orcishgamer: Your view of culture is incredibly myopic. People participate in their culture. This is why people paint themselves when they go to football games, why you see intricate fan-made costumes as PAX and Blizzcon, and why the internet is full of fan-art and fan-fic.
You do not need to pirate games to participate in gaming culture, even if you're broke. You can play old and cheap games like here on GOG and participate in this forum. You can play old and cheap NES and SNES games and participate in classic gaming culture. Or you could just, you know, find a culture that doesn't cost money at all. Play fucking baseball or something.
You seem to be trying to float the idea that the right to have a culture means the right to play every video game whether you have the money or not. That is what I am calling out as a stupid idea. I agree that some kind of cultural outlet is needed for human beings, I just don't agree you should be able to pick whichever one you want, situation and finances be damned, and then break the law to participate in it. I also disagree that is required to participate in gaming culture even if you are broke... there are countless classic games I have never played and when people talk about them or make threads about them I just ignore them, or say I never played them. It's not some huge catastrophe that cause you to feel ostracized, as I said before.
In short your whole theory seems to be founded on the idea of a cultural identity meaning access to all creative works unimpeded, and I completely and flagrantly disagree.
orcishgamer: The idea that people can "own" ideas is incredibly European in origin. It was rejected by the US for a very long time (until the mid 1900s in fact, maybe as late as the 1960s, I'd have to look - that was the first time we complied with the Berne convention). This has allowed us to produce creative industries that literally dwarf whole other regions of the world (you have no further to look than Hollywood, and for all the tripe they shovel out the world would be the poorer without it). Yes, much that is created is trite, but huge penis vases from ancient Greece probably were considered a bit trite back then as well.
People should get paid for their work. Bringing in concepts like "owning ideas" is an abstraction. There is more going on with Crysis 2 than an idea, it's a body of work that took a massive investment of time, work and money to create. I accused before of over-complicating a simple concept but now I think you are oversimplifying it. Since Crysis 2 can be seen as tiny bits of information you treat it like an idea, something with no production cost and expense to create, which is ridiculous.
orcishgamer: We've already been over the reason you buy games for which you're unwilling to accept the DRM (and yet also unwilling to deny yourself the pleasure of playing said game) I'm not sure I see your logic in deny the privilege to another. You may very well fall into the piracy count for said games by downloading a crack for the DRM, you believe you don't, but I doubt you have any concrete evidence of that.
As I have explained many times the reason I don't care about DRM is because there is nothing to care about, it is 100% ineffective at controlling when and how I play my games. Why get worked up over something that is completely impotent? That is my point.
I'm not cracking games today, which you seem to consistently think I do despite me correcting you before. I have no reason to crack them because DRM is completely functional, I have no issue with it working what-so-ever and never have. My issue with DRM is that it might harm the longevity of games, their long-term existence. Funny enough that links back into your culture argument... I want these games around in 20+ years because they are creative works in gaming culture and my own life. If DRM ever works it will be a huge blow to video game longevity, but it doesn't work. Let me repeat that: it doesn't work.
I have no worry what-so-ever about being able to play Crysis 2 in 20 years. If the DRM activation servers are shut down without a patch then the community will make a patch. If the game is incompatible with future Windows versions then the community will fix that too, or worse case I can just build an old Win7 rig. At that point no one is going to care about the DRM being removed by modders, no one is going to be tracking crack downloads for 20 year old games. The only people who could possibly give a shit are EA or Crytek, and if they are still around at that time then chances are the DRM still works, so it's a moot point anyway.
I will boycott DRM when it means something. Streaming means something, MMOs mean something... activations and other forms of DRM that are cracked in hours mean nothing.
orcishgamer: You act as if the Crysis 2 team hasn't been paid, they have been paid for their work no matter how much piracy happens at this point. You may forget, I write software too, and I'm telling you, their model is certainly not the only way to get remunerated for artistic work or software (nor do I necessarily have any right to demand that I can make a living writing software specifically, ask the thousands of starving musicians, actors, and artists out there if they can force people to pay them to follow their bliss). I don't know why people think their 5 dollar Crysis 2 purchase 18 months from now during the Steam 2012 Christmas sale is going to make much of a difference on whether Crytek gets a green light for Crysis 3.
The merits of that comment aside, it doesn't matter. I don't care if they need the money. What I care about is the fact I don't have a right to use their work without their consent or compensating them. I mean the moral right by the way, not the legal right. Morally there is no way I could justify to myself taking their hard work for nothing.
I'm sure you'll float the notion of some Somalian making $50 a year or a 12 year old kid whose parents never buy him anything as being able to find that justification easier, but the fact is if they have the money to get a PC than can run Crysis 2 then you better damn well believe they have the money to buy their games, even if it means waiting for sales or GOG-level prices.
orcishgamer: What I really see when I read comments like yours and Delixe's (and sorry Delixe, you've generally have been polite to me) is that you're worried that someday you won't get to play Crysis 5 and that the PC will be abandoned. It's mostly a selfish argument really. You'll willingly tell publishers you'll accept any DRM, lose your right to resale, and think contentedly that "I'll just crack it down the road" all so you can have your cake and eat it too. To use your terms, it's "selfish and uncaring". No before you write it off, think for a second: Is you're right to play Crysis 5 more important than some poor Korean kid's right to experience SC2 when SC was so formative for him (and if you don't believe SC permeated Korean culture you haven't been looking).
The Starcraft/Korea thing is a huge fucking outlier and you know that. That example is so far from the norm I can't even take this paragraph seriously.
And yes, I am worried about Crysis 5 being on the PC. I like Crysis games and want to play more of them. I want the companies to be rewarded for making those PC games so that they make more of them. There is some selfishness to that, sure... it's pretty inherent in capitalism really.
orcishgamer: I'll make a projection, if PC gaming implodes it will be mostly the industry and its customers reinforcing bad behavior until even they are literally not willing to put up with it anymore. Because despite all the cries of piracy on the PC, PC sales are still staggeringly huge and video gaming grosses more than Hollywood. If developers aren't getting their due and creativity itself is being crushed, I'd say it's our fault for supporting the likes of EA.
This is where your argument is purely based on your own preferences though... let me be clear: I like EA! I like a lot of games EA makes or publishes, which means I like that they exist. Would I make some changes if I ran the company? Fuck yeah I would. Does that mean I hate them or dislike their products? Nope! Dead Space 2, Bulletstorm, Crysis 2... these are great games I loved playing and that's just this year's releases. Even Dragon Age 2, flawed as it was, gave me 50+ hours of entertainment for $40.
I like EA. I support them because they make games I want to play.
My post ends here because GOG told me the original was too long. The rest was kind of stupidly cyclical anyway.
