but why would one go for another hobby when going for gaming will not touch upon anyone else? More importantly, why shouldn't one get into gaming and support the industry when they get a chance to (in this case, once they're done with university and can get a proper job) when that will gain net profit for the industry that we're trying to get support for here in the first place? The whole argument of "pirating games is evil" is based on the game industry losing money and you'd rather people just forget gaming as a whole and do something else. So rather than pirating games for several years then spending the next 20-50 years supporting the gaming industry because you fell in love with the medium, you'd rather have someone go for another hobby and never support the industry at all.
Look, I absolutely love my games, but there are about a million things more worthy to spend money on than gaming. A book can last about as long as a movie and cost 10x less. They are luxuries and should be treated as such. If you can't support them, pirating games doesn't help them any more than not buying it no matter how you twist it, and it especially doesn't help the legitimate consumers.
You're missing my point I think mate. Lemme put what I mean as simple as possible:
If a person gets into gaming via piracy, they might support it later on. Thus, gaming industry earns money, sooner or later. (Not saying this is the case 100% of the time, but a lot of the time, I believe it is, from what I've seen everywhere, friends, internet etc.)
If a person chooses a different hobby, they never support gaming. Thus, gaming industry earns nothing from that person, ever.
Jumplion said:
Yeah that's my point exactly. That people from developed countries are somewhat out of place to talk on the subject. Not that I'm saying you shouldn't talk on it or are not allowed an opinion, just saying, think about when was the last time you saw your argument supported by someone living in a place that doesn't have a fantastic standard (I for one remember lots of people, one in particular from Croatia saying "I ain't gonna go and blow a third of my monthly salary for every game that I wanna play"). Think about how that ties in with the argument.
Then...don't blow a third of your salary on every game you want to play? Ever heard of restraint? Saving up? Investing? Choosing wisely/carefully? Gaming's an expensive hobby, either you've got the money or you don't. It's like complaining that you have to spend 2/3s of your salary on upkeep for your hot tub,
Once again, hot tubs are physical products. Stealing a hot tub would deprive the store that made it from a hot tub they could've sold to another person. Duplicating a game and pirating it doesn't deprive the developer of a physical product that could've been sold to someone else.
It's like the difference between stealing an apple and buying one apple, taking it's seeds and growing an apple tree of your own, letting anyone grab an apple from it in the future. Except piracy is a crime due to IP and copyright. But in the essence, it's the same thing cause you're not depriving the guy who sold the initial apple of anything other than potential consumers that could've gone and bought his apples instead of grabbing one off your tree. However, he can still sell his apples to someone else.
Jumplion said:
A lot of scenarios like this just end up becoming "Oh, these poor-poor people!" and a whole lot of gray areas. Is it sad that some people in some countries can't play the games they want? Of course, to an extent. But there has to be a line drawn somewhere. Whether knowingly or not, most arguments like this boil down to the sympathy card.
I'm not sure what you imagine a life in a country like Serbia to be. We're not Afghanistan, carrying cinder blocks around all day to rebuild a country torn by war. It's a normal country just like your own, everything is same except that everything is more shit because it's poorer on the whole. No, the people don't have anything huge to occupy them or larger things to worry about. They're just living their life and just like you, they like to put their feet up once in a while.
Now this is the "Common/Plain Folk" appeal here. I know you're not trying to, but you are using emotional, sympathetic appeals here. This is what the argument tends to boil down to, where the question "why can't a poor, hardworking, honest (wo)man not have the joys of escapism?" but again, a line has to be drawn.
No, no, no. A thousand times no on the sympathy argument, it's not my point. I was merely responding to your "a person in a country like that has bigger problems to worry about than gaming". My point was simply - we don't. It's the same shit over here and we have just as much time we could and want to kill with various hobbies such as gaming.
Jumplion said:
There are just as many hardworking, daily living people in the US. It's just that they happen to get paid more due to the whole world economy or whateverthehell dictates what's valuable and what's not.
It very much is. I take no offense to it, I take pride in it. What's viewed as a mature view on politics these days (actually in most of history outside revolutionary periods) is what I see as pure cynicism. I don't see a reason to be ashamed of the fact I'm unwilling to accept the bitter reality of life (that's negative and completely changeable, imo) as something that should never be changed. The fact that most of the society do and merely accept is why I believe we're as fucked up as we are on a global scale.
While I agree with you, somewhat at least, on the cynicism part, I don't feel that this aspect of life really needs any focus on that change. Again, games are a luxury, an expensive one at that, why not advocate to everyone having a book/being literate as that is a much more reasonable expectation? That I can totally get behind, books require little resources to get into (compared to games, anyway), and it further promotes education and such. Games, not so much.
Everyone can have a book. There's this thing called library, it's cheap as chips. If there was a place here renting games at local prices (which there really should be, but the sad reality is there isn't, the few places that we do have actually rent pirated games so you're not really doing anyone a favour by renting from them), I'd drop the argument
That does give me an idea though, should open one up here, might be good business
Jumplion said:
[My view on this is part of my greater view on life. I'm sorry, but you could've told to a black person unable to sit on the bus "that's life" too. You could've said to a person living under Stalin (or, what I had personal experience with, Milosevic) "don't talk shit about the state, that's life". You could've told people in medieval ages "don't question why the king is king by birthright and why we live under a shitty monarchy, that's life". No, I'm not comparing not being able to play a game to those things, I'm comparing the fundamental views on political/social cynicism and accepting the "reality" even when you know full well it's complete and utter bullshit.
Okay, really now, don't compare slightly unfair/higher prices in games to enormous, nation changing political movements that stem from the human condition. Oh, bleh, I didn't catch that bolded part, my mistake.
I don't think sitting wherever you want on a bus is a luxury, though hell if I know if it was at the time.
You don't? It was at the time I believe. But that wasn't my point, my point was, as I said, the fundamental similarity of accepting something you know is broken and saying "that's life". Imo, that's not life, that's what you accept life to be. And the fact that we don't do anything to change the fact leaves everything the way it is, which is often fucked. My point was that the system where the discrepancy between countries (and even people within a single country, but that's another story) was that huge is not something I'll accept someone telling me "that's life, deal with it and don't complain/do anything against it"
Jumplion said:
As far as how piracy fits into that, it's simply something to do in the in between period. It's just something to get by with. I'm not glorifying it, I'm merely saying don't demonize it on the whole. If you honestly think someone's not making PC games cause of piracy, you oughtta delve a little deeper into how the gaming industry works. Tip, PS3s and Xbox's don't need an upgrade every year or so and are made just for gaming.
Someone cannot make games "because of piracy", that's just a non sequitor. Correlation vs. Causation or something like that. Someone can pirate games and still make them, but they wouldn't make games because they pirated them.
Don't quite know what you understood here, so will just repeat, I was saying that PC gaming wasn't suffering from a low amount of titles due to piracy. It does so because of the comparative ease (in the sense of not having to constantly upgrade the hardware, which also leads to not having to make games that push the boundaries of said hardware, which is again, easier) and popularity of consoles and piracy are just something that's easy to blame to not look like a fucktard when your loyal fanbase of some 20+ years asks you why you stopped supporting it.
Jumplion said:
I don't particularly demonize piracy, in all honesty. The main thing I dislike about it is that the legitimate consumers get screwed over because companies employ restrictive DRMs and hold parts of their games from us so that the pirates will have a slightly harder time cracking their game. That's what grinds my gears, not the cause of piracy, but the effect of it. It's not the hardworking, underpaid person I dislike, it's the entitled, westernized, already well-off pirates that tick me off.
Now the last part I can totally agree with and that's exactly the point I've been making the whole time! I also think those who are well off shouldn't pirate games. Hell, I buy everything that I can afford, I save up, even with my shitty allowance, whenever I can support something, I do. I think someone who pirates a game just because they can is a fuckwit too.
However, on your first point of hating them due to DRM - don't hate pirates over this. That's like hating criminals for the police beating the shit out of an innocent person at demonstrations. The companies are the idiots there, not the pirates. And I'd get behind them too if the DRM at least staved off pirates for some 2-3 weeks and earned them higher sales from those who can't be arsed waiting for a crack, but it doesn't. It's a useless system and they know it, which constantly leads me to ponder why they insist on putting them in as all they're doing is being a pain in the ass to the legitimate customers, while the pirates actually go ahead and make a better product out of it and even the most complex DRM doesn't even phase them. In fact, it's gotten to the point where I sometimes see people
cracking the original games they buy just so they get rid of the fucking DRM. If that doesn't tell you how shit the system is, I don't know what does.
Jumplion said:
Yes. I am of the opinion that the same line of work should be relatively similarly paid wherever you live in the world. If there is a discrepancy of 1800%, something is simply wrong and it's not something you can ignore and say "that's life". Or well, you can. But I'll never understand it or respect you for holding such a view (don't mean that as an offense, just a fact).
Well, at the end of it all, I think we won't come to an agreement anytime soon. I do understand your reasoning behind some of your beliefs, but I just happen to disagree with them. One has to wonder if our places in society was switched, would we retain our previous beliefs or accept the other person's policies regarding electronic media?
And that, is the cosmic perspective [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38PGB9dcr4c].
Well I hope we don't switch cause that'd be crap for you, but I do intend and am working on getting the hell out of here as soon as I can, so I'll be in a position to tell you I have the same view on the matter in a few years time ^^. I'm working to get into the gaming industry myself and since one doesn't exist here, I'll definitely be moving somewhere else - current plan is Canada, looks like the most awesome place to finish my studies and live/work atm.