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[7DollarHagane]

I can only assume those opposed to it are either collectors that have high value rarities and feel the price is damaged because people have a means to play them, or they are straight up scalpers, who want to sell every old game for as much as possible regardless of it's true worth.

Emulation is not the best way to experience any old game, the original hardware on the original type of display for the time is.

People don't appreciate a game they download a rom of and play for five minutes and forget. Someone who drops $150 on panzer dragoon saga or snatcher is much more likely to value and enjoy that game. Perhaps even reselling it later at an equal value to another person.

 

[Shuggananas]

Emulation is not the best way to experience any old game, the original hardware on the original type of display for the time is.

What about 50 Hz vs 60 Hz, and long ass cutscenes you've seen too many times that you can now skip with fast forward ?

 

[DriftedPlanet]

Why don't you buy and then emulate? Emulation does not preclude ownership.
For the record, I don't have a major ethical/moral issue with piracy of old stuff you cannot feasibly pay for.

My philosophy right here. I buy copies however I can before emulating. Psn and steam sales are great for morally enabling me to play emulated games with bumped up settings and controller remapping.

 

[Amentallica]

As some posters have said, I don't take issue with emulating old games that can no longer easily be purchased. But emulating or torrenting a game that came out within the last ten years without owning the physical media is something I frown upon.

 

[DriftedPlanet]

Emulation is not the best way to experience any old game, the original hardware on the original type of display for the time is.

People don't appreciate a game they download a rom of and play for five minutes and forget. Someone who drops $150 on panzer dragoon saga or snatcher is much more likely to value and enjoy that game. Perhaps even reselling it later at an equal value to another person.

Yeah... I have to reject this argument. If my choices of how to play a game are to play it on the original hardware with a fluctuating framerate at the original resolution (Shadow of the Colossus comes to mind) or to play it at full speed on a emulator bumped up to 1280x960 (or another 4:3 res) then I'll definitely go with emulation.

I agree that someone who hasn't paid for a game and just downloads tons of games probably won't get to every game nor appreciate it as much as someone who spent $150 for one game, but if a game disappoints I'd rather be the guy who didn't spend $150 on it. Those who buy digital copies before emulating support the devs/license holders as well.

(If a game runs perfectly on original hardware I find its just personal preference on where to play a game, but I also stand by my reasoning above.)

 

[cris7198]

I had this wondering now that I wanted to play the first four Silent Hill games, I have the first in my Vita, but there's no way in hell I'm going near the HD collection, so I thought they might have been released digitally on PC, but nooooo, I guess Konami doesn't want my money

 

[conman]

The legality is a known factor. The ethics of it is up to you. For me, if you can buy it, it's unethical to emulate.

 

[inki]

If you want to be ethical, why not purchase the physical game (cart/disk/whatever) but then just use a PC emulator. In reality your only purchasing the right to use said software anyhow. You could purchase games for a console you don't even own.

 

[Chû Totoro]

The legality is a known factor. The ethics of it is up to you. For me, if you can buy it, it's unethical to emulate.

I was making a huuuuge post but it could pretty much summarize to this so

 

[Lionel Richie]

The legality is a known factor. The ethics of it is up to you. For me, if you can buy it, it's unethical to emulate.

Church. However if you have the game and choose to emulate it for whatever reason is fine as well, at least for me. Not everyone enjoys changing the saving batteries.

 

[Shuggananas]

If you want to be ethical, why not purchase the physical game (cart/disk/whatever) but then just use a PC emulator. In reality your only purchasing the right to use said software anyhow. You could purchase games for a console you don't even own.

Easier said than done when some old consoles or games are super expensive

 

[chaosaeon]

This reminds me of how the only copies of Megaman Legends are on ebay and nowhere near decent prices, nor will they likely come to psn classics.

 

[AzureTranquility95]

This reminds me of how the only copies of Megaman Legends are on ebay and nowhere near decent prices, nor will they likely come to psn classics.

Legends 1 is still somewhat reasonable, thankfully (Around $30-$35, which is still slightly below original MSRP). Legends 2 and Tron Bonne however? Yeah, those got pretty bad.

 

[charlequin]

If I create something I own the rights to it, and no other ownership comes with a strict legal expiration date, so the creative industry was getting screwed over by the earlier short copyrights.

This is exactly why the purposely misleading term "intellectual property" is so toxic. Creating an idea and owning a physical object are nothing alike. Laws about the latter are built entirely on the concept of physical existence -- that an object can't actually be used by two people at once, and so ownership must take that into account.

The idea that "inventing" an abstract idea gives you some kind of absolute control over it, on the other hand, is completely ahistorical and entirely unrealistic. Society and culture are constructed on a bedrock of concepts, ideas, and creations that have been copied, modified, remixed, and otherwise used as fuel for ongoing cultural development -- to the degree that a wide swathe of creators active today borrow liberally from works that in a world of infinite copyright they'd still be getting sued for by the thousandth-generation descendants of some ancient-world author. Once you step outside the short-term temporal goal -- to make sure that someone can benefit from the immediate success of their work -- the logic of absolute protection becomes entirely unsupportable.

I just don't think Public domain is really that big of a deal anymore.

Yes, that would be the selfish and outrageously short-sighted position I'm criticizing you for.

 

[Faxanadu]

Like others have logically said, if the game isn't actually available for sale at retail (benefitting the publisher etc.) then there's no harm or foul in emulating without owning the copy.

Buying from joeshmosretrogamz275 on eBay doesn't make it "more ethical" as it only benefits that seller and not the creators.

 

[Jobbs]

Why don't you buy and then emulate? Emulation does not preclude ownership.
For the record, I don't have a major ethical/moral issue with piracy of old stuff you cannot feasibly pay for.

if you want to play powerblade 2, I forgive you for emulating it.

 

[beril]

This is exactly why the purposely misleading term "intellectual property" is so toxic. Creating an idea and owning a physical object are nothing alike. Laws about the latter are built entirely on the concept of physical existence -- that an object can't actually be used by two people at once, and so ownership must take that into account.

The idea that "inventing" an abstract idea gives you some kind of absolute control over it, on the other hand, is completely ahistorical and entirely unrealistic. Society and culture are constructed on a bedrock of concepts, ideas, and creations that have been copied, modified, remixed, and otherwise used as fuel for ongoing cultural development -- to the degree that a wide swathe of creators active today borrow liberally from works that in a world of infinite copyright they'd still be getting sued for by the thousandth-generation descendants of some ancient-world author. Once you step outside the short-term temporal goal -- to make sure that someone can benefit from the immediate success of their work -- the logic of absolute protection becomes entirely unsupportable.

For starters ideas aren't covered by copyright. Actual creative works are. The only way that really stifles the cultural development is by slowing down the stream of remixes and adaptations somewhat, which I honestly don't think is such a bad thing, and makes it a lot more fair. Do you honestly think that an author doesn't deserve a cut or a say or if a Hollywood studio wants to adapt his novel? If there's a commercial or creative value in using an existing property; the original creator deserves a cut, and otherwise you can just do a new IP.

Whether it's historically typical or not isn't really much of a point because the way people both produce and consume culture have changed entirely several times in the last few hundred years; but some forms of copyrights have existed basically since the printing press. And it's absolutely necessary for the creative industry to have some legal protection. You can't expect anyone to invest millions of dollars into a production and then just be fine with anyone pirating it for free, or their competitors reselling it and making other cheap games/movies based on their popularity.

 

[charlequin]

For starters ideas aren't covered by copyright. Actual creative works are. The only way that really stifles the cultural development is by slowing down the stream of remixes and adaptations somewhat, which I honestly don't think is such a bad thing, and makes it a lot more fair. Do you honestly think that an author doesn't deserve a cut or a say or if a Hollywood studio wants to adapt his novel? If there's a commercial or creative value in using an existing property; the original creator deserves a cut, and otherwise you can just do a new IP.

The idea that the destruction of the public domain "isn't a big deal" is incredibly short-sighted. The extensions of copyright driven by Disney lobbying have had the effect of shoring up corporate IP farms at the expense of individual creators, creating the uncreative pop culture state of today where corporate-sanctioned reboots of old properties are far more common than new ideas, and made vast categories of creative works that were seminal in creating our culture of today impossible to create. As a person who makes a living on creative work, you owe it to yourself not to be ignorant about this, especially when the current copyright regime is particularly harmful to independent creators. The topic has been written about extensively, but just off the top of my head this might be a place to start.

The idea of the creator "deserving" something for their work has very little to do with what's under discussion here. Even original copyright terms covered works for about 30 years, which does plenty to protect a work at the time of its release and ensure a long period of control and economic benefit from it. What current law emphasizes isn't protecting the actual human beings who create something; it's making sure the the corporate entity that controls a work can profit on and control it for as long as possible, even if they get rid of everyone who actually created it.

And it's absolutely necessary for the creative industry to have some legal protection.

No one except you is talking about a situation where the creative industry has no legal protection.

 

[beril]

The idea that the destruction of the public domain "isn't a big deal" is incredibly short-sighted. The extensions of copyright driven by Disney lobbying have had the effect of shoring up corporate IP farms at the expense of individual creators, creating the uncreative pop culture state of today where corporate-sanctioned reboots of old properties are far more common than new ideas, and made vast categories of creative works that were seminal in creating our culture of today impossible to create. As a person who makes a living on creative work, you owe it to yourself not to be ignorant about this, especially when the current copyright regime is particularly harmful to independent creators. The topic has been written about extensively, but just off the top of my head this might be a place to start.

The idea of the creator "deserving" something for their work has very little to do with what's under discussion here. Even original copyright terms covered works for about 30 years, which does plenty to protect a work at the time of its release and ensure a long period of control and economic benefit from it. What current law emphasizes isn't protecting the actual human beings who create something; it's making sure the the corporate entity that controls a work can profit on and control it for as long as possible, even if they get rid of everyone who actually created it.



No one except you is talking about a situation where the creative industry has no legal protection.

you were pretty much arguing against the very notion of intellectual property, so yes.

And using the original US law to make a point is silly. I wouldn't want to live under 18th century laws in any other aspects of life either.

The notion that the current copyright duration is some new thing brought on by large evil corporations is flawed. The Berne convention from 1886 specified life+ 50 years as minimum, but the US was very late to sign on. Many European countries had longer than that, and it was standardised to life+ 70 in EU in 93. The famously Disney lobbied extension in 1998 was largely to make it consistent with Europe.