The Author

Don't you know? Nowadays you have to play the game within two weeks of its release to be a REAL gamer. And if you aren't a real gamer, you don't care about spoilers.

In fact, there was a time where even worse was acceptable.

Psha, "way of the future" is the wave of the future, not the way of the past.

Well, the Coop's been rambling on about you, and I still have sex dreams of fake Mae, so yeah, you come up once in a while.

Wasn't he a scary stalker?

Well, obviously the guy who got the Metroid series started would not see Prime as part of his creation, seeing as he died a while ago. Now if he says he developed Other M without Prime in consideration, then it might mean that Other M was in fact the one out of official cannon.

Well, the PTSD is almost explainable, but it is a bit of a weak point in the story, and it could have been used a lot better. Hell, if there had only been Metroid 1, 2 and 3, and the Other M, it would have been a lot more realistic to get the PTSD moment. If she'd have lost her upgrades to the powersuit due to a recent and bloody battle to a more powerful Ridley to only fight it again, yeah it would have made sense for the PTSD. Hell, if she would have saved the bunny a couple of times and formed a bond with it, to have it THEN become Ridley, it would have made more sense. But what we got was a plot that was rehashed from Fusion, with some inconsistencies that stood out. Keep in mind, I loved the game, and it was very enjoyable, I just have issues with its placement in the plotline. Like I said, you put it after 1, before Prime, and you replace "baby metroid cell" by "metroid goop found on your armor after one bit you" and it becomes much stronger. Oh and FUCKING REMOVE THE NIGHTMARE FIGHT. It was a super secret top secret ultra unknown weapon bio-organism found in Fusion. Samus should not have fought it in Other M. (In fact, the Nightmare fight pisses me off a LOT MORE than PTSD... No complaints about Phantoon though, cuz, well, he's a bit of a ghost that feeds on dead space stations, he made sense.) Rogue Security bot from Fusion would have been nice, hell, a Serris fight would have been nice, or if you wanted a very shocking and effective reveal: an Omega Metroid. The Nightmare... I dunno, it doesn't quite fit there.

I keep saying it: place this game before Metroid 2 and you have a good game plot wise. Heck, place it between 2 and 3 and you still have a good game plot wise. After 3 and you run into some issues. (And well after 2 means after Prime, and well, I still think Prime should have been Ridley free but whatever...)

Abut as much as an X-Box 360...

Oh, the sega PEEco, I get it now...

This time, I'm staying as far away as possible from this... Nope, not touching that one... Although, a repeat of the 1 track remix album... Nah....

Now see, last time I MDMAed, I spent the week end having sex and the following week grumpy as hell but that may be because I was trying to quit smoking at the same time. I didn't spout confusing half assed imitations of arguments.

Ok, lets get meta on your ass. Emotions are illogical right? Since you are the product of an illogical construct (love between your parents) then I can safely use your brand of logic to assert that you should not exist. I don't have to prove myself, because, I used meta-logic to undo your existence. Please direct yourself to the nearest cliff. Copyright, when looking at the intent and the cause for its creation, makes perfect sense. I write a story people like. I publish it, the books are sold, my labor nets me money.Not unlike a cook who makes a pretty damned good steak is gonna earn income for his work. However, intellectual and creative work exist in a state that is quite different from goods and even services: they can be reproduced almost effortlessly and their reproduction can be directly linked to loss of income by the creator. If we go back to the steak example, another restaurant could open in town and imitate the recipe the best they can to sell steaks, but it would never be the original thing done by the original chef. It will be obvious because the steaks will not be sold in the restaurant where the original chef is working. However, in a book store, if you were to see in fiction 2 books, side by side, where one is the copy my publisher ships being sold for 15$ and another, a copy made by hack publisher that copies books, being sold for 10$ (because they don't have to pay me or my agent), tell me, which copy will be purchased more often? The easy argument is: my publisher just has to chop down the price, maybe instead sell it for 10$ and cheap out on the book tour. But then the other company could still sell it lower, they don't have to pay for the promotion, all they have to do is sell what I have worked on, not give me a penny for it, and make money off of my back. With intellectual property and copyright, then when I write a story it is mine, assuming I created the blasted thing. I sell it to a publisher, and he prints books, and there's only one copy of the book on the shelves, the one from my publisher, being sold at a reasonable price. If I create something, then only the people involved with the publication process should benefit from my work, right? Hell, the TLDR version: If I create something, it is MY creation. There, this is why copyright exists. Now the details do get messy, but truth be told, even if Disney has bastardized some aspects of copyright, doesn't it make sense that Mickey Mouse remains their intellectual property?

Actually, the status quo is this: we have copyright, and intellectual property. You are the one arguing for a change of the status quo. Right now the system works for the most part. Intellectual properties are respected, there are derivative works, but nothing too blatant, just conceptual derivatives. (e.g. Zombie horror is popular? lets make a zombie horror game but with another approach so that we don't get sued.) So, tell us, please enlighten us: why do you want to change the status quo? Also, the crash was caused by an immense amount of games people didn't want to buy. Which, all things considered, when in a year you would have 1200 clones of the few successful original games of the year, would be what would be happening if we moved away from the status quo. But maybe I should go back to the concept of the market making things right. If you believe in the power of the invisible hand of the market, then you have no reason to complain about the current pricing of games, as it is what the market dictates. Plus, other than buying consoles, gaming is fucking cheap nowadays regardless. Or maybe I'm missing the point of your babbling. But that would assume you have a point, and right now other than serving as a debating punching bag, I have to admit you lack a sense of direction. But then again, philosophy majors are not really fun to debate with, now on the other hand Masters and Doctoral students of philosophy are fun to debate with, even if you do feel sad that they will end up not doing much with their degrees.

But it is you who is unable to formulate some kind of actual argument. You cannot reduce everything to mathematical variables and assume that it is conceptually sound. Wanna work on a good hypothetical:L Remove all copyright laws. Nothing ever again is copyrighted. Intellectual property ceases to exist. Are we going to see an improvement in creativity through the dissolution of intellectual property? If so, please theorize how it would go. Because the way I see it, everything would go the Chinese way: Executive A: What was popular in the last few months? Executive B: Well, Vampires, and that Harry Potter thing. Executive A: Well, then get some chump to write The Young Wizard and the Vampire Plague. And don't forget to license for videogames... My niece loves Nintendogs, so why not make a game where the Wizard raises his familiar, just copy the code from Nintendogs and replace the model with something more magical? Underling A: Like a cerberus or a sphynx? Executive B: Nah, we'll just put sparkles around a purple chihuahua. Without intellectual property, we would be stuck in a flood of imitations of what was successful. If you didn't like Avatar, you,d still have to deal with 200 copies of it done hastily to cash in on the wave. Hell, back before intellectual property, this sort of thing happened a lot. The only reason you have heard of Shakespeare is not because he was a great playwright (he was, but still), it's because his company managed to produce plays that were not entirely his in just a more visible fashion. But don't think for an instant that he wrote all of the plays attributed to him now, he just tweaked them and put his name, and his company's name, on it which gave his version of the plays great visibility.

Wait what? Just because you throw in variables means that it is a mathematical rule? The number of arguments JackKieser can com up with is X. The number of counter arguments that can be made by a person is also X. Since Jack is the only one arguing for his position, and more than one person (lets say 5) are arguing against him, therefor: Jack's position = 1X Counter arguments = 5X 5X>1X So, mathematically speaking, JackKieser is wrong. Also, even with current copyright laws, there are derivative works that are perfectly legal. Mario begets Sonic. Dragon Warrior begets Final Fantasy. Ultima Online leads to EverQuest leads to World of Warcraft leads to Warhammer Online leads to Lord of the Rings online leads to Dungeons and Dragons Online... Copyright laws work like davidoff says: it forces people who like a concept to rethink it so that while it remains derivative (A platformer that inspires a platformer for example) it also becomes something else. (A fat plumber fighting a giant dragon becomes a blue hedgehog fighting a rotund scientist.) Wanna see games get boring fast? Without copyright laws, if one company publishes a very successful game.. Lets say: God of War. Company A publishes God of War, it is successful. Company B rushes "Deity of Massacre" to cash in on the success. Company C (a partner of company uses Company B's engine to create: The War Immortal. When it comes time for God of War 2, the market is saturated, and it bombs majestically. If you remove copyright laws, what the hell is the motivator for a company to create something new when they know what works and they can copy it? In fact, no company would want to pay for development of a new concept when they can just wait for a competitor to develop it, and then rip the idea. Then you end up with 25 different versions of Pong and programing teams of 1 person with a 10 000$ budget and 3 weeks to knock off a very promising movie license game. Been there, done that. Got the fucking landfill to prove it. Edit: Also, this is 2X versus your 1X. You lose again, JackKieser. And finally:

You know what? I think I love you.

Ok, wanna hear a real thesis statement? (As I am working on my master's thesis.) "The bilingual theater movement starting in the late 1970s in Quebec and Eastern Ontario was not indicative of understanding or support for Quebec's status as a distinct society, but rather served either as a reflection of the tools used to hinder the sovereignty movement or as a direct criticism of Quebec's cultural and national politics." 1 sentence that explains my point, where I'm coming from, and what I want to demonstrate. If you cannot do that with the position you take in this thread, then you need to rethink your position. (Also, I've read doctoral and master's theses, and usually, you get the point early on. In academic papers, there isn't any reason to be mysterious, you just go for it and say what you have to say.) EDIT: Also, about broad: my theses covers 6 plays by 4 authors written over the span of 20 years, that present different aspect of the historical and political status of Québec, as the province was going through an identity crisis as well as a political one that shook the foundations of a country. So shut up about broad topics. Hell, I'll even give you a hand, answer these two questions: 1: How do you think that game pricing should change? 2: Why aren't companies switching to this new method of pricing?

Actually, even a doctoral thesis can be boiled down to a sentence. It's called knowing what you want to say.

Problem with that is: If they decrease subscription by 5$ it will have exactly the projected effect you claim: More players. Is that a good thing? Yes and no, yay more players also means yay more data in our server banks, more processing power needed, yay more bandwidth needed, yay more accounts to manage, and yay, the incom to expenditure ration is gonna be off kilter. Less profit also means less money re-invested in the game, which means less important patches and updates, less content change, longer dev times for expansions, and so forth. Which in the long term could mean faster death of the game. But Yay! more players is all that matters, right? Also, 15$ US per month is the defacto price for a subscription based MMORPG. It's been like that for years. It might just be one of these marketing things where people expect to pay that price and if you charge less, they'll wonder what the catch is. In fact, that it remains 15$ per month after so many years is also a good deal, since they don't adjust it with inflation. But yeah, it should be 10$ because then you would play it... For god's sake, if 5$ is preventing you from playing a game you want to play, you have some issues. When I feel like playing a MMO, I simply adjust my finances accordingly. It's easy, and it isn't nearly as whiny as your method.

Actually, piracy can be beaten. How? Well, I don't pirate games. You should all be more like me.

By the way, this is how all pro-piracy people sound like in my mind.

No, you see, how it works out is this: If I want money, I get a job and WORK for my money. Then if I want to play videogames, I use the money I WORKED to get to purchase it. So the developers and distributors get the money I WORKED FOR. They don't work for the money, I do. What is this, some communist country? If the developers want money, they should do exactly like I do and WORK for the money and not hope I pay for a game that is easily available online for free...

Because Steam works. At this point, I am not afraid that in 2 years, Steam will shut down and make me lose my collection of PC games. Your home server is nice, but it lacks visibility. And if you want another option for digital distribution, look at Newgrounds. Ok, stop laughing and look at it again: A website that distributed free gamin experiences on a massive scale. Sucks that the creators get the shaft on the financial reward side of things, but it'S another form of viable digital distribution. Why does it work? Because it's big enough to work. A small scale digital distribution network is gonna have a hard time dealing with issues of bandwidth, controlling the download and accounts, managing the money. Frankly, when you have the choice to figure out how to distribute the games yourself or sign on with Steam, well, going with Steam is one way to make it less expensive.

Well, I think Seph touched on something: Even if the tools used against piracy don't work right now, it does not mean that piracy can't be beaten, or that it should be tolerated. Companies need to change their attitudes, and as consumers we should tell the companies quite clearly that they are going too far with DRM. But if we complain about DRM, then we cannot, and very well should not, turn a blind eye to piracy and we should try to remain as honest as we can.