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[jim-jam bongs]

Anyway, instead of focusing on saving a game from being deleted from history by pirating the game - what about focusing on saving a developer from closing down by buying the game?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I spent a fuck tonne more money "saving a developer" over the last few years than most people here did, so you can take your condescending attitude and stick it as far up your arse as you can manage, thanks.

 

[Fraeon]

I honestly don't think the developer care that their game gets pirated 5 or so years after it's release. Nobody is buying it new at that point anyway. The problem is that games are being pirated on day 1.

Anyway, instead of focusing on saving a game from being deleted from history by pirating the game - what about focusing on saving a developer from closing down by buying the game?

There are plenty of existing developers that pretty much have their games lost in time. A more recent example is a game like Outrun Online Arcade, which is impossible to get now thanks to licensing problems.

 

[phisheep]

is your argument seriously "who gives a shit about culture anyway, fuck culture"

I think people's lives are definitely worse off in aggregate for not having the complete works of Heraclitus, the full text of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the complete cut of Metropolis (at least until it was recently restored!), the full run of the first ten series of Doctor Who. Knock out the early years of film or the Baroque period of music or impressionist painting and you leave a world where the expression of one of humanity's unique talents is immeasurably lessened.

And all for... what? So a content aggregate corporation can make a few extra bucks of of it in the present? What an awful philosophy.

More or less, yes. It's not so much 'fuck culture' as 'in 100 years time who's going to care and why should they'.

Sure, I'm kind of privileged in having watched Doctor Who on first run right from the beginning - in the same way as Melissa may have been priviliged to watch the original performances of Mnester - but in the long run the cultural significance of both is probably pretty close to zero. I don't buy the line that we're missing anything of significance in Heraclitus or Buxtehude or anyone else really. The more that's missing the more we value what we have left.

 

[AzureNightmare]

More or less, yes. It's not so much 'fuck culture' as 'in 100 years time who's going to care and why should they'.

Sure, I'm kind of privileged in having watched Doctor Who on first run right from the beginning - in the same way as Melissa may have been priviliged to watch the original performances of Mnester - but in the long run the cultural significance of both is probably pretty close to zero. I don't buy the line that we're missing anything of significance in Heraclitus or Buxtehude or anyone else really. The more that's missing the more we value what we have left.

Have you really even seriously given your arguments even a modicum of thought, or do you just post whatever sounds good at the moment?

 

[Dead Man]

More or less, yes. It's not so much 'fuck culture' as 'in 100 years time who's going to care and why should they'.

Sure, I'm kind of privileged in having watched Doctor Who on first run right from the beginning - in the same way as Melissa may have been priviliged to watch the original performances of Mnester - but in the long run the cultural significance of both is probably pretty close to zero. I don't buy the line that we're missing anything of significance in Heraclitus or Buxtehude or anyone else really. The more that's missing the more we value what we have left.

I know you are a smart guy, I follow you vs Tim Langdell. I don't get how you can think a hitorical record of culture is without value.

 

[shuri]

Emulation is amateur hour when it comes to preservation.

The frame timing is never right, the colors and the sounds are never 100%; lots of effects are not rendered the same (scaling on the neogeo is way more impressive on the real hardware ). 'piracy' can be useful in certain situations; for exemple the whole CPS2 suicide battery stuff; or people with Midway hardware that are replacing the original hard drives with flash drives containing the original data, this way Killer Instinct boards wont be thrown away once the hdd dies. They also ensure that they will live on forever.

Using emulators to preserve history is laughable, its like using 128kps rips to archive audio. They still can't get the NES's sound chip right after nearly 20 years of emulation..

There are arcade collectors out there who maintain pcbs that are over 30 years old working perfectly with 'new' parts that are far better than the original, and they maintain the original feel. And those guys have no real budget; I can only imagine that they could do with the financial backing of a university.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

I kind of see where phisheep is coming from, despite enthusiastically disagreeing with him. I guess I just don't think that any historical archive is worthless, regardless of the subject-matter. Cultural archives are especially important since they relate to how humans experience history, and help to give events context which can't be gained by simply describing facts.

 

[Fredrik]

There are plenty of existing developers that pretty much have their games lost in time. A more recent example is a game like Outrun Online Arcade, which is impossible to get now thanks to licensing problems.

I get what you're saying, but I'm sure there are plenty of examples of closed developer studios too or cancelled sequels etc because of piracy. If people could wait a while before pirating then it wouldn't matter as much I guess, but as it is today I could never defend it, imo it's all bad right now.

 

[AzureNightmare]

I get what you're saying, but I'm sure there are plenty of examples of closed developer studios too or cancelled sequels etc because of piracy. If people could wait a while before pirating then it wouldn't matter as much I guess, but as it is today I could never defend it, imo it's all bad right now.

A million different economic variables can be attributed to the demise of any one of those developers and would make way more sense than blaming it on piracy each and every time.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

There isn't a single studio in the history of gaming which has closed down as a result of piracy.

Not one.

Any studio which closes down and claims it's because of piracy is actually saying they're closing down because they didn't sell enough games, just like any other studio. Of course, it's easier to convince yourself and other people that the reason you didn't sell enough games is because of those nasty pirates than accept that maybe you just didn't make a very good game.

My attitude on piracy is that companies need to accept it as an unfortunate reality of doing business in the digital-age and then move on. If you make your product compelling, price it fairly and make it widely available you will have a better chance of defeating piracy (i.e. making it irrelevant to your bottom line) than using any other technique.

 

[inky]

I kind of see where phisheep is coming from, despite enthusiastically disagreeing with him. I guess I just don't think that any historical archive is worthless, regardless of the subject-matter. Cultural archives are especially important since they relate to how humans experience history, and help to give events context which can't be gained by simply describing facts.

I don't honestly, because he seems to be a pretty smart dude =/ It's a shame that a lot of people don't see the value of preservation other than some sort of personal enlightenment or academic stubbornness (ignoring the topic at hand). I guess that in the kind of very pragmatic society we live in today the gross of the population find very little use for that kind of stuff.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

I don't honestly, because he seems to be a pretty smart dude =/ It's a shame that a lot of people don't see the value of preservation other than some sort of personal enlightenment or academic stubbornness (ignoring the topic at hand). I guess that in the kind of very pragmatic society we live in today the gross of the population find very little use for that kind of stuff.

Well the thing is, despite the internet making "crowd-sourcing" a popular model for any type of fact or opinion gathering, there is still a place for authoritative voices in historical discourse. You have to wonder if it's really appropriate to ascribe equal significance to the historical record of the Imagine: Somethingz series as you might to Mark Twain, and some would argue that refusing to discard the detritus of cultural history is tacitly doing precisely that.

Personally however, I do believe that either everything needs to be preserved or nothing does. History has shown that the significance of some events and works hasn't become apparent until many decades after they've been forgotten by the general public, so even just from that perspective I think it's important to retain everything. In this day and age there's no reason not to either, since preservation doesn't require physical archiving.

 

[Fredrik]

A million different economic variables can be attributed to the demise of any one of those developers and would make way more sense than blaming it on piracy each and every time.

You can't blame it on piracy alone of course, but I'm sure there are many occasions where piracy is one of the reasons, which makes it bad enough for me to never defend it. But like I said, if people doing this would wait a while before releasing the games on the net then it probably won't matter much, it's the release day piracy that is so hurtful, waiting just a few months would probably make a huge difference.

 

[kinoki]

More or less, yes. It's not so much 'fuck culture' as 'in 100 years time who's going to care and why should they'.

Sure, I'm kind of privileged in having watched Doctor Who on first run right from the beginning - in the same way as Melissa may have been priviliged to watch the original performances of Mnester - but in the long run the cultural significance of both is probably pretty close to zero. I don't buy the line that we're missing anything of significance in Heraclitus or Buxtehude or anyone else really. The more that's missing the more we value what we have left.

We don't really decide what is important. You could argue that if life had any meaning it would be to preserve what efforts it's made. We also don't get to decide what should be preserved. It's like judging the merits of movies based on who has won the oscar for best picture. We can't assign arbitrary values to what we think is culture of importance and what isn't. We just have to preserve.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

It's odd how we have this love/hate relationship with history as human beings. We have sayings like "those who ignore the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them", but then we also like to make a big deal out of "seeking closure" and "moving on". We build museums and libraries because we believe that our collective history is worth preserving, but we look down on people who hold on to the memories of their past and call them hoarders.

 

[Dead Man]

It's odd how we have this love/hate relationship with history as human beings. We have sayings like "those who ignore the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them", but then we also like to make a big deal out of "seeking closure" and "moving on". We build museums and libraries because we believe that our collective history is worth preserving, but we look down on people who hold on to the memories of their past and call them hoarders.

I think it is a case of wanting to learn the lesson, but once we have we don't want to be reminded of our mistakes.

 

[DCharlie]

'piracy' can be useful in certain situations

ROMs/Rom images can be used for other things besides just whacking them in an emulator.

I'm sure you are aware of it , but for others you can use ROM images to repair arcade boards that you own that have badrom issues.

And of course you can fairly easily play ROMs on actual native hardware.

I'm all for preservation of history of actual games. For me the art work , box art and all the advertising and extra trinkets that go with it are all part of gaming history. As we more and more rush towards digital only, i feel we are losing out on what other things the physical product brings to the table. Some of the boxed games in mint condition really are a sight to behold.

IF i ever had a house huge enough i'd love to have a go at creating a proper "museum" set up - alas, after the earthquake, my desire to do something like that was tempered and as a whole slew of software ended up on the floor i decided it was probably best to let someone else play these games rather than me having them available just to look at and admire.

 

[Card Boy]

I see no reason why someone shouldn't be allowed to download an obscure game that has been out of print for 15 years and isn't available on any DD service.

If you can't buy it legally, there's no room to complain when people download it.

TotalBiscuit weighed in on this issue last week (starts at 1.11)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHC3...xt=C3f03042UDOEgsToPDskIiGWtK57J7mwD4xqECo6F8

He basically agrees with your point. If its not available on a DD service or at retail, then its free to download.

 

[Palom]

We don't really decide what is important. You could argue that if life had any meaning it would be to preserve what efforts it's made. We also don't get to decide what should be preserved. It's like judging the merits of movies based on who has won the oscar for best picture. We can't assign arbitrary values to what we think is culture of importance and what isn't. We just have to preserve.

This is what I believe, too. I was watching some program on television last night where they destroyed a 19th century piece of art just to reuse the canvas as a demonstration of how to forge a painting. Regardless of the fact that it wasn't that good or from a renowned artist, I just couldn't believe they would do that.

The biggest problem I have with video gaming media is that electronics simply aren't built to last. I have thousands of dollars of games and systems in my collection. There is no question of piracy here: I own these 100% legitimately. Unfortunately, whether or not I will be able to actually play them 10, 20, or 30 years from now is questionable.

 

[phisheep]

I know you are a smart guy, I follow you vs Tim Langdell. I don't get how you can think a hitorical record of culture is without value.

Have you really even seriously given your arguments even a modicum of thought, or do you just post whatever sounds good at the moment?

I kind of see where phisheep is coming from, despite enthusiastically disagreeing with him. I guess I just don't think that any historical archive is worthless, regardless of the subject-matter. Cultural archives are especially important since they relate to how humans experience history, and help to give events context which can't be gained by simply describing facts.

Oh dear, seem to have struck a nerve here. Maybe I was a touch too laconic ...

Well the thing is, despite the internet making "crowd-sourcing" a popular model for any type of fact or opinion gathering, there is still a place for authoritative voices in historical discourse. You have to wonder if it's really appropriate to ascribe equal significance to the historical record of the Imagine: Somethingz series as you might to Mark Twain, and some would argue that refusing to discard the detritus of cultural history is tacitly doing precisely that.

Personally however, I do believe that either everything needs to be preserved or nothing does. History has shown that the significance of some events and works hasn't become apparent until many decades after they've been forgotten by the general public, so even just from that perspective I think it's important to retain everything. In this day and age there's no reason not to either, since preservation doesn't require physical archiving.

... but in the end Jim-Jam nailed what I was getting at (even though he may not agree with me).

I'm kind of coming at this from an old man's viewpoint and trying to understand what of value we've lost track of in mine and my grandfather's lifetimes. And what I think is that (nearly) everything we've tried to deliberately archive has got it wrong. Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams collected a load of songs but nearly nothing of their social context; the Opies gathered a whole load of playground stuff, much of which I recognise from their descriptions but what I don't see (and what was important at the time) was the elaborate social rituals wrapped around them; the Bledington Morris lives on only in a few collected dances but we know nearly nothing of how the Morris interacted with the village (which is interesting, I've talked to a few elderly residents about it); the parlour games of my youth before televisions were common that grew out of the late Victorian era are recorded in rulebooks and the odd passing reference in novels but again the social context, the warmth, is missing. Impromptu/spontaneous harmony singing in Wales has a long and valuable pedigree but apart from Giraldus Cambriensis nobody seems to have noticed until it died out. The Mass Observation movement is probably the closest we came to establishing a real feel for social history.

When it comes to digital archives though, I kind of suspect that an archive of GAF would be a whole load more valuable than any amount of actual games. There's very limited value in seeing or playing the games without the social and technical context wrapped around them. (Source code might be interesting in terms of development of techniques, but then a whole lot of that has been lost. I for one would be interested in tracing programming technique through 1960s and 70s sources, but they are mostly proprietary and long gone).

But all that stuff that has gone missing doesn't really affect us one bit. Not really. Not in any way other than that it affected our parents and grandparents and the way we grew up.

We shouldn't think now that our digital output will mean any more to future generations than the lost music of Rome does to us now.

That said, I'm kind of in favour of some sort of digital copyright library - if only so we can stop arguing about it!

 

[Agent X]

Sorry, but tell me how someone other than the ROM modders would preserve something like a cartridge based game of which the source code was lost.

What does source code have to do with anything? Do you think Nintendo needs source code for their Virtual Console games? No, they just throw the ROM up and call it a day, which is why so few games get changes, and when a game does get a change, it's very small (they are "hacking" the ROM). And XBLA versions of classics are recreated from scratch, no source code used at all (which is why they are often not 100% accurate, like Frogger having different music).

(Quoted the above two posts together because Dreamwriter was responding to Des0lar.)

I believe it is important to have both the source code and ROM images archived. The developer and/or publisher should maintain copies of the programmers' source code to aid in the creation of future conversions and emulations, but the resulting ROM images should also be preserved. In years past, some developers have discarded their source code, but I believe (and hope) that modern developers are much more careful to retain the source code.

One reason why developers should archive their source code is if you want to do a conversion or a port from one system to another. Sometimes the port is being done by a different entity than the original author, and it's easier to understand what's going on and what the programmer(s) intended if this is written in a high-level language (or at least assembler with comments). If the source code is unavailable, then the task becomes much more challenging--sometimes incredibly difficult or nearly impossible.

Without the source code, programmers who ever want to offer modernized versions of old games have to do at least one of the following:

1. Emulate the original game's target hardware, and run a copy of the ROM image on that emulator.

2. Disassemble the game and analyze the program to the best of your ability.

3. Rewrite the game from scratch, and try your best to replicate the level design, movement routines, patterns, physics, AI, etc. from your knowledge of previously playing the game.

#1 is obviously what you do for something like Virtual Console or some classic game compilations, where the intent is to replicate the original game as closely as possible with no alterations. (BTW, Dreamwriter, there have been some emulations on XBLA/PSN as well.) #2 is painstaking, but it has been done before, and a skilled programmer can sometimes get really good results. #3 is usually done when #1 and #2 are not viable options. For "enhanced" ports or emulations, they may use multiple approaches.

This is why people are lamenting the loss of the source code for Panzer Dragoon Saga--it might never exist in an "enhanced" form that's noticeably improved beyond the technical level of the original Saturn game. This is also why the developer that ported R-Type III to Game Boy Advance had such a difficult time doing the conversion.

Having the ROM images at least ensures that the games would at least still survive in some form for future generations, but developers retaining their own source code could also provide a great benefit to future generations of game development.

No university or library is going to have the expertise, time, or budget to circumvent the DRM on the original media or code a near-perfect emulator for old hardware.

Pirates do all of this for free in their own time, and this facilitates archiving and preservation. They don't do it for those reasons but it's a beneficial side-effect of piracy. That's the whole point of the OP.

Yes, that's true. I don't think very many people are advocating piracy (I'm certainly not), but a few extreme cases (such as the one I mentioned earlier) the work already done by pirates can be reappropriated by the original IP owner for a good purpose. Still, I would prefer that companies do their best to archive their own ROM images, since occasionally the pirated copies may have slight alterations that are not easily detectable. Some of these modifications could have a detrimental effect on the purity of the game, such as altered in-game text or bugs that crash the game.

 

[TheExplodingHead]

From a simple philosophical and practical angle, software piracy (of all kinds) benefits far more people than it hurts, regardless of self-interest related investments...it serves a greater good/higher benefit to a larger pool of people. And considering the state of particularly the games industry in fiscal revenue it certainly isn't killing or severely limiting profitability. In essence the people who are proactively anti-pirate are concerned about the potential escalation rather than the current status quo and reality of filesharing.

 

[Tain]

Using emulators to preserve history is laughable, its like using 128kps rips to archive audio.

Once a game is dumped perfectly, emulation can always improve. It's nothing at all like using 128kps rips to archive audio. Jesus.

 

[TheExplodingHead]

Once a game is dumped perfectly, emulation can always improve. It's nothing at all like using 128kps rips to archive audio. Jesus.

Not to mention that once a piece of hardware is "legacy" and exorbitantly priced, emulation in the longterm is the most practical alternative. It's not always about preserving a perfect FLAC rip, it's also about just offering something people can readily and inexpensively use. For the least amount of bandwidth, convenience and annoyance, which is also a longterm concern especially for older games.

And let's not forget about archival of extremely rare editions and formats as well, also differing regions.

 

[faceless007]

But all that stuff that has gone missing doesn't really affect us one bit. Not really. Not in any way other than that it affected our parents and grandparents and the way we grew up.

We shouldn't think now that our digital output will mean any more to future generations than the lost music of Rome does to us now.

You're framing the issue very conveniently. It's a tautology to say that all the things that have been lost over time don't affect us because we don't know how things would be different if they had survived. Unless you have access to the parallel universes in which the library of Alexandria didn't burn down, of course the world you're living in seems fine and unaffected by it. Maybe if it hadn't our knowledge of history and the world would be vastly different today. Or maybe it would be exactly the same. But you have absolutely no basis on which to say so, and in the meantime we should err on the side of preserving more information, not less. What possible reason could there be to take a reductionist or essentialist approach to history?

It's also disingenuous to portray the issue as what "most people" care about. Most people don't care about anything that happened more than 10 years ago, but so what? The information should be kept for those historians and those who do care. As a film fan I'm glad we still have the works of Melies and the Lumiere brothers because I'm interested in studying the subject. They won't be lighting up the box office any time soon, but so what? Should we just ignore everything that went into shaping and forming the media we have today?

 

[Agent X]

Using emulators to preserve history is laughable, its like using 128kps rips to archive audio. They still can't get the NES's sound chip right after nearly 20 years of emulation..

The purpose of the emulator alone isn't to "preserve history". The ROM dumping (and hopefully also source code retention) is preserving history. The emulator is merely the vehicle that is used to deliver that little bit of history to today's consumer.

As Tain said, the quality of emulation is constantly improving. To use your analogy of audio rips, it would be more like someone saying that arcade games like Pac-Man, Joust, or Donkey Kong are faithfully preserved because Atari 2600 or NES conversions of those games exist. Emulation means that someone could experience highly accurate renditions of those games (or even the Atari 2600 or NES versions if they so desire) without having to use the original hardware for which those programs were originally designed.

 

[AzureNightmare]

Using emulators to preserve history is laughable, its like using 128kps rips to archive audio. They still can't get the NES's sound chip right after nearly 20 years of emulation..

It seems that once again the point of emulation in the scheme of software preservation is way, way over your head. I don't know if you're just ignorant of its role, or if you're just that damn petty.

 

[Borman]

Preservation has to do with preserving the software itself. When a ROM is backed up, it is more safe then it will ever be. Emulation is just a means of playing it. Don't use emulators that are hacked together if you want accuracy. Something like BSNES is great, aiming for accuracy, but at the cost of processor speed, which most people don't care about. But anyway, if the ROM is backed up, it can still be played on real hardware, which is usually fixable for a period of time. A game is not fixable though. Thus, ROMs online.