bdp612 on 22/2/2007 at 20:21
Hi all, I'm a college student at WPI. I was just assigned a project for a "Social Issues in Video Games" class in which I have to choose a video game community and write a paper on an social issue in that community. I remember about a year back I was on these forums and the issue of piracy was quite prevalent.
I was hoping to get first hand accounts from some people that are invested in the community. Do you have anything to say about encounters with piracy that you face on these forums or elseware? Any opinions or insights that you would like to share? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.
Kolya on 22/2/2007 at 20:36
What is WPI?
Apart from that, piracy is quite done as a subject here ... and we couldn't even really talk about it here.
I think if you take a closer look, you could find lots of other interesting social topics for your project. First thing you should do is read the rules carefully. Then maybe dip your nose into commchat. Try to get a feeling for the habits and conventions of ttlg. A good subject might be the pros and cons of member moderation or "backseat moderation". Not sure if that's too far from video games, but this is a gamer community after all.
Well just my two cents.
Bjossi on 22/2/2007 at 20:50
Social issues in video games?
Hmmm, you could get some good stuff by studying people's love for debates or even wars, like PC versus consoles.
rachel on 22/2/2007 at 20:56
Kolya, as long as no links are provided nor any tips or help, we *could* talk about it probably...
When I arrived here back in 2000 I was a n00b that didn't know better and thought that piracy in gaming was common place. (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33674) Boy was I wrong! But although I now own several of the LGS games, I have to admit that I would never have heard about Looking Glass and Shock 2 if a friend hadn't put a copy on a CD as complement to Quake 3. And had Quake 3 actually worked properly, I think I can honestly say I would never have given Shock 2 a try.
And look where it got me.
On the other hand, if you talk about, say, the mod community (and for Thief as well as Shock 2), you might get much more feedback. You could even compare the two universes.
D'Arcy on 23/2/2007 at 02:52
The problem of talking about piracy here is that it normally ends up following a more or less well known path. The subject of 'piracy' usually brings out someone cleverly stating that the 'developers aren't making any money from the games anymore', which then leads to the pleasant little subject of the concept of 'abandonware', and suddenly we have the same discussion that we've had oh so many times before.
And backseat moderation is also one of our favourite subjects. Oh yeah. GBM is particularly fond of it.
Kolya on 23/2/2007 at 05:52
Have there been so many discussions about backseat moderation? I guess I missed those. Anyway, it was just an idea.
But maybe I was looking at this from the wrong perspective. When I heard "video games" and "social issues" I immediately thought of the problems, but a lot of good things arise from it too.
Then again if your subject really is "social issues in video games" none of this is relevant and we should look at the content of games, eg how LGS dealed with morality in games by encouraging the player to find solutions instead of killing characters. A motif that seems to endure with Bioshock.
bdp612 on 23/2/2007 at 19:20
hey thanks for the replies guys.
to clarify, the topic is actually a social issue within a community for a specific game. everyone is doing world of warcraft or counterstrike, so I figured I'd go with something a bit more unique.
if it's against the rules to talk about it then that's cool, just let me know. thanks again.
Firefreak on 25/2/2007 at 07:53
I'm still not sure to understand your topic; You're interested in one specific social issue (chosen: piracy) in a closed group of gamers that have a certain (group of) games in common? Piracy about the certain games, or generally?
If I remember correctly, Doom was said to be so successfull because it was pirated so much (apart from its shareware -- which loosely reminds me: The 'shareware' of Quake1 that had only a small set of levels available could be set to full mode by changing a console variable ;) )
The first time I'd played SS1 was with a copied disk version during school time; As I stumbled over the announcement of SS2 I found a virtual home here at TTLG (talking about social interaction) and bought the CD version of SS1 via another member living in the US if I remember correctly.
At that time there often were posts about 'Hey, my local games shop has 5 old boxes of the CD version - will send on request...' - Today, in the age of eBay, it's often only: 'If you want it, have a look and try to catch it'.
The_Raven on 25/2/2007 at 18:50
Quote Posted by Firefreak
'Hey, my local games shop has 5 old boxes of the CD version - will send on request...'
I used to have a store like that in my area, sadly they got rid of them before I got a chance to get older and have disposable income. At least I got a hold of Wing Commander 3, missed out of Privateer though.
Vigil on 25/2/2007 at 20:15
Quote Posted by Firefreak
If I remember correctly, Doom was said to be so successfull because it was pirated so much (apart from its shareware -- which loosely reminds me: The 'shareware' of Quake1 that had only a small set of levels available could be set to full mode by changing a console variable ;) )
It still didn't have any of the map resources for the rest of the game so it wouldn't do you any good regardless. And since it had no copy protection anyway, if you could get your hands on the maps from the full game to copy into your haxxed shareware version then you might as well just copy the entire game.
