Pirate shmup-o's (split from Fast Striker)

[gray117]

For example, I wouldn't say this case is even similar to the ketsui emulation concerns I had; where some argued the passage of time and the unique offerings of the 360 port essentially made it a different product.

The funny thing is though it is You either keep the 'rules' to the letter of the law or you make up your own and if that's the case then everyone is right

The letter of the law is grey, and open to interpretation - the single largest part of that exercise being the action of the plaintiff; they essentially make the call to exercise their rights or not.

Generally, providers and consumers co-exist through through understandings, guided, but not always enforced, by the law of each territory.

As a shmup community - I would like to think that a sense of sustainability would, particularly in this case, see this as a bad/unfortunate case.

[dpful]

I think art should be free. There, I said it.
I don't care how much it costs to make- if it has any real merit, the artist will more enjoy that it's being appreciated. If it has less merit, the artist will want money for it.

[mjclark]

As a shmup community - I would like to think that a sense of sustainability would, particularly in this case, see this as a bad/unfortunate case.

But surely the shmup community, with it's diverse (and sometimes divided) opinions, is not undermined by the activities of its members which take place outside of that community but rather by members within that community singleing others out to be the subject of dubious moral judgements, thus inciting internal division and, in this case at least, increasingly humourous threads.

[Super Laydock]

one other point though...

it's one thing to make use of an already existing download/torrent as a fan of the genre, it's a whole different thing actually helping others to pirate the game.
You're actually actively helping people to get pirate copies mr mjclark, which makes you somewhat more responsible than the "let's sample this b4 I buy" downloader.

I hope you someday will suffer proper consequences of your actions mr.

[Jockel]

I think art should be free. There, I said it.
I don't care how much it costs to make- if it has any real merit, the artist will more enjoy that it's being appreciated. If it has less merit, the artist will want money for it.

Yeah go tell RHE and THE to pay the rent with their feeling of accomplishment and self-importance.
If you do this stuff for a living, you kinda depend on things costing money. Crazy concept, i know.

[mjclark]

I hope you someday will suffer proper consequences of your actions mr.

Well you can't cheat karma so I guess we've all got what's coming to us and, as before, it's good news for some and rather bad news for others

[Super Laydock]

Well you can't cheat karma so I guess we've all got what's coming to us and, as before, it's good news for some and rather bad news for others

Guess we'll meet each other in hell then!

[mjclark]

Well you can't cheat karma so I guess we've all got what's coming to us and, as before, it's good news for some and rather bad news for others

Guess we'll meet each other in hell then!

lol- I'm not sure which religion thinks you'd go to hell for uploading torrents but it'd get a good following here whatever it is

[burgerkingdiamond]

I know this started out with MjClark

All lowercase please
I looked up "self-righteous indignation from all sides" on wikipedia and there's just a link to this thread lol

please accept apologies for my subconscious capitalization of proper nouns

[gray117]

As a shmup community - I would like to think that a sense of sustainability would, particularly in this case, see this as a bad/unfortunate case.

But surely the shmup community, with it's diverse (and sometimes divided) opinions, is not undermined by the activities of its members which take place outside of that community but rather by members within that community singleing others out to be the subject of dubious moral judgements, thus inciting internal division and, in this case at least, increasingly humourous threads.

Depends if you want to talk about drm/region locking . In my opinion I also don't know how you'd say this topic was unrelated/outside to the shmup community...

Personally, I do not think it is helpful to single out individuals, and instead prefer to talk about the principles involved, in my opinion.

I accept other opinions may well differ from my own - doesn't sometimes stop me from being interested in why.

[Drachenherz]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk

[Super Laydock]

Well you can't cheat karma so I guess we've all got what's coming to us and, as before, it's good news for some and rather bad news for others

Guess we'll meet each other in hell then!

lol- I'm not sure which religion thinks you'd go to hell for uploading torrents but it'd get a good following here whatever it is

Since hell doesn't exist anyway it was just a matter of speak.

I am pretty certain that the Flying Spaghetti Monster issues a fatwa against torrent uploaders of shmups from indie devs though.

[mjclark]

please accept apologies for my subconscious capitalization of proper nouns

Apology accepted.
Please accept my apologies for inadvertantly upsetting the OP so much when he was browsing torrent sites that it's generated all this bollocks

[Super Laydock]

Please accept my apologies for inadvertantly upsetting the OP so much when he was browsing torrent sites that it's generated all this bollocks

apology denied.
Please proceed to the nearest exit.

[mjclark]

Please accept my apologies for inadvertantly upsetting the OP so much when he was browsing torrent sites that it's generated all this bollocks

apology denied.
Please proceed to the nearest exit.

Ha ha- I just googled "Flying Spaghetti Monster"

[burgerkingdiamond]

Please accept my apologies for inadvertantly upsetting the OP so much when he was browsing torrent sites that it's generated all this bollocks

apology denied.
Please proceed to the nearest exit.

Ha ha- I just googled "Flying Spaghetti Monster"

Dawkins originated that term right?

[mjclark]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster (pay especial attention to the "Pirates and Global Warming" section on that page).

we're going way off topic here but frankly I'm quite pleased about that

[KBZ]

lolz who would pay any money this flash game? They should make it $1 on XBLA.

[Super Laydock]

lolz who would pay any money this flash game? They should make it $1 on XBLA.

right on bro!
And make that $1.5 on PSN.

[dpful]

I think art should be free. There, I said it.
I don't care how much it costs to make- if it has any real merit, the artist will more enjoy that it's being appreciated. If it has less merit, the artist will want money for it.

Yeah go tell RHE and THE to pay the rent with their feeling of accomplishment and self-importance.
If you do this stuff for a living, you kinda depend on things costing money. Crazy concept, i know.

I know they have to pay their bills, not with video games, though. I've been looking forward to seeing this game and I appreciate their other games, too. I believe anyone would make a better game for love than for money. I'm sure all great games are made that way to some degree.

I don't think people should attempt to make a living with art. It's self defeating.

[dunpeal2064]

The letter of the law is grey, and open to interpretation

That makes no sense to me. As far as I have heard it put, there is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law. The letter is black and white, and the spirit of the law is grey.

This is non-important, but I wanted to say something.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

I think art should be free. There, I said it.
I don't care how much it costs to make- if it has any real merit, the artist will more enjoy that it's being appreciated. If it has less merit, the artist will want money for it.

I know they have to pay their bills, not with video games, though. I've been looking forward to seeing this game and I appreciate their other games, too. I believe anyone would make a better game for love than for money. I'm sure all great games are made that way to some degree.

I don't think people should attempt to make a living with art. It's self defeating.

There's no logical connection between the two statements
a) Most developers make games because they love them
b) They shouldn't make any money of the games they make.

I'm kinda sorry to be so confrontational, but the above suspiciously sounds like the opinions of the average teenager who has a nebulous concept of "art" which must never be tainted by things such as profit, a stance that usually quickly vanishes as soon as you go out into the real world where mum and dad don't pay for lodgings, food and christmas presents anymore. In a world exclusively populated by teenagers, you wouldn't have any of the games that exist today; the fact that you can make a profit with them keeps the entire videogame economy in existence.
Besides, making games is more like arts and crafts; anybody who has worked on code or artwork or music or anything that goes into a game knows that.
In conclusion, I totally fail to see why taking money for making something that other people have fun with (doesn't sound much like art to me, anyway) should be in any way wrong. Give the people who are good at something money so that they can keep on doing it and everybody will be happy.
/rant over/

[NAVVARR]

Seems pretty simple to me- the Dreamcast is finished- NgDev are choosing to release games for it and we all enjoy playing them- hence NGDev make some money, we get our games and everyone is happy.

- if NGDev wanted to give their game away for free they'd have just done the same thing as mjclark has- ie upload it and fileshare it.

Its a shame since I'd say the NG-Dev would be well within their rights just to walk away from the Dreamcast scene now and concentrate on other projects on more secure and possibly more lucrative systems- I'd be pretty fed up if I'd invested time and effort and money in producing and polishing a shootemup like Fast Striker only to have a wee fanny like mjclark upload it for the whole world to 'enjoy' for free.

Still as an adult, I know that there will always be people like mjclark in the world- if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else...

I just hope that this doesn't hit the sales of Fast Striker too hard and hope that NGDev continue to support the dreamcast.

[mjclark]

...they'd have just done the same thing as MJClark... a wee fanny like MJClark...

Lowercase please

Also NG:Dev are well aware of the limitations of Dreamcast copy protection and this has not deterred them from making excellent games for that platform:

Now, as we release it on DC, we will get raped by pirates to unconscious anyways

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Artist who get paid for their work create better art because they dont have to go out find a real job to pay the bills and spend more time improving in their craft and making better things for us to enjoy. If it wasnt for programmers getting paid ild be suprised if the would be even free flash games for us to play because no one would be willing to invest the time into learning to code in the first place.

Sure theres stuff like mame, emulation and all that open source free stuff but I would hazzard a guess that the large majority of them (or those who are the real talent) have at some point made a living from coding aswell

[captpain]

So did you guys solve the illicit downloading conflict in here yet? I'll bet you did.

[dpful]

I think art should be free. There, I said it.
I don't care how much it costs to make- if it has any real merit, the artist will more enjoy that it's being appreciated. If it has less merit, the artist will want money for it.

I know they have to pay their bills, not with video games, though. I've been looking forward to seeing this game and I appreciate their other games, too. I believe anyone would make a better game for love than for money. I'm sure all great games are made that way to some degree.

I don't think people should attempt to make a living with art. It's self defeating.

There's no logical connection between the two statements
a) Most developers make games because they love them
b) They shouldn't make any money of the games they make.

I'm kinda sorry to be so confrontational, but the above suspiciously sounds like the opinions of the average teenager who has a nebulous concept of "art" which must never be tainted by things such as profit, a stance that usually quickly vanishes as soon as you go out into the real world where mum and dad don't pay for lodgings, food and christmas presents anymore. In a world exclusively populated by teenagers, you wouldn't have any of the games that exist today; the fact that you can make a profit with them keeps the entire videogame economy in existence.
Besides, making games is more like arts and crafts; anybody who has worked on code or artwork or music or anything that goes into a game knows that.
In conclusion, I totally fail to see why taking money for making something that other people have fun with (doesn't sound much like art to me, anyway) should be in any way wrong. Give the people who are good at something money so that they can keep on doing it and everybody will be happy.
/rant over/

I'm not too far off the same page as you, and didn't mean to sound like a douche about it. I think they should make as much money as they can from the game. It's not a "product" they're entitled to get paid for. If that's the kind of work the wanted to do, it wouldn't have been a shmup, wouldn't have been on the dreamcast, and they'd have better jobs (probably making products for someone else). I very much admire their devotion to their art. I only spoke up because they seemed to be very proud of how their game turned out and it seemed sick to hear people getting pissed about the pirating, which was obviously always a part of their artistic equation.

Plus, I thought it was teens who thought they could make money with art, and grown ups who knew how to keep it in perspective.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

So did you guys solve the illicit downloading conflict in here yet? I'll bet you did.

Looks like it but ill say my piece anyway

What gets me about 99% of those who pirate is the sense of entitlement they feel the whole world owes them and the moral excuses they make up to justify to themselves and to others why they do so.

For example some hotshot from Epic Games trolled PC gamers over bulletstorm recently, which I must admit isnt a hard thing to do nowadays. And amidst all outrage and the gnashing of teeth were loads of PC gamers commenting that That they were going to pirate the game because they were pissed off acting as if the news of epic shafting PC gamers gave them the moral green light to go and torrent the game, like they would of done anyway.

As for myself, sure I pirate, although I hoarded like crazy the first year i connected to the internets (4 years ago). Now a days I tend to just stick to emulating old systems, roms and doujin games that havnt been localised. I tell myself that im not directly harming the industry but that isnt totally true as since ive been spending so much time playing free stuff when I could be playing games that cost money. Its because of this that Ill still continue to buy other mainstream and some indie games even though ill probably never get the time to play half of them.

The only part of pirating that I think is OK and even necessary is for demoing and compatabity testing purposes on the PC as since so many developers and publishers cant be bother providing PC gamers with a demo so gamers can judge if the game is good or even works on their PC. With this and other things PC gamers have to put with (like DRM, no patch releases or tech support) Its kind of understanderble that their feathers are abit ruffled but doesnt give anyone the right to pirate and play the game from start to finish

BTW does anyone know if the real version of Fast Striker will play on a PC through an emulator like NullDC? I hant got a DC and have no intention of getting one but the game looks quite like Mars Matrix which I love

[louisg]

When you're talking about something that's as significant a time investment as a video game, there is nothing wrong with charging for it. I write music, and give it away for free, but there is one important difference: It only takes me a few hours to finish a song, I don't have to debug it like you have to for games, I use cheap gear, and I don't have to go out and hire additional people to work on it. If I had it professionally mastered, would I want to give it out for free? No way. If I had to pay for CDs, which is typically a good $1k investment given minimum order sizes, would I just give those out? Of course not.

Now, this is just music. To write a game that has good coding, good music, good art, and good design, you are usually talking about at least two people-- ideally more-- investing huge amounts of hours. This is a sacrifice: this is spending long hours with this stuff instead of going out to bars with friends, or spending time with girlfriends/wives.

So, can you make good art and make it freely available? Of course! But can you make good art that also requires significant time and money investments and still give it away? Possible, but unlikely.

[Tylerxuppercut]

LOL man why is everyone so butthurt about it...all I hear is

RABLE RABLE RABLE RABLE RABLE RABLE