PC vs. … Switch? (What will be your way of playing ReMI?)

[ThunderPeel2001]

11 hours ago, LowLevel said:

Would it sound completely off-topic if I say that I'll play it on the PC? It will be probably on the bigger monitor, but before that I'll try to screencast it to the living room TV, hoping to minimize the lag.

 

Ironically (given the other interesting discussion going on in this thread) Valve make a great device for this: The Steam Link. I used it with my computer upstairs and the lag was minimal, even in action games.

[ThunderPeel2001]

1 hour ago, Niemandswasser said:

I'll move on after this because we're getting way off topic, just wanted to say I 1000% respect and understand your reasons for staying away from Steam and hope I didn't come off as trying to argue/dismiss them; I was just explaining my own aversion to patronizing GOG given a series of decisions over a period of years that soured me on their public-facing image. (Also, AFAIK Steam didn't pull Devotion outside of China--Red Candle pulled it themselves to edit out the "offending material" and then, for reasons that I've never seen made public, it never went back up. Assuming there was some behind-the-scenes stuff that was never disclosed which may well have come from Valve, but all we can do is speculate.)

 

Anyway. I have a Switch so that seems like a good place to play the game.

 

This is a really interesting conversation. I can't help but feel that gaming culture is partially to blame for all of it. I love gaming, but I generally hate gamers. The whole industry has the whiff of toxicity (of course there are lovely exceptions to that sweeping statement, eg. Double Fine and many others, but they have to swim in the same shitty sea as G*merG^te).

 

When I worked at Sony 20+ years ago, the whole company was 98% men... and even that gave the place a certain whiff. And I recognise that smell even decades later when I play certain games... a totally myopic view of the world that believes it's worldly and balanced.

 

Anyway, this is all a very big subject! 

 

I've always assumed that people boycotted Steam because of DRM issues (which I can't fathom -- the convenience far outweigh the cons in my mind), but if people are doing it for ethical reasons, well that's something I can get behind. I didn't particularly like Gabe Newell's "everything goes on Steam" response to H*tred. Of course, banning the game gave it more notoriety... So on some level they can't win. But on another level, they should just make it clear where their boundaries are and stick to them.

[Al.DeHyde]

20 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

I've always assumed that people boycotted Steam because of DRM issues (which I can't fathom -- the convenience far outweigh the cons in my mind)

 

My PC wasn't connected to the net years ago. I bought a game on disc that I couldn't play without connecting to Steam. I've been boycotting them ever since 🙃

 

I'm also into software being free as in freedom which doesn't mix well with DRM - it's ironic that Steam/Valve are doing good things for Linux gaming but GOG really aren't 🤔

[Remi]

To paraphrase @elTee, the original games were all about the DRM of the time.

 

 

[ThunderPeel2001]

11 hours ago, Al.DeHyde said:

I'm also into software being free as in freedom which doesn't mix well with DRM

 

As I say, this makes zero sense to me. Software has had copy protection ever since it could -- it's just been adapted to the modern age. Nothing new. Physical copies of modern games (which I love, too) have copy protection.

 

I've heard complaints that Steam might suddenly disappear... for the last 20 years  The requirement is connect to the internet is nothing -- It takes more effort to NOT be connected to the internet these days. Even with GOG you need to connect to the internet to download the game in the first place.

 

The only potential downside with Steam is the lack of a second-hand games market -- which isn't helping software developers: Publishers want DRM. But then GOG doesn't have that, either.

 

As I said: The convenience outweighs the cons for me. Arguments against DRM seem to be idealogical more than practical/logical... but vote with your wallet. Maybe I'm just being lazy, and there's definitely pressure on smaller companies to support GOG due to it.

Edited September 4, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Thrik]

I’d be screwed if I couldn’t connect to the internet to go to that site with all the old code wheels on it.

[Al.DeHyde]

4 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

As I say, this makes zero sense to me. Software has had copy protection ever since it could -- it's just been adapted to the modern age. Nothing new. Physical copies of modern games (which I love, too) have copy protection.

 

I won't go into the reasons why free software makes perfect sense to me since it's so off topic but I can see why you and others value convenience.

 

I guess it's about who's in control of the copy protection now. In the past I had a code wheel that some company couldn't just decide to take away. It is largely idealogical for me though. Plus I dislike Steam and don't want their software on my computer!

[KestrelPi]

Since we're getting into it a little.

 

Preface all the following by saying: I completely respect anyone's decision to use or not use any game service for whatever reason they see fit. All the below is just where I land on it all, and other people's mileage may vary.

 

Firstly, I think I have similar beef with CD Projekt that @Niemandswasser has talked about. For me the issues I have with them are far more personal to me and far more relevant to me than an ideological opposition to DRM.

 

Secondly, I'm not really particularly ideologically opposed to DRM. I think it's unnecessary, and I think the best data we have shows it does very little to prevent piracy and could in fact contribute to the problem. GOG is right about that. But I largely subscribe to the idea that for almost as long as software has existed, software license agreements have existed. The idea of 'ownership' of commercial software has always been an illusion, for better or worse, and it ought to not be surprising or alarming that some companies would try to find technological solutions to enforcing the software license.

 

Thirdly, over the years I have recieved quite mixed messages about whether Steam actually enforces DRM. As far as I can ascertain, it's the publishers that have to include it, rather than Steam thrusting it on everything. I'm willing to be educated on this, but as far as I know a game can exist on Steam with no DRM at all. It is true that if Steam disappeared your ability to download the game would also disappear but I think that's true of any online platform to download games, and has little to do with the DRM conversation. As I say I'm willing to be educated on this but because of my second point, I haven't been very motivated to look into it myself because I really am totally ambivalent about DRM.

 

Fourthly, I believe that having a Steam library is a fair trade off in convenience. This is coming from a personal perspective, knowing how I play games - 95% I play a game once, and never again, and if I lost access to it I wouldn't even know. The other 5% of the time I might try to get a physical copy if I like the game enough. Or, if not available, I might buy it on multiple platforms.  If all else fails, the idea of having to spend £5 re-buying a game I lost access to 20 years from now doesn't really haunt me.

 

I know, I know, for some it's the principle of the thing less than the practicality of the thing... but see point 1. That principle is more important to me than the notion of possibly having to pay for something I used to own again at some undefined point in the future.

 

Given that I lost my MI2 Amiga codewheel years ago, and one of my MI1 disks, and my MI1/2 CD is scratched to bits... I feel like it's just not accurate to say that our access to our own games is being put in jeopardy by DRM. It has never been less in jeopardy (preservation of old editions aside, which is a whole other conversation), even if the whole DRM industry feels like basically snake oil for media businesses. It is so easy for me to access all my games now and I have trouble with the idea that DRM is any sort of threat to that because I've never had that threat materialise, ever.

[ThunderPeel2001]

25 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

Given that I lost my MI2 Amiga codewheel years ago, and one of my MI1 disks, and my MI1/2 CD is scratched to bits... I feel like it's just not accurate to say that our access to our own games is being put in jeopardy by DRM. It has never been less in jeopardy (preservation of old editions aside, which is a whole other conversation), even if the whole DRM industry feels like basically snake oil for media businesses. It is so easy for me to access all my games now and I have trouble with the idea that DRM is any sort of threat to that because I've never had that threat materialise, ever.

 

This is quite an interesting point, actually. I've had Steam for 14 years... None of the physical PC games I bought 14 years ago can even by played on any modern machine I own 😕 

 

(Interestingly, just went down a Steam rabbit hole: The first game I ever purchased was Portal in 2008. And I've spent £1,100 with Steam in all that time... which isn't as bad as I'd have feared.)

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[BaronGrackle]

13 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

This is quite an interesting point, actually. I've had Steam for 14 years... None of the physical PC games I bought 14 years ago can even by played on any modern machine I own 😕 

 

(Interestingly, just went down a Steam rabbit hole: The first game I ever purchased was Portal in 2008. And I've spent £1,100 with Steam in all that time... which isn't as bad as I'd have feared.)

 

Funny enough, this is part of the reason I've gravitated to consoles in the recent couple of decades. My PS2 is still playing its old titles. If my parents hadn't sold off our NES and Genesis, I'd likely still have access to them.

 

Though, truth be told, I am nervous about the durability of more modern consoles.

Edited September 5, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Jake]

Console durability is also something with plenty of points of failure, across time. For example: your NES games might still work if you still had them, but any with battery backup are likely long dead and the saves erased, or worse the battery corroded and damaged the cartridge. Any physical media and the hardware to play it on requires vigilance and, past an inevitable point, upkeep. 
 

I hope with time, hardware virtualization and software emulation gets better and better to the point that some of this is moot. DREAMM in particular has given me a lot of hope. It really is the ideal: it emulates the original hardware and operating system so the games original data can run in a way it perceived as “natively,” and DREAMM can run a loose directory of game data, a disk image, or the original physical media if you have it along with the hardware to read it. I hope solutions like that become more and more common over time. 

[BaronGrackle]

Maybe in 30 years, people will be able to just log into the equivalent of archive.org and the old games of today for free.

[MichaelSon]

I will be playing it on my old MacbookPro. either connected to a 27" thunderbolt display or I go with my Mac Pro Cheesgrater from 2009 (plenty of RAM and a sold GPU) to enjoy it on its 30" cinema display.
Recently played MI1 EGA on it and it looked fantastic!