orcishgamer: If you want to really burn your noggin, would most old school gamers have become gamers at all if we'd not been able to pirate? Would we have had enough exposure to fall in love with it, would the same people have gone into the industry?
Yes, young people tend to be pirates, older people with incomes tend to pay to avoid wasting time. It's sort of the natural cycle of things. You may have not paid for your first car or paid very little, and it was a fucking beater. Now some of you buy nice, new cars.
Same with music, books, movies, fancy kitchen appliances, etc.
Doesn't burn my noggin at all - the concept that many active gamers today are where they are because they had so much exposure to games is a given for me. Almost everyone I know did it. Everyone I know that didn't do it isn't really interested in games today.
By the way: I'm 30 years old and I'm still driving a fucking wreck of a car! :) But then, my computers are more important to me than my car (that's not a case of twisted priorities - I work from home, so my work computer is literally more important than my car for work!)
kalirion: Simon the Sorcerer 1 (though I'd only played the "abandonware" version for about an hour many years before)
Funnily enough, Simon the Sorceror is one of the few titles to have never been abandonware in any sense of the word. AdventureSoft have repeatedly milked the franchise and games over the years and they've always been available in some form of another.
But then, it's possible that it wasn't available where you were after its initial run.
Fenixp: Yea like System Shock, grabbed it on release! I screamed: "GOG, TAKE MY MONEY!"
Yeah, I'm tempted to just get a ripped copy of System Shock, as I'm finally losing all faith that this problem will ever get solved. If GOG/EA want my money for it, they're welcome to have it, but first they've got to take it.
PandaLiang: Should I tell you I'm actually trying buy every game I privated before? Oh, I've told you already.......
I think I've already done that actually. I now own a legal copy of pretty much every game I ever pirated. Either said game has since been rereleased on Steam or GOG, I've found a used copy somewhere in a secondhand shop, car boot sale or eBay, or the games have been legally released as freeware.
