You call that an argument?

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Barchan


Crimes are defined by laws created by the state. So long as the state exempts itself from its laws, it's not a crime.

But, really, I was only making a bit of a tongue-in-cheek remark. A "modest proposal", if you will. Still, there's something to be said for the deterrent power of draconian punishments. There's a lot less shoplifting in countries where doing so will cost you a hand. Also, there are very, very few repeat offenders. Software piracy, at least on an individual level, is fairly widespread because there’s little risk of any adverse consequences. Perhaps if there were greater consequences for using illegal pirated software, fewer people would do so.

Hehe I agree with your statement about the cutting off of a hand for shoplifting, it does indeed deter the crime. But it's almost like dropping a nuke on an ant colony to get rid of a pest problem. Sure, it'll work, but isn't it overkill? I do not want the govt. to be stepping in at all to "people-watch". If the gaming industry is so concerned about theft (of which I am absolutely opposed, ergo I never DL warez), then let them deal with it.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by yin26
I routinely borrow (yes, really) or download a game to evaluate it. If it's as buggy and incomplete as Civ3 was and continues to be, I give back / delete the game and wait or forget the title entirely. In the case of Civ3, however, I think that by Gold Edition time, there might be a game worth $30.

And I have no qualms using Warez to evaluate a title ... given the current state of release and maybe patch.

Maybe you do just borrow it, or maybe you don't. I have no clue, only you do. But I can guarantee that 99.9% of people that DL warez claim the same thing, and they are in all actuality stealing it and continually playing it. In their minds they justify it by saying the company charges too much, or made a buggy product, or whatever. Again, I'm not pointing fingers at you, but at the majority of ppl out there. I think ppl whine to much about a game not being this or that. As Denis Leary put it, "Life sux. Get a f***ing helmet."

But, I do like flame wars too, just like gs said.

[gsmoove23]

Dennis Leary could say the same thing to the software companies upset about warez.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
Dennis Leary could say the same thing to the software companies upset about warez.

Hehe but you and I both know he wouldn't. Almost all of his jokes are aimed at individual whiners.

[Zero]

Originally posted by yin26
I routinely borrow (yes, really) or download a game to evaluate it. If it's as buggy and incomplete as Civ3 was and continues to be, I give back / delete the game and wait or forget the title entirely. In the case of Civ3, however, I think that by Gold Edition time, there might be a game worth $30.

And I have no qualms using Warez to evaluate a title ... given the current state of release and maybe patch.

oh come on, dont lie now, u mean u never keep warez games?

Its simple economics, a game (in general not talking to civ3xpack) I wouldnt pay for $30 no matter what, whether warez version existed or not, i will not buy. However when available for free, I might consider downloading it (now whther its worth downloading time... like some games i have tried to get.. )

[Jerk]

Originally posted by Zurai
Except there are no pages missing from PTW. There's a number of typos, yes, but there are no missing pages. That's what I'm trying to get across - all a bug is, 95% of the time, is a typo or grammatical error.

The entire book comparison doesn't work. Have you ever read a book in which a typo or spelling error that occurs on page five forces you to go back to page one and start over. Has a spelling error ever kept you from reading the rest of the book? The cause of the bugs in PTW may be spelling errors but the consequences of those errors are much more serious than that of a book.

I see several people putting the blame on Infogrames for forcing a hurried release. While deadlines often result in bugs being in the release it is not entirely the publishers fault. Firaxis deserves some of blame (if not most) for missing the deadline in the first place. They agreed to have the game ready by a certain date and they failed. Maybe they should have devoted more resources to the project. Maybe they shouldn't have agreed to a deadline they wouldn't be able to meet (for the second time now cause Civ3 was originally supposed to have multiplayer). Maybe they should have just said "It isn't ready yet" and faced the consequences (fine, lawsuit, whatever) for failing to meet the deadline. Unless Infogrames pushed up the release date, Firaxis is to blame.

[Zero]

Agreed, I dont care about any other rants (actually i do but lets simplify) but this topic REALLY bugs me. "Oh yeah lets slash alot of stuff we have talked about to fans since we didnt really write a formal note of promise and instead release it on the next expansion which wont eventually be 100% of what we promised anyway." That kind of attitude seems to be prevalent in gaming industry. Playing Diablo II because of this fact ruined it.

Now I dont need someone pointing out specifics on how it could/couln't legally be false advertising there, but it certainly feels personally to me to be false advertising. A lot of people do get hyped up because of all the promise of feature that they talk about early on in the production. Oh well I guess the very nature of advertising is kinda iffy....

I guess buyer do have to be aware, that is true. You cant blame anyone else for buying a car that is falling apart to break down as soon as you buy it. But there should be a certain point of protection for consumer against false advertising and vendors hiding facts form buyers. If car looked great and engine was faulty, and vendor promised a working car, isnt there a problem w/ that?

It doesnt help that these days game software retailers like EB and Bestbuy wont accept open box as cash return. Now there is absolutely good reasoning behind it (people who clonecd) and I wont suggest changing that policy, but it does add a lil dilemma for consumers and most games dont really come with publicly available demo to try out.

[Zurai]

Originally posted by Jerk


The entire book comparison doesn't work. Have you ever read a book in which a typo or spelling error that occurs on page five forces you to go back to page one and start over. Has a spelling error ever kept you from reading the rest of the book? The cause of the bugs in PTW may be spelling errors but the consequences of those errors are much more serious than that of a book.

Um, duh. That's why I was saying that any comparison to any other kind of purchase is idiotic. You *can't* compare software to anything else you buy. That's the same thing as comparing a 4-course meal to a romance novel. Apples and whales. Two entirely different entities that have no real similarities other than they're organic. Same thing with books and code - two entirely seperate entities that have no real similarities other than they're made with letters and punctuation.

Maybe they should have just said "It isn't ready yet" and faced the consequences (fine, lawsuit, whatever) for failing to meet the deadline. Unless Infogrames pushed up the release date, Firaxis is to blame.

Are you an idiot or what? So you're saying that Sid Meier and all of the Firaxis team should have chosen to be arrested/fined VERY large amounts of money rather than hand over the code that *belongs to Infogrames*? Infogrames owns every line, bracket, and semicolon of PTW, and have since the contract was signed. The developers have no legal rights to the code and have no legal right to continue working on the code without permission of Infogrames. Once Infogrames says "your Gold Master is due next Monday", whatever you have next Monday is what you HAVE to give them. There's no (legal) choice in the matter whatsoever. The publishing companies have a stranglehold on game development. Their word is law to developers. They can be as unreasonable as they like and the devs are forced to bow to their wishes.

Do you really honestly think that there are so many bad coders in a company as prestigious as Firaxis, owned by a living legend in the game development circle? Any coder that wasn't worth his weight would never have been hired in the first place.

People seem to be laboring under some heavy misconceptions. You can't just run a spellcheck on code. There is no easy way to catch bugs. There is no way to fix every bug. There's no way to even find every bug in a normal development cycle. Especially when you're dealing with multiplayer bugs, where there has to be many, many people all using the same code at the same time at the same place. *Bugs are a fact of life.*

Again, that doesn't excuse game-stopping bugs, but the only game-stopping bugs I've heard of with PTW have been related to the Gamespy end of things. We all love to hate Gamespy, so why is that a surprise? Singleplayer by all accounts is drastically improved and as bugfree as could possibly be hoped for, and once you actually get into a multiplayer game with people with low ping that's supposedly mostly bugfree as well.

[Jerk]

Originally posted by Zurai
Are you an idiot or what? So you're saying that Sid Meier and all of the Firaxis team should have chosen to be arrested/fined VERY large amounts of money rather than hand over the code that *belongs to Infogrames*? Infogrames owns every line, bracket, and semicolon of PTW, and have since the contract was signed. The developers have no legal rights to the code and have no legal right to continue working on the code without permission of Infogrames. Once Infogrames says "your Gold Master is due next Monday", whatever you have next Monday is what you HAVE to give them. There's no (legal) choice in the matter whatsoever. The publishing companies have a stranglehold on game development. Their word is law to developers. They can be as unreasonable as they like and the devs are forced to bow to their wishes

I highly doubt Infogrames would have had Firaxis sent to JAIL for failing to meet a deadline. That would only further delay the product getting to the stores because a whole new team would have to familiarize themselves with all the code. Should Firaxis suffer a financial penalty for failing to produce? Absolutely. I can see why they wouldn't choose to though. I mean, why should they pay for their own shortcomings when they can just ship it on time and let the consumers pay (especially when Infogrames will be the one to get blamed).

I don't see how Infogrames wanting the game they paid for on time makes them the bad guys. Nobody held a gun to Firaxis and forced them to sign the dotted line. Infogrames could have delayed but why should they be the ones to suffer financially when it was Firaxis that did not deliver.
Besides, they were probably told by Firaxis that the game was OK to go (rather then admit that they didnt finish on time).

Do I think they will make good and patch it correctly? Yes. I have not returned it for this reason. I don't expect that the games I purchase are bugfree. I do expect that I can at least play them. I could care less about the new races or new units. I wouldn't have bought it had there been no multiplayer. I am not saying we should go lynch Firaxis but simply saying that the blame should be assigned to them and not Infogrames.

I am having issues with both LAN and internet games (Horrible lag and excessive restarts due to desynchs) so it's not just a Gamespy issue.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by Jerk

I highly doubt Infogrames would have had Firaxis sent to JAIL for failing to meet a deadline. That would only further delay the product getting to the stores because a whole new team would have to familiarize themselves with all the code.

This is true. What they could do (and may very well have done) is to take one of the regular releases that Firaxis has been sending them and sent it off to distribution against Firaxis wishes. It is their software after all.

The true story will probably never be known.

Like you, I have faith that Firaxis will make it work out in the end.