The difference is being the good customer and insisting on paying full price even when the vendor knows that you could have just as well gotten it cheaper/for free somewhere else and that you support their business.
I have no argument with that. I know exactly how far
I would go to personally fulfil my own entertainment needs. (fnar fnar) Which lines I would cross, which I would shy away from.
I was really into the original Sims franchise. Had/still have somewhere every expansion pack. If my Win98 machine was still running, I could continue playing it tonight. As it is, I could probably install (afresh) on one of my current machines because I still have the activation codes on the DVD sleeves/manuals. When Sims2 came out, though, for some reason I didn't get it. Perhaps for the best because the family of said nephews bought me it for Christmas. On eBay. Foreign version (Phillipines?) with instructions on how to change the localisation settings to English. I had no idea whether it was a legit pressing, in the first place, but I also had qualms about the jurisdictional legality. And, besides which, I think my poor old '98 machine was a bit underpowered, so I left it. Appreciated the present, it's nice that they bought it for me and I think they're happier not knowing that it was put away in a cupboard.
Move forward until a month or two before Christmas, last year. Local supermarket selling Sims2 (with Night Life expansion) pack for a low amount of wonga. And now I have a number of machines around the house capable of dealing with the 'power requirements' of the game. Bought it, as an impulse buy, after checking it wasn't an internet-registration version. (I tend to keep some of my computers offline, so when I work on them I'm not distractable, and various other more spurious reasons.) So now I have a fully country-legit version (even better than the present, 'cos it has a bonus pack included!) that I could install on every single machine in my house, and more besides. Except that I've only done so on one.
Played it a lot. An awful lot. Bit into my Dwarf Fortress time, as well as my Minecrafting, UFO:AIing, OOliting, etc... Plus quite a lot of non-gaming time. Because I have a machine next to the chosen gaming machine, I could multi-task, but I was still only getting about 125% of a single machine's business done. (Pretty typical ratio, I tend to micromanage so much I don't have much 'let it run idle' time on such games. Esp. DF.)
I had, of course, wondered whether to get some of the other expansion packs, so I visited a number of games shops in my area (while passing, mostly). I found that each individual expansion kit for Sims2 would actually cost me around twice as much as my original BonusPack purchase! And if I was to go to said shop with the intention of buying Sims2 (basic) + Going Out (expansion), given the lack of the bonus pack, I'd end up paying four to five times the amount I had already shelled out for exactly the same thing... This probably means that the supermarket is selling ultra-cheap (maybe a loss-leader, maybe they get a better deal, maybe they just have a better supplier (but I doubt that) than the games shops). If it's a trick by the supermarket to get me to shop there... well, I'm already shopping there, so it doesn't count. I'm more or less convinced that the specialist game shops are raking it in. (Did not check online outlets for their prices. By that time I was actually trying to wean myself off of it, so I could get other things done in my spare time!)
And, out of curiosity, I checked the usual places for downloads of the same, and found them, but after sating my curiosity I stayed on the side of the line that I've already mentioned I don't stray across. Even though I know I'd never need to crack the expansions (more than they have been) to make sure they don't give me up as illegal on the internet, because they'd never get to that stage. I didn't do what social networking (swapping and sharing family bios, etc) were available in original Sims, I'm not doing it with Sims2 and I'm not interested in it in Sims3 (a larger part of the game, I understand, as is the (if uncracked) mandatory online registration). In fact I've more or less decided that I'm not going to bother with Sims3.
(And, as the only On Topic aspect of this entire post, I could get really hooked in most games with a Sims-like interface, but DF-like in background (sort of combo Fortress and Adventure mode), and include Elite/Oolite space travel between the various procedurally generated loadsa-detail worlds...)
In the nephews' games example, though, I'm not in any way those nephews of mine's godparent (neither me nor their parents are religious enough to consider that sort of thing, in the first place), but it's very much a more strict line drawn so as to uphold (to what degree I am able) and teach the
secular form of the same moralities as might be expected under a 'god<foo>' relaitonship. Which makes it sound more high-faluting and gosh-darn weird than it really is. It's really just a more personalised form of my more general humanitarianism.
You give good advice. IME, .rars can be traps. (Even if you're
looking for 'Traps'
) If you're torrenting, check the filelists (pre .torrent download or in the preview of the client) to make sure there are ow .exes that you're not expecting. (I don't download games/etc through that, but obviously they'd have them by default...) Decide whether you're willing to waste time/bandwidth with a .rar knowing that you might list the contents when it's finished and find that it's a .exe inside. Or a further .rar and a text file that (upon examination) turns out to be instructions on how to go to a web-site to get the password (which can be a similar trap). If you're downloading actual executables and/or .isos that might or might not be intended to have such files inside, run your virus scanner over them (and still cross your fingers) as soon as you have the data exposed enough to check it (in the case of .isos, post-burn or through your .iso-mounting-to-virtual-disc program). That and taking note of the mentioned reviews (or lack thereof) and "Good/Bad/Ugly" flags in the original listing.
Personally, my torrenting tends to be freeware stuff (to give reduced load on the linux distro provider's servers, sort of thing), but I'm not saying I
haven't caught up with a TV episode of something or other that I've missed and that just happens to have been torrented by some person who must have realised my plight. A programme that I just happened to not watch when it was on but I had been perfectly entitled to see had circumstances been more opportune... But that's already on the slippery slope, and I don't say I
have done it, either. <InsertSuitableSmileyHere>
And I don't want anyone else to slide down the slope, either. My advice above applies towards what your jurisdiction considers legit. It covers more than that, obviously, but that's because, IMO, it's generally good advice. Add seasoning, according to taste.
And I need to go cold turkey regarding being Off Topic on this particular thread. I'm going to try to be resolute from now on. Game-talk only, and less of that, even. Definitely.
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Topic: Games you wish existed (Read 929212 times)