Why I Think It Is GOOD To Pirate Commercial Games

[Tessera]

Oh... that reminds me:

It is very easy to exchange copies of Hellgate: London with your friends. But only if (1) their installed copy of the game has been patched with the most recent single-player patch and (2) if both of you have 64-bit operating systems (XP or Vista x64, etc.)

Just compress the entire installed game into an RAR file and then give it to your friend. Decompress that RAR onto your friend's hard drive, so that all of the various sub-directories are restored intact. And then, your friend just needs to create a desktop shortcut to the following file:

hellgate_sp_dx9_x64.exe

- OR -

hellgate_sp_dx10_x64.exe

Select whichever one corresponds to your version of DirectX (DX9 or DX10/11). Highlight the correct executable file for your version of DirectX in its sub-folder, then press <Ctrl+C> to copy it and then, right-click anywhere on your desktop and select "Paste Shortcut" from the pop-up menu. You can rename the resulting shortcut anything that you want to, if you so desire. Both of those files can be found within Hellgate's "SP_x64" sub-folder.

This works because the most recent SP patch "unprotected" the 64-bit versions of the Hellgate engine... meaning that you don't need to have any Windows registry entries present for Hellgate, nor do you need to have the DVD in your DVD-ROM drive in order to simply play the game. Just launch it directly from its 64-bit executable file and have fun... it is as simple as that.


Note that I am merely providing the above information for educational purposes only. I would *never* actually try to encourage anyone to pirate a copy of Hellgate from their friends. I mean... that would be like, a totally wrong thing to do.

Almost as wrong as charging $50 USD for a miserably broken and poorly supported game, that ultimately drove its studio (Flagship) out of business... thanks to their own (and EA's) greed and irresponsibility.  

[anariel]

I wonder if theres still the pirates Codex: If the game is good, i buy the legal copy. Thats how I'm doing it with every stuff. Good work needs its fruits, and EA needs a shovel in its face...twice.
They really spend 30m on ads for a 10m game? mmmh correct me if I'm wrong but thats not what they thought me in Business studies, old rule was 4% of project cost into ad, now they raised it to 10% due to high media presence... so which idiots idea is it to spend 300% of costs?

I completely agree, I have played a lot of games I never payed for it... because they weren't what I wanted to begin with. And in the other hand, I have a lot of games I purchased after playing with a "security copy" version of it, games I don't mind to reinstall an play again and again. My only regret is the end of Sierra as how it was (I'm a great fan of their "Homeworld" series, and I totally loved No One Lives forever 1 & 2), and the fact the Ground Control saga won't have a fourth game (and there I was, wondering about Sarah Parker's fate, and how she looked so similar to the bad girl commanding the Terran empire's army...).

The problem is, mainly, people no more wants to make good videogames, but to make money fast and cheap. The thing you say about games having x3 more money invested in the launching than in the developing? It sounds to me quite similar to the cinema "top movies", movies so "good" they have to regain all the money invested in them, in their premiere's weekend. And if you go an watch them, they aren't worth a damn.
   In my opinion, the main reason of all of this may be quite well an arrangement between software makers and hardware makers. I mean, all that crap about "hiperrealistic water", and it worked quite well enough for the old games just have something people was able to call "water" in the game. If I want to see "hiperrealistic water" I'll go to see the sea, or a river, or the Discovery Channel!

So here we are (and I'm sorry if this is a little out of topic), in a global town, with a society to which is not only good, but a way to prove you are successful when everything produced is just like Kleenex: use and discard.

Mmm... thinking about it, I sound quite like an easy politician, sorry >.< (and sorry too if I wrote something wrong, english is not my primary language... By the way, the Spell Check works ^^U).

[Prometheus]

Zack Mc Krakken fitted on 1 floppy disc .... plain story and jokes.. same as monkey island or Day of the Tentacle... course those arent shooters or sport games but cmon, they "represented" whats possible at that time

Take Baldurs Gate 2 f.e. wow... was just plain wow... they used 1gig space when the harddrives where slighty in that range for an affordable price... but they used that space wisly

Now you get games that are humoungeuos, for 2- 10 hours playfun somethings definitly wrong there.

As you said, money makes the world go round, no exceptions on games too... you cannot be to political on this issue because its as politically f***ed  up as everything else

[GameOn]

Simple, we are addicted to the eye candy.  And gamers will put up with any amount of bullshit to have it.

[Tessera]

I don't think it's so much that we're addicted to eye candy.

I think it's more a matter of having learned to accept eye candy
in place of imaginative and well-constructed gameplay content.

We see the same lowbrow bullshit in major motion pictures these
days. Does your script suck..? Are your actors only slightly more
talented than a trained chimp..?  Well then hey, no problem...
just add a bunch of loud explosions and some tits and the public
will happily pay 8 bucks a pop to go see it in the local multiplex.

Chalk it up to the systematic dumbing down of our culture.

[Kandid]

Simple, we are addicted to the eye candy.  And gamers will put up with any amount of bullshit to have it.

Bloodlines and Omikron were both released on 3 CD media, which is much smaller in size compared to recent releases. And while they are technologically inferior, they look a lot better than many modern games with super hi-res textures and overused bloom.

Eye candy should be just icing on the cake i.e. a good game with all of its components, story, gameplay, everything, it should not be something to hide a game's flaws.

We see the same lowbrow bullshit in major motion pictures these
days. Does your script suck..? Are your actors only slightly more
talented than a trained chimp..?  Well then hey, no problem...
just add a bunch of loud explosions and some tits and the public
will happily pay 8 bucks a pop to go see it in the local multiplex.

Likewise, make the exact same third person borefest action game with EZ mode regenerating health and automatic cover system, add a soap opera story with a "romance "subplot, pay attention to nothing but its graphics, and you'll make truckloads of money.

Me? I want to play something original.

[anariel]

"Necessity is the mother of innovation". As long as hardware capabilities will be enough, the software companies won't make any effort to use them at 100%. And people just demand eye candy, they find beauty = apparency, which is not correct (philosophically speaking, something is more beautiful when it does its function better...).

Personally speaking, 2D adventure graphics were just enough for me, and as for "eye candy", I prefer "to see" something rather than to have a greatly representation of every atom composing the thing I'm seeing... I mean, why do I need an hyper-defined graphic, when my eye won't be able to see more than 20% of the image?

[Tessera]

Here's the thing, though...

There's no reason why eye candy and solid content need to be mutually exclusive.

Superior writers exist. Superior games like Bloodlines have proven that they exist.


So where are all the good writers these days..?

[perez007usa]

So where are all the good writers these days..?

       Looking for work! Developers don't want good writers, they want something that can be punched out and sold like
an assembly line. GITTY, GITTY GO!!

       By, the way, anariel. Your English is not bad at all!

[Kandid]

Everyone seems to be trying to imitate the riskless, shallow, 100% politically correct mainstream games instead of coming up with something original and unique. Especially during the financial crisis. Who would invest in a game like Bloodlines instead of making yet another Comic Book superhero game with much less effort and similar budget? Activision? I bet they even regret publishing Bloodlines.

Good writers have no place in today's game industry. Our only hope is to see the collapse of big companies.

[anariel]

     By, the way, anariel. Your English is not bad at all!

Ty ^^.

I assume the good writers are working as mass-producers for the "top writers". Besides, a great writer with a great idea seems to me something "too complicated" (mean: expensive, in time, money and programming) for the taste of the commercial companies.

Anyway, a great game doesn't need a great writer: just a great idea is good enough to start with. The problem here, few people things about "recycling", which means they try to innovate, making things so "unique" they are... well, plain crap.

Bloodlines is a game without a great idea (it's based upon a pen&paper RPG, with one "classical" main adventure, in the same way the city books were made), but its a carefully nurtured game: the dialogs are well written, the voice actors are good, the music is great without being intrusive (and more importantly: you try to play the game without sound, and you will miss its music a lot), the characters are well defined... But again, its a great game because it was made carefully.

An example of a "great" idea, in my opinion, was "American McGee's Alice". The game has not great dialogues, and is not nearly as inmersive as Bloodlines, not to mention the graphics are even cruder than the ones in Half Life... But the idea of an Alice in wonderland struggling into her mind to retain her sanity, with all the traits of a psychopath, that was what gibed the game a great point.

And now, an example of a great idea becoming bad, Dungeon Siege and the skill-rising system. Like oblivion, the more you used a skill (well, in that game, a type of combat: ranged, melee, magic...), the more it raised. Sadly, unlike Oblivion, you couldn't train the skills out of combat. And unlike in Oblivion, you had one to five characters to train. A totally grindfest, to me. Or SW Republic Commando, a game which I think was designed by the same dudes who made Resident Evil games... I spent most of the game out of ammo, and without my 3 buddies (you play the role of the leader of a 4-squad clone commando), my damage output is about zero using the main weapon. Quite frustrating, going from "3 shots => 1 dead" to "300 shots => maybe five enemies death". Both games tend to be frustrating (but Republic Commando has some good missions to save it from the thrash).

Great dialogs, acceptable graphics, but not a very great idea? No One Lives Forever. Pick James Bond in the 60's, change him to become a cat burglar (a feminine one: the main character is a girl), and mix all with Austin Powers to get the bad guys... It wasn't a great game, but I laughed to tears more than once, being it hearing the dialogs between H.A.R.M.'s agents (that's the name of the "evil organization which wants to conquer the world" XD), or visiting their Space Station, seeing their weapons, or looking at the history's developmet. Quite hilarious for a shooter, I may add.

[Kandid]

I'm in no position to judge anyone's English, but apparently you really have a good taste in games. Alice is one of my favorites.

[Prometheus]

For me a good writer is Hideo Koshima. Well hes stucked in the Console world (i dont know why the hell he doesnt jump into computers to have more space for his ideas)
He hands out books to all members of the developing team and demands that they write in 1 idea per day they always wanted to have in a game. At the end of the day he gathers all books and have a huge laugh and/ or tells the coders to add this or that idea to the game.
But then again, behind him KONAMI swings "the big Club of RELEASE DATE+2"

So long story short, the only way for a good game today seems to be independant of the market... which is impossible because of the slightest showup EA jumps in and buys of your game (just to ruin it again)

[anariel]

I'm in no position to judge anyone's English, but apparently you really have a good taste in games. Alice is one of my favorites.

Tanks again ^^. For me a game should be:
a) Believable. That doesn't needs tied to reality, but to an internal consistency
b) At least three of: fun, interesting, without requiring half of the NASA computers to run, with room to free development, without 90% useless map, with good characters.
c) A reasonable price (I don't care to wait until the game goes from 60 euros to 20, it's just 6 months or so...)
d) Stable. I can bear an "unfinished" game, as long as my computer won't crash 50% of the times I enter a new zone (of course, additional "missions", like the one for Mass Effect, are welcome), and I know a lot of things are being keep out of every game, for several reasons (money being the most common...).

Hideo Kojima... Great games, but they may become a little too complicated at a times. I hate to get stuck, I must confess. Sadly, since FF10 (and my lost savegames of FF7, at lv 54 before ending the first CD...) I don't have the patience to "master" a game the way a console shooter requires from me (keyboard + mouse for me, thanks...). By the way... Did you know he was behind 3 dating simulation games for the DS? Quite strange, but I feel he would do a great job in graphical adventure games.

[perez007usa]

For me a good writer is Hideo Koshima. He hands out books to all members of the developing team and demands that they write in 1 idea per day they always wanted to have in a game. At the end of the day he gathers all books and have a huge laugh and/ or tells the coders to add this or that idea to the game.

    Hideo Koshima, was doing the same thing that Gene Roddenbury creator of Star Trek. He gave out to the writers, a book on what to write and not to write about Star Trek to keep the "continuity" of the show, and Hideo was doing that.

    If the game developers would JUST LISTEN to theirs writers instead of their bank accounts, maybe then they will come up with something original. That will last, and make a name for themselves. 

     That's my way of thinking!

[Cat]

What happen to that wirters' strike a while back?

[Caspa_tfng]

That was just about writers getting more money.in a few years time, you're not going to have a game anymore.  You're going to have a CGI rendered man jangling a set of keys saying "Look at the shiney shiney.  Look at the shiney shiney", and it will sell like hotcakes.

[Tessera]

As of this morning, Hollywood has once again managed to temporarily shut down The Pirate Bay web site.

The owners of the site... whomever they may be... have promised that they already have a contingency plan ready and they hope to be back online within a matter of hours.

My personal comment regarding this ongoing situation of piracy is simply this...


To the entertainment and software industries:

Stop releasing assembly line garbage that you don't deserve to be paid for -- and people will stop stealing it. Piracy is a predictable response by an angry public, who have felt exploited and ripped off for far too long by a greedy and dishonest industry. When all nine theaters in the studio-owned multiplex are all showing formulaic crap, produced by untalented whores who go to great lengths to shut out independent productions from their theaters, and when they charge eight bucks per ticket for said dumbed-down and formulaic trash... does it really surprise anyone that such a large percentage of the public has fought back by resorting to online piracy..?

Fix your own mess, Hollywood. A deterioration in customer loyalty is what is truly at the heart of your problem. And that problem is entirely your own fault... you greedy, unethical slimebags.

The above comment also applies to the PC gaming industry. In triplicate.

Power to the people.