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    #16
    Question to all:

    Do you think about whether you can justify playing a game you haven't paid for? Or do you not even think about it? If you do think about it what criteria do you use to justify your decisions?

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      #17
      Here's a thing that stuck with me: years ago a guy I knew used to steal popcorn at the cinema. He said it was a protest because the price of the popcorn was too high. But it wasn't a protest. It was a fairly flimsy justification of theft. If you genuinely feel the popcorn is too expensive, you can show the restraint of not buying it or purchasing alternative popcorn or some other snack from somewhere else. The reality is he wanted THAT popcorn but just wasn't willing to pay for it and so he stole it and created a justification for it. And I see that same thing over and over when people pirate games or TV or movies - each time they do it, they show that the demand is there and they do actually want it, but they'll just take it and create a justification for it. And things need to be paid for.

      But to answer your question, yeah, I can justify it but it's where a game just isn't available and won't be and, yes, I think about where that line is drawn. And there are now things like those C64 bundles and so on that throw a bunch of stuff I used to emulate into question. As a result, I ended up buying one of those Atari Flashbacks and, man, do I have buyer's remorse over that one.

      Really old unavailable games I can justify to myself. Beyond that, I'd struggle and I certainly would never use cost as a justification for piracy. I can't imagine how much I have spent on versions of SFA2 over the years when I could just emulate it but, if it's available and I can buy it on a system I have, I will. If I can't afford it or am not willing to pay that much I will either play an older version I own or simply not play it. I won't just take it and try to justify it.

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        #18
        I don't massively think about it. To be honest I don't often have the time to play old roms with everything else that needs playing in my limited game time but by far the biggest attraction to emulating a game is the fact it's no longer available which is usually why it's triggered the nostalgia button in the first place. Even then there's the fact of no longer owning the host hardware to consider and the auto-defence against that is 'well go and buy it'. That usually means paying over the odds or ending up with something that needs quarantining first, not to mention the numerous practical implications of that and... the company that made the game still doesn't see a penny because it's all second hand based.

        It's why it's nice when companies do properly curate a game as it at least buys it some time. It's something companies just need to be realistic to, either there's enough demand for their past game or there isn't. It's a little like when companies used to be zealous in their pursuit of torrented users only later to realise how much those users also fed into merchandising, streaming subs, the shows continued existence. It's not to say piracy is justified across the board but it's stupid for a company to penalise those who can't locally access their show just as it's stupid for a games company to be shocked at people emulating a game they refuse to make available.

        There's an element of case by case. Downloading Super Smash Bros Ultimate is a different moral case than Super Mario World - Mostly because one would be legitimately available on the current machine and the other isn't and has likely be bought numerous times by many of the users. In each case it'll vary as to who, if anyone, is actually worse off because of it. The moral argument is a long one in itself, how much do you owe a moral debt to games companies and in turn how much do they owe you?

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          #19
          Excellent points. Interested in your definition of "unavailable games"?

          Looking at all the games I have given myself access to it appears I have, rightly or wrongly - probably wrongly, made the following justifications:

          For old hardware (I'm calling old, before PS3) where I want to play on original hardware it's perfectly fine to use an Everdrive or similar to give myself access to every title available. For anything newer than that I find that games are still available to buy new or available in excellent condition used without paying a "it's rare" premium so I buy them.

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            #20

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              #21
              If you buy a used copy of Super Mario World instead of buying from the VC that's fine, right? Can't see how handling ROMs is any different really, the developer is seeing none of the money you spent on their product. So I agree with SF's point.

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                #22
                Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
                it's stupid for a company to penalise those who can't locally access their show just as it's stupid for a games company to be shocked at people emulating a game they refuse to make available.
                This assumes a right to access everything that exists and an obligation for producers/distributors to give it to you. This sense of entitlement doesn't sit right with me at all. There are a LOT of things I can't have that I don't just go and take. I feel sometimes we need to recategorise entertainment based on its non-essential nature and stop working on the assumption that people have a right to all of it because it too often feels akin to a child who just keeps repeating "but I want it" when they can't have something.

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                  #23
                  Originally posted by Brad View Post
                  Question to all:

                  Do you think about whether you can justify playing a game you haven't paid for? Or do you not even think about it? If you do think about it what criteria do you use to justify your decisions?
                  I'll play,

                  On my pc i now have a few collections of older consoles and arcade/computer stuff but the timeline limit is upto the DS for me i have no idea why i don't emulate anything newer but i just stopped at the DS. But even in the DS era when it was active i had a flash cart and i used it profusely to play a lot of import games which i downloaded to try and see if it was any good and within my language reading limit, i purchased the ones i liked. And that's the thing, i'd say a good 2/3 of my 364 DS collection were bought at full retail price so the makers got all their cash around release day. Yeah some i only discovered years later when the DS was sadly retired so i never got to fully support them when it first came out which i do feel a little sad over as some of the gems i found i wish i could have supported at release day. But a lot of them i supported from day one at full price. Without my flash card i would have never taken that many risks in buying games but it allowed me to fully try and see if i wanted it game devs got a crazy amount of money out of me over the lifespan of the DS because of it.

                  Nowdays i still buy plenty of new games and show my support but i'm not going to tie myself up in knots about emulating an older retro game. The nintendo classic minis are a good example, in our place there is no less than 5 of them between versions & regions all of them bought for retail so nintendo got a chunk of cash from me for them, yet they are all hacked and have tailored games libraries on them. So while i bought them i did support nintendo but i also have no problem adding in the games they didn't. I personally found virtual console overpriced & inferior as i don't enjoy playing my games looking like i'm playing them through sunglasses plus they have the digital restriction factor too. Nintendo kind of shot themselves in the foot a bit with the mini as they have made them more enticing for me than the VC ever was, the amount of hours put into playing them has been crazy. If they make more minis im happy to keep buying them but i will tailor the games to what i like.

                  Here's a thing, which is worse? someone who emulates but also buys a lot of new games or someone who is holier than thou but barely buys any games all or even at full price. Because i have seen people who take the i'll never emulate stance but then also go on about how they never buy at full price on release and always wait for price drops or buy second hand. Which of the two is truly the worst for the publishers?

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                    #24
                    The games industry is now bigger than Hollywood - but you still have people worrying about whether loading a ROM is a bad thing. The idea that playing copies of old games for free is hurting the industry, is ridiculous.

                    If Nintendo re-released Super Mario World tomorrow in a shiny new SNES box, some people would only buy it as a collectable, rather than because it's still a good game. I'm pretty sure that most people didn't buy the reissue of Street Fighter 2 for the SNES because they want to play it, but simply because it fed their hunger for niche retro items.

                    I think the gaming biz is always about the 'latest & greatest' games. Sure you get remasters, but on the whole people want brand new games. Remasters are just a way to make extra money on an old game. But if companies just released 10-20 year old games again for £50 without any changes, not many people would buy them. Gaming isn't like the movie biz, where you can keep re-releasing the same film forever and ever for full price.

                    I think the people who should be trying to have ROMS banned, are eBay sellers of second hand games. They would probably see a lot more business if ROMS didn't exist. Then again, I think most people wouldn't even bother with retro gaming if they had to pay loads of money for old games. Playing around with emulation is a just a bit of fun for some people, so retro gaming is something they toy with. If they suddenly had to choose between spending their money on brand new or old games, I think many would choose to focus on new games.
                    Last edited by Leon Retro; 20-08-2018, 13:47.

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                      #25
                      Or Nintendo trying to lay a foundation for their Switch VC venture.

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                        #26
                        Originally posted by importaku View Post
                        Here's a thing, which is worse?
                        Whataboutery is definitely worse.

                        Originally posted by Leon Retro View Post
                        The games industry is now bigger than Hollywood
                        Yep. This is very true and if you look at gaming as one big lump like that, there is no way you can say that it's suffering all that much. But break that big huge lump up and things can look different. I remember people saying the same about music piracy and they were right. And if you looked at the big players and their huge mansions, everything looks so decadent - they're rolling in cash. But beneath those people are thousands of others, many struggling. Not even just the artists themselves - session musicians, sound engineers, cover artwork designers and many more all needing to get paid and it's not like that big industry figure gets split evenly. If you're looking for an impact, you have to look further than the big overall figure.

                        But I would also put forward that this is a bit of a diversion. It changes the conversation to "well who does it hurt?" rather than whether it's right or wrong by itself. I can't imagine it would make all that much difference to him if I nabbed one of Snoop Dogg's cars but I'd struggle to make the case that I am right to do so.

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                          #27
                          Interesting thoughts!!!

                          DT's entitlement comment is a good point. I'm almost certainly guilty of doing that and this entire website is based on that philosophy if you think about it:

                          I want 60Hz
                          Sorry, 60Hz isn't available to you. Here, have 50Hz.
                          But I want 60!
                          *imports 60Hz* ahhh, lovely
                          Hey! Special Reserve, you been selling the 60Hz to the 50Hz guys, begone!!!!!

                          I did write a bunch more here but it turned into incoherent gibberish and I couldn't figure out what point I was even trying to make.

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                            #28
                            I think an age old piracy arguement is that digital data can be duplicated without consequences, you're not harming Snoop Dogg if you copy a ROM file of his from his desktop.

                            I definitely feel there is a sense of entitlement though, of course. You're acquiring the result of hard work of so many people and are able to enjoy them for nothing in most cases, there's no way you're entitled to that for nothing and to think otherwise is insane. I'm far from innocent but I'm still buying old, used games too. It's the lesser of two evils I think, the other being the piracy in place of a retail sale which is a practice I participated in before I had any kind of income. Definitely never thought what I was doing is right though.

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                              #29
                              Typically unavailable would cover things like Stunt Race FX say where it remains solely released on the original SNES hardware. There's no route where Nintendo loses money via emulation on that game as it's not available to legitimately buy anymore and is unlikely to ever be.

                              The trouble with avoiding emulation via the entitlement view is that it basically means that a huge volume of past releases are then effectively sealed off forever tapping us straight into the curation argument where numbers of games are still only around because emulation exists. Say a kid gets a Switch and in the coming years wants to explore and experience Nintendo's past generations based on the current systems high appeal to them, Nintendo doesn't allow them to in many instances so emulation becomes one of the only avenues. You could say they should be forever denied that content and knowledge but it's mostly due to their date of birth that they are.

                              I suppose you could extend that to things like Sonic Mania and Megaman 11. I'd be genuinely interested to know how much years of emulation and fan made knock offs maintaining interest in these series allowed for the existence, employment of dev staff, success and profit of those games for the companies that didn't profit from the original actions of emulators. It's why I can't see it as a closed door, it's just as much a missed opportunity for the companies that don't engage and properly manage the situation.
                              Last edited by Neon Ignition; 20-08-2018, 14:03.

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                                #30
                                Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post

                                But I would also put forward that this is a bit of a diversion. It changes the conversation to "well who does it hurt?" rather than whether it's right or wrong by itself.
                                I'm not really interested in talking about whether it's right or wrong to boot up a rom. I just think that everyone in the games industry should have zero interest in whether someone plays a copy of an old Psygnosis game on the Amiga. I think it would be disgusting for someone behind a Psygnosis game to come out and say bad things about people who enjoy emulation.

                                The thing is - even if it is easy to emulate old Psygnosis games, there would still be some people who would buy brand new boxed copies of something like Shadow of the Beast, simply because re-releases of really old games appeal to a small group of collectors. The same would apply to games from The Bitmap Brothers, Team 17 etc...

                                So my point is all about roms not really taking potential money out of people's pockets. Huge companies are always focused on the 'latest & greatest' things - and Indie type of companies always know there's a niche collectors market for repackaged old games. There isn't a huge market for straight re-releases of old games at full price. Capcom, for example, has had to spend lots of money on a remaster of Resident Evil 2, because they know people will be willing to spend £50 on it. Hardly any of those buyers would pay £50 for straight port of RE2 to the PS4.

                                Ultimately, emulation is something people toy with. People aren't wheeling & dealing in roms. No, 99% of people who play around with emulation aren't doing it for financial reasons - they just want to have a bit of fun with old games. I would imagine that most people who dabble in emulation also have modern consoles and pay £50 a pop for new games. So I think the subject of emulation and roms should be irrelevant to the games industry. Playing old games has nothing to do with piracy. Piracy is all about stealing things that are in demand and profiting from theft. Emulation has nothing to do with that sort of thing. It's just a hobby for a niche group of gamers who like playing old games that most people aren't interested in anymore.
                                Last edited by Leon Retro; 20-08-2018, 15:08.

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