Stance on emulation?

[Touchfuzzy]

Another benefit of emulators is prosperity.  In another hundred years, Nintendo Cartridges will probably no longer physically be around, and if they are, they most likely will not work.  How would you feel if you put your heart and soul into a game that was beloved by the community and you release it for free for all, but found out that every copy of the game was gone in a few years?  There are a LOT of older games like this.  Games that were made back in the 80's and 90's were probably stored on Floppy Disks that have gone bad and can no longer be read.  The source code for these games has been completely lost.  The compiled code that ended up on many cartridges, forturnately, are still in existence.  SEGA has had tremendously bad luck with their source code, even from the 16 bit era.  Much of the actual source code has been lost or damaged.=

One of my things with emulators is that I think its important to understand the roots of gaming, and there are just so many brilliant games that you can't experience now without either paying ridiculous sums of money to collector's markets or emulation.

I'm 99% sure that the creator of Robotrek is happy that people out there can still play his game. Would he be happier if it was on Virtual Console and he still made a bit of money off it, yeah, probably. But at the moment, the game is in one of those situations where its either

A. Be lost to time

B. Be experienced through emulation.

I know which I would prefer as a developer.

 

[Ralpf]

I'm fine with it if there is no way to buy it from the publisher/developer, as in it is out of print or not sold in the US (which is getting rarer for new games).

Anything else I don't like, with the exception of personal backup, of course.

 

[Clord]

Considering even Double Fine uses emulated footage on their channel for their "Devs Play" series, I think that developers don't generally mind.

 

[Heretic86]

I'm fine with it if there is no way to buy it from the publisher/developer, as in it is out of print or not sold in the US (which is getting rarer for new games).

Anything else I don't like, with the exception of personal backup, of course.

Very true, Copyrights do expire.  Authors also die as everyone dies.  When we lose a game to the pages of history, we lose that history.  Super Mario Bros has established itself as having very firm roots in video game history, while the games we create barely scratch the surface.  None the less, they are just as much a part of gaming history as Super Mario.

+Like

 

[hian]

Always played a lot of games on emulators - firstly because I grew up in the EU where a lot of games never got released back in the days when all games were separated by zones.

There was a lot of games I wanted to play, that I never got to play, and while I knew it was legally questionable I didn't really care because the producers and distributors obviously didn't see me as a potential customer to begin with.

I would rather imagine that the makers of games like Chrono Cross would prefer to have a fan who later bought their game when it was made commercially available because he played the original, than not have one due to silly happenstance.

This is even more for true for dated Jrpgs (which is my favorite genre by far) on Snes, even if it's true even for the PSX and the PS2 as well.

There are(were) so many great classic titles for old consoles (although the industry is at last getting better at redistribution) that I wouldn't have gotten to play if it wasn't for emulation which has prompted me to invest in both hardware and software on later dates.

One thing I have always lamented is the way the industry failed to use emulation to their own benefit, both for (re)distribution and and production of video-games.

If companies like Sony and Nintendo had made their own emulators for PC and distributed games themselves, they could have made a lot of money.

If they had prioritized the technology once it first started happening, they wouldn't have had to suffer the backlash due to lack of backwards-compatibility on many of their recent consoles, since emulation software usually don't take up much space, and could have been implemented with each new console-generation without having to rely on large hardware changes to enable the reading of outdated disk-formats etc.

That would have been the ideal solution to the PS2 to PS3 transition, especially considering that the PS3 came with a hard-drive capable of storing PS2 rom-size data.

If they had thought of that early on, they would probably have been able to work out the rights with most of the PS2 devs and distributors as PS2 was still partly relevant prior to the PS3 release. Now, on the other hand, you have loads of PS2 titles that will never see a re-release, because

1.) too much time has passed and it's become almost impossible to get together all the original and relevant parties in terms of rights for distribution meaning that a re-release would be contractually impossible, and

2.) many of those titles are now so dated and irrelevant that the costs involved in re-releasing the game digitally can't be justified in terms of prospective profit.

Furthermore, with official emulation options they could have kept platforms "alive" and already released titles relevant for much longer, which could in term prompt everything from a much larger indie-dev community that could make viable games for an older platform and thus reduce costs, or prompt producers and distributors to keep alive franchises that have disappeared from the radar as of today due to the current situation (the Suikoden franchise comes to mind)

A game like the original MGS was a AAA title of its time, but to create a PSX game of that quality today would be relatively cheap in comparison.

If Sony had adopted the emulation format for computer properly, many low-tier developers could have worked with relatively cheap assets to create Snes/N64/PSX/PS2 level  games and sold them to the thriving emulation-crowd for a decent profit.

Furthermore, emulators are neat because you can graphically optimize the experience beyond the scope of the original platform, and it opens gates for community-modding.

As usual, the few legitimate emulation-choices we have are too few and too late the in making.

It's very much like the music industry, where the big labels, a couple of artists with an almost paranoid possessive relationship with their art (usually the "artists" that are products in and of themselves acting as fronts for the lables), and financial backers with no concern but net-profit and no connection to the culture surrounding the consumers, doubled down against digital distribution after the creation of services like Napster.

Now we have the Itunes store etc, serving us sub-par products at artificially inflated prices to make up for the fact that the industry didn't have the foresight or sense to jump unto the format until many years after pirates had already abuse the hell out of the system.

It's sad as hell.

Emulation is a fantastic as a concept. Instead it's whittled down to a tool for pirates to enjoy games a couple of years after release to save money.

 

[Zeriab]

On my Wii there is the Virtual Console where older games can be bought, downloaded and played through emulation.

I have bought and played Super Mario World on an emulator by Nintendo. Perhaps I am just naive thinking that Nintendo have the rights to sell me Super Mario World?

 

[Heretic86]

Another apparently unaddressed perspective of Emulation is Development.

When games are developed for Console Systems, the Console itself is emulated on the Developers computers.  Thus, what you can run on the PS4 Dev Kit (which runs on computers) will work on the console itself.  The Developers Kits tend to be much more expensive than the version of the console intended for consumers as it opens up a lot of debugging and other resources that are not normally available to of the consumer consoles.  The Dev Kit machines can directly interact with the software side running on the developers computers.  There are lots of different ways to do it and Dev Kits are developed with the intent of partial emulation and expect the exact opposite outcome in terms of Piracy.

And to chagne the subject, Piracy is a lot deeper than just "people that steal games".  Pirates have a lot of reasons why they do what they do.  They are potential paying customers that many times, feel they have been burned by paying a lot of money for a very low quality product, and view pirating games is somehow justified because they got ripped off by the whole game industry when they paid big bucks for games that were absolutely terrible.  The solution to Piracy isnt going to come from more Laws or stronger DRM.  It will come when we change our way of thinking.  Such as this whole idea of "cant please everyone all the time" is total nonsense.  We can.  While it is true that not everyone will like even the most popular games, it is true that all people can be treated with respect.  I would not expect anyone to pay for a burger that I made that they were completely dissatisfied with.  That respect has to be earned each and every time.  The other side of Piracy is that it is not intended to cause harm to a company, but simply that trying to go back to play old games that are no longer in production that a person, even a potential Pirate, had enjoyed.  These people resort to Piracy many times to play the old outdated games that still hold a certain value to them even today.  In another 20 years, people will still play old Nintendo 8 bit and Sega 8 bit and Atari 8 bit games, and that may not be possible without some form of Emulation.

 

[Kaiju Master]

I 100% support emulations, most games I like to play can't hardly be found anymore unless they are for high sums of money.  I have found breath of fire 3, a game that I love almost as much as final fantasy 7 but the price for it is ridiculous, a used copy is 40 dollars but a new copy is 120 dollars at the minimum.  If you pick it up with the walkthrough for it the 120 can jump to 200.  If it is available on say the ps network then I will buy it because they are cheap enough but lots of them are not available so I use emulators to play them.  Most the old games have been released for public use now as they really aren't profitable anymore.

if it wasn't for emulators I would have never discovered some of my favorite games.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

It will come when we change our way of thinking. Such as this whole idea of "cant please everyone all the time" is total nonsense. We can. While it is true that not everyone will like even the most popular games, it is true that all people can be treated with respect. I would not expect anyone to pay for a burger that I made that they were completely dissatisfied with.

You cannot make everyone be pleased with your game and that is a fact... Getting respect and making people be pleased by your games are totally different things. You could respect someone even if ur not pleased with their products, and you can also be pleased with their product even if you don't respect them.


As for emulation, well, for me it is a tool. And like with almost any other tool, it can be used for both good and bad things.

 

[Jaymonius]

I used to not care as much for emulation as I did it for every JRPG out there for the SNES and PS1, but now my stance has sorta changed when it comes to it, I'll only emulate it if I own the actual game, it just didn't feel right with me.

Some people also have this disgust with bootleg games, but personally, I don't care about that either, especially if it depends on how old the game is anyway, I'd rather play a game I understand than read it in a different language. That was my same stance with emulation. But I just have a personal satisfaction of having a hard copy of games nowadays.

 

[Funplayer]

Emulation itself is a much much wider topic than video game emulation.

Your entire operating system could be considered an emulation of a virtual environment, built out of data and countless hours of hard work and dedication from both hardware and software engineers for the past 60 years.

Video game emulation is simply a copy of an actual hardware system, built into a bit-wise machine code driver.  The developers create a virtual environment when they are emulating the game hardware into a software form.  This is simply one of countless forms of emulation.  From ISO files emulating the existence of a CD, to a web browser emulating the graphical environment of your PC hardware using webgl.

Emulation, is everything in computers.  Without it, they would be paperweights.

 

[Andar]

I would not expect anyone to pay for a burger that I made that they were completely dissatisfied with.

OK, then I would like to suggest a test:


You make 500 burgers (including paying for the ingredients out of your own pocket), then setup a stand at a busy street offering those burgers and claim that only people who are satisfied with them have to pay for them.


Some will pay for them of course, but I think you won't get enough money back to pay for the ingredients you purchased...


I agree that piracy has a lot of different reasons and that some of them are more understandable than others, but anyone claiming that all pirates are only misunderstood customers is simply <censored>. Some of the pirates are people that will never pay for software because they always want to get away with everything without paying, including people who pirate resources to sell them - just go to deviant arts forums and check for how many good artists had their pictures copied, printed on posters or T-Shirts and sold on conventions by pirates who never even asked them for the artwork.


Same goes for pirate sites where the pirated programs are sold (often for only a minor price decrease while claiming to be originals).


Unfortunately idiotic claims are made from both sides - both the claims of the software industry that every pirated copy is lost money and the claim from the pirate defenders that software pirates are modern robin hoods and would buy programs if they were only cheap enough are stupid.


The truth is somewhere in the middle - a lot of software pirates are thieves that care for nothing but their own money and sell the copies they make, but not all of them. And it's difficult to seperate the two groups as long as all pirate defenders do nothing but claiming all pirates are simply misunderstood while the SI claims that all pirates hurt their sales.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

There are only three reasons I can honestly see for pirating that I wouldn't think were really wrong:

1. Game is almost unobtainable and/or only available in the collector's market.

2. Bypassing DRM on a game you ALREADY OWN. Like if you didn't want to have to have Origin installed to play some of the games you already own on Origin. (Or you have no way to play that game you own on CDs, because your computer has no CD drive).

3. Just to install to see if your computer can run it, at which point you uninstall and delete. Then buy if you can run it.

Maybe a bit off topic though, but I think it can kind of play into the conversation on emulation.

 

[Bloodmorphed]

I think a good approach to this would ask yourself one question: "If I were a developer, and have released games, how long would it take for me not to care if it was emulated/ripped?"

For me personally though, my view is a bit weird.

I think it's fine for games that do not have a demo and you want to see if you would enjoy it before dropping down 40-60 bucks. Play for it an hour or so, if you like it then buy it I'm okay with it. If you don't like it, delete it off your computer and forget about it. Who cares? 

After that though, I'm totally okay with older games. I really don't see a problem with it, especially if they no longer profit from it.

 

[bandkanon]

My stance is pretty much similar to everyone else's here. I mostly play emulated roms if the game is unobtainable, ancient, or I already had the game in my collections and it's broken/lost. In other cases, I might try something out if it's rare, and buy it if I like it enough, so as to support the developers for a good game well made.

I played Suikoden 1 & 2 on epsxe back in late November/early December. I bought Suikoden 1 on PSN after I finished it because I liked it so much, and had to wait until Suikoden 2 was available on psn to buy that as well (because I am NOT going to buy a ps1 copy for 400+ USD no thanks haha)

It may seem backwards to some, but as I see it, it does at least give me the freedom to decide whether or not a legitimate copy is worth my money.
 

It's just like with buying an album. I like to be able to go through the songs first and make sure that at least the majority of the tracks are to my liking before I purchase a cd copy. I use Youtube for that purpose quite a lot.

Now, is it right that I do this...?

...*SHRUG* :/

 

[Cannoli]

I emulate foreign games and those that are out-of-print, but I always end up buying what I can regardless.

(Japanese importing is expensive, yo.)

 

[Silver Wishes]

Pretty much what everyone said... Only for really old, nowhere to be found games and systems...

And I made some to keep safe from my brother... for all I know he can be chewing on them with how they end up...

But with steam and all that I think that argument will die out soon anyway...

I can't buy much, so I don't really own an impressive collection, but if I believe a game deserves it then I will definately try to get it...

To the companies our opinions are just numbers, so I think it's a  way to show what you want them to make...

 

[Luminous Warrior]

My stance is that if a game is no longer being made and the developers aren't making money off of it, then I'm fine with emulators. I actually became a gamer after playing an emulated version of Pokemon Blue. I'm also fine with games that you have no intention of playing in their original form (Pokemon Emerald mods), games that have no chance of coming out in America (Earthbound 3), or ROMs of games that you simply downloaded temporarily for a demo with the intention of buying it if you like it or deleting it if you don't (Phoenix Wright). I actually got into the Phoenix Wright series after downloading a ROM for the original. I don't condone pirating games that would cost the company money, but I wouldn't care if you told me that you had an emulator of any game at all.

 

[Bastrophian]

ITS WRONG!!! YOU SHOULD NEVER, EVER EMULATE! Just be yourself and others will accept you for who you are..............................

OH! You meant in gaming...meh, i dunno. That stuff is all kinda....y'know, dodgy. On the one hand, if its for a really old game that you cant play at all anymore, any other way, and especially if theres no way that the developers could make money off it anymore in the first place...i dont see what the big deal is. I also, dont see what the big deal is if you already own a copy of the game, but just arnt able to play it for some reason. But the thing is, people "dont" ONLY emulate to play old games, or play games they already own....Personally, if i went through with all the work to make a game (..or, insert...art form, service, product here) , only to have it pirated right out from under my nose, id probably be really cheesed off too. 

Here is another issue i believe has some similarity: With many providers, did you know it is technically illegal to connect to and use a neighbors wifi? And not just without their permission...is not legal to connect to it AT ALL (personally, if im visiting a friends house, or vise versa, and permission is given to use the wifi that the customer is paying for, it is absolutely NONE of the providers business...that is micromanaging at its worst.).

...However, it was quite a different matter with a relative of mine not long ago...i was staying with this relative and i needed to connect to the internet to do some internet things, and they had told me that they had wifi, well i eventually found out that they did not. In fact, they were piggy backing off the neighbors unsecured wifi, and without their knowing. Their reasoning was that if they really didint want anyone accessing it, they would have secured it with a password....with that reasoning, i could assume that it was perfectly fine for me to enter your house, or drive off with your car, as of course you must have wanted me too, due to you leaving them unsecured, right? "But its just wifi, im not hurting anyone" they would say, "Bull crap!" i would reply....it only starts there. First off, perhaps this was an elderly person and they didint know how to set up the security, also my relatives had no way of knowing if the neighbor only had a set amount of gigs they were allowed...gigs they were footing the bill for...that my relatives weren't helping with. Anyway...they did eventually get there own wifi...to my amusement, they made sure it was secured.

I know i probably sound like i got a little hot under the collar...let me cool down a sec...ahhhhhhh....thats better, lol.

Anyway, i cant make anyone do what i believe is right, but what i can do is try my hardest to live what i believe is right, and hope it makes an impact, for the better, on what little part of the world i have access too. Is emulation ok....i dont really feel like it is, i just dont, sorry...i guess. Do i think its fair how those in power are trying to micromanage the internet because of emulation/pirating....HECK NO. It all comes to the attitude of people thinking they can do whatever they want just because they can....and it may seem benign at first glance, especially if it has to do with something like gaming or emulation....but alot of the havoc in this world and things you dont like is made out of the same stuff...of that attitude.

I think we just need to treat those around us the way we want to be treated....and no, of course that dosent necessarily mean the other person will return the favor, but thats the only way the world will get any better in my veiw.       

 

[ookami_lord]

Even if I wanted to emulate Ps2 or even PC games(3 d ones and mostly 2d as well) my PC would lag from it.

I bought some PC games and they sure lag.I always forget that my card isn't really new too.

Well, I guess games don't get very much exported to europe, much more Portugal...wich they only sell games nobody wants and are usually boring.

And I don't feel inclined to online buying either.So either, I have to watch a person play the game or emulate it, i guess.

So...I like to play GBA games, like ff4 and the likes, since I don't a ps3 nor Xbox...

Wich I will say that I don't mind playing an emulator IF the game is old and if my computer can take it that is