orcishgamer: There was a time when games like that were ideal on LANs with friends...
hedwards: And Blizzard would even let you install a couple extra clones so that you didn't have to own a copy per computer. It's a shame that didn't become more popular with publishers. It's getting so hard to justify not pirating materials when the developers arrr the way they arrr
Well let me tell you how hard it gets, now my kid wants to play co-op everything. We didn't have much co-op outside of very arcade-y titles (think Asteroids) when I was a kid, just due to our systems' limitations. Now you can do co-op on XBox Live or just over wireless, not to mention LAN. So if I want to be legit it's 2xevery game, oh and that DLC that costs 10 bucks? Yeah that costs me 20 if I get it, so we can play the expanded story together. A few games feature couch co-op, and you're okay with a single copy of the DLC and the game in this case, but a game like RDR can cost 100 bucks, on sale, with on sale DLC, to get it so we can play co-op and all the portions together (I have a single copy of RDR, I did buy all the DLC when they had it included in the Undead Nightmare pack on sale during Christmas though).
Those Arcade titles that "only" cost 10 bucks, well they're 20 for me if they're awesome co-op and my daughter wants to play.
It's a racket and it gets to be a bit much at times, sometimes i have to just say no, because even if I can get the game for 30 bucks a pop that still adds up really fast.
And I don't blame my kid, co-op experience is awesome playing as a family. It's so much better than the sit on your ass in front of the tv "bonding" my family did growing up. Heck, we were running through Pokemon strategies earlier today (the new game is great, btw).
Back in the day it didn't cost multiple copies of games, or rarely, as you said. You could clone copies for the few friends that didn't have cash to buy their own at a LAN party. Now, I have to buy a copy for everybody or half of them will show up with pirated copies (and no beer, man some of those friends are tools!).