---political correctness of the highest order---
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Piracy sucks balls
There are 7 game consoles hooked up right now in my room alone, from the original NES to the current gen PS3.
GOT SOMETHING TO SAY??
-e|even¹¹-
With H1N1 rampant among the weak & unhealthy, what better way to safeguard yourself than to stay at home with Mario and Cloud?
Including the spare systems and portable devices would round that number up to 15. Shared among these 15 systems are close to 200+ games, roughly 50 of which I have never played before.
I blame this on piracy. When a bootleg copy costs $2, its hard not to amass a whole collection and inadvertently never touch about half of them.
On all moral accounts piracy should be a bad thing, as cinema pre-screening adverts would have you know. However, there is no denying that piracy opens up the gaming hobby to the masses. Paying upwards of $60 for a typical console game isn't a big deal neither is it unaffordable. Seriously its not. A typical Friday night at Butter Factory would easily set you back double that amount. However, to borrow the economics term, the 'economies of scale' for most games are somewhere between pathetic and retardedly pathetic.
For most games, playing it to completion once would seldom warrant a 2nd playthrough unless the game is REALLY good. A 3rd playthrough however, is reserved only for those few holy grails that reach 'classic' status. Plowing through through a game once would eat away anywhere between 5 to 50 hours of your life depending on genre. The median duration would be about 10-15 hours. Paying $60 for a gaming experience lasting 15 hours isn't the best use of money. A further slap to the face considering most people only achieve 60% completion of their software library.
Consider a high end console like the PS3 that costs $600. Amassing a software library of 10 games would amount to getting another console. In a typical console life, the average gamer would end up with 15 games for each system, then its on to the next newest next gen system where the cycle repeats itself perennially.
No wonder piracy is rampant here. Even when adopting the moral high ground, it does not make economical sense whatsoever to drop that kind of money to support originals. Of course, along with piracy comes the birth of the casual gamer; the type that owns folders upon folders of pirated games and has every single version of Winning Eleven released that same year. My opinions of such individuals is best left to another, more vulgar article.
However, the silver lining with original games is the perceived high intrinsic value of every single game. If I pay $60 for a game, I would under any circumstance attempt to finish the game at least once, even should the gameplay be similar to sound recordings of nails on chalkboard. In fact, its not uncommon to coerce oneself to eventually grow fond of the gameplay by toughing it through in an attempt to justify the purchase.
To date, hackers have yet to crack open the PS3 coding to allow for bootleg gaming. For this I am extremely grateful. This forces me to make informed software purchases and ensures that I complete every single game at least once. Gone are the days where any game with an interesting sounding title is immediately added to my folders of DVD-Rs.
I'm proud to report that I have completed every single PS3 game I've owned at least once; most twice, and have sold or traded away subsequently. An added achievement considering this is the very first time I've ever play through every game on a console. The PS3 may be one of the most expensive consoles I've ever built, but the 'economies of scale' for this console have been reaped barely 2 years into is shelf life.
Completed:
MGS4
GTA4
SF4
COD4: Modern Warfare
Assassin's Creed
Prototype
InFamous
Burnout Paradise
Stuntman Ignition
Fifa Street 3
Ridge Racer 7
Rainbow 6 Vegas
Rainbow 6 Vegas 2
Everybody's Golf 5
Resistance Fall of Man
Resistance 2
Killzone 2
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 2
SF2 HD Remix
As a comparison, most of the games I've completed on the PS1 and 2 comprise of the words 'Final' and 'Fantasy'. Not bad...considering the PS3 has yet to receive all the eventual RPG juggernaut blockbusters.
GOT SOMETHING TO SAY??
-e|even¹¹-
