How the demonization of emulation devalues gaming’s heritage - Polidicks

[quote]For years now, "emulation" has been a dirty word in the video game industry, regarded by many companies as nothing more than an illegal, piracy-fueling technology that represents an existential threat to the gaming business. In a passionate presentation at the Game Developers Conference this week, though, gaming historian and developer Frank Cifaldi made a well-reasoned case for the industry at large to embrace emulation as a way to capture its heritage. [/quote] [URL]http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/how-the-demonization-of-emulation-devalues-gamings-heritage/[/URL]

its very well possible there's a lot of games out there that'll be unplayable in 10 years time. that's why always online drm is a shitty idea. its all based on short-term profits instead of making your game known across time the whole goddamn reason duke nukem 3d is still fairly active today is because the source code got released. blood's source code hasn't, but still has a somewhat large cult following nonetheless because it's fucking great and somewhat easily available [editline]22nd March 2016[/editline] emulators are curators of the past of vidya games

The thing is, the PC is the only platform where a game made 10 or 20 years ago should still be able to work. No console can do that. When a console is long gone off the market, and so are its games, are we supposed to just forget about all the gems that existed there? That's why we have emulators, and they do the work of God.

People use emulators to play old games that can't be legitimately bought now. It's not like people are just playing PS4/Xbone games for free on an emulator. By the time that's a thing, those consoles will be irrelevant.

And as consoles become more complex it becomes increasingly harder if not impossible to develop an emulator for them so in the future, unless you can find an original console that will probably be selling for thousands on eBay, you'll be shit out of luck to play those games.

As ross scott once said of letting games die, "There are no good reasons, only legal ones."

[QUOTE=Loadingue;49979558]The thing is, the PC is the only platform where a game made 10 or 20 years ago should still be able to work. No console can do that. When a console is long gone off the market, and so are its games, are we supposed to just forget about all the gems that existed there? That's why we have emulators, and they do the work of God.[/QUOTE] If you read the article it says that a 64 emulator existed during the 64's lifespan. It's still fine in my book though. [editline]22nd March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Electrocuter;49979608]And as consoles become more complex it becomes increasingly harder if not impossible to develop an emulator for them so in the future, unless you can find an original console that will probably be selling for thousands on eBay, you'll be shit out of luck to play those games.[/QUOTE] It seems to be that consoles are moving towards widely-used architectures or reusing old ones, WiiU reuses (at least in the CPU) the wii architecture, the 3ds uses ARM, and next gen consoles use x86, ARM and PowerPC have been emulated a lot, that's why decaf and citra are doing so much progress

[QUOTE=Loadingue;49979558]The thing is,[B] the PC is the only platform where a game made 10 or 20 years ago should still be able to work. No console can do that.[/B] When a console is long gone off the market, and so are its games, are we supposed to just forget about all the gems that existed there? That's why we have emulators, and they do the work of God.[/QUOTE] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)[/url] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love emulators so keep em coming.

If games have an official rerelease on any console available, like the virtual console on nintendo systems or whatever, of course buy that before downloading ZSNES, but if there's no way of finding or playing the original copy easily then emulation is definitely the way to go. Culture shouldn't be limited because of the limited distribution of physical copies.

[QUOTE=Al Bundy;49979650][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)[/url] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯[/QUOTE] He's talking about in general, not for specific games that somebody decided to port. Out of the >700 hundreds of games for NES, virtual console has less 100. Out of the > 600 for SNES, virtual console has less than 80. Out of the >300 games for N64, virtual console has 21.

[QUOTE=Recurracy;49979490]its very well possible there's a lot of games out there that'll be unplayable in 10 years time. that's why always online drm is a shitty idea. its all based on short-term profits instead of making your game known across time the whole goddamn reason duke nukem 3d is still fairly active today is because the source code got released. blood's source code hasn't, but still has a somewhat large cult following nonetheless because it's fucking great and somewhat easily available [editline]22nd March 2016[/editline] emulators are curators of the past of vidya games[/QUOTE] Watch Ross Scott's gamedungeon, a lot of games from 10 years ago are almost unplayable, a lot of games from 5 years ago when DRM was really bad are by design unplayable, and games from 3 years ago with always online are dead when servers go off

[QUOTE=Al Bundy;49979650][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)[/url] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯[/QUOTE] The point he's making is that PC games don't intrinsically [i]require[/i] emulation to work. x86-64 is really just an extension to x86, which has its origins in the 80s. And Windows still retains a stupid amount of backwards compatibility. I can still play Simtower for Windows 3.1 (from 1994) on a 32 bit Windows 10 machine with no modifications. Its not guaranteed old games and software will work properly on newer versions, but it will at least try to run. [editline]21st March 2016[/editline] That aside, the vilification of emulation is stupid. The original hardware will only last so long and there are only so many copies. The fact that some people are so warped on the matter that they will call you a dirty thief for using an emulator or flash cart on a 20 year old console. Its ridiculous. Artificial scarcity is not a concept you should embrace.

If only these companies would make emulators for their own games with plug and play controller support. The one thing I hate about emulators is having to set up everything so it runs reliably on the computer. If they made official emulators for Windows I'd actually be happy to repurchase all my old favorites.

[QUOTE=Electrocuter;49979608]And as consoles become more complex it becomes increasingly harder if not impossible to develop an emulator for them so in the future, unless you can find an original console that will probably be selling for thousands on eBay, you'll be shit out of luck to play those games.[/QUOTE] Not true. Just you need to be focus on working on this most of the emulator writers tend to have jobs and such that don't allow them to work on emulators. We only got lucky with xbox one emulator is because someone happen to acquire one of the PC's from E3.

[QUOTE=Electrocuter;49979608]And as consoles become more complex it becomes increasingly harder if not impossible to develop an emulator for them so in the future, unless you can find an original console that will probably be selling for thousands on eBay, you'll be shit out of luck to play those games.[/QUOTE] Actually, the current gen is probably going to be able to be emulated more easily than past gen because current gen is literally custom OSes for x86 whereas last gen was some PPC-based witchcraft.

[QUOTE=Samiam22;49981638]Actually, the current gen is probably going to be able to be emulated more easily than past gen because current gen is literally custom OSes for x86 whereas last gen was some PPC-based witchcraft.[/QUOTE] The PS3's processor was witchcraft

Companies get so buttstrated over emulation when 95% of the time they don't do a damn thing with their games.

Any company that gets butthurt over a few people trying to bring long-dead classics back to life can fuck off. They're not losing out on new sales since the consoles that are being emulated tend to be near/at the end of their lifespan and if anything they should have a bit of gratitude for reviving interest in old games. It's the same logic as those who called me out for torrenting Fallout 1 and 2 before they were available on Steam and GOG.

I even believe that you should be able to emulate modern machines, both legally and morally, morally because I should be able to do what I want with my software, even if I don't own it, and legally because of the legal precedents that have been set in many countries. You don't see anyone complaining with the fact that you can run windows programs on linux, it's not my issue certain software is not available for my platform and I have to emulate it(even if wine is not an emulator you get what i mean) , but of course I should own a legal copy of said software.

I hope there's some kind of law in the future made for this kind of preservation. That determines a time when it's a-okay to emulate games from older systems and that companies can't bitch (hi nintendo) about it. Something about MMOs and other always-online games would be great too. It sucks that a game like city of heroes can just kill its servers and close the game off to its players forever, as they were very strict about stopping people from sniffing packets and such to prevent them from creating private servers. Unlikely though as the idea that you don't own your software is very popular right now

[QUOTE=Samiam22;49981638]Actually, the current gen is probably going to be able to be emulated more easily than past gen because current gen is literally custom OSes for x86 whereas last gen was some PPC-based witchcraft.[/QUOTE] PowerPC is well documented, I'd imagine due to it being used in multiple applications outside of games consoles. Here is essentially the [URL="https://fail0verflow.com/media/files/ppc_750cl.pdf"]documentation[/URL] for the Wii and GC's CPU.

[QUOTE=Genericenemy;49983084]PowerPC is well documented, I'd imagine due to it being used in multiple applications outside of games consoles. Here is essentially the [URL="https://fail0verflow.com/media/files/ppc_750cl.pdf"]documentation[/URL] for the Wii and GC's CPU.[/QUOTE] Isn't that documentation one of the reasons why emulating GC/Wii been the most successful out of that gen

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;49982989]I hope there's some kind of law in the future made for this kind of preservation. That determines a time when it's a-okay to emulate games from older systems and that companies can't bitch (hi nintendo) about it. Something about MMOs and other always-online games would be great too. It sucks that a game like city of heroes can just kill its servers and close the game off to its players forever, as they were very strict about stopping people from sniffing packets and such to prevent them from creating private servers. Unlikely though as the idea that you don't own your software is very popular right now[/QUOTE] Phantasy Star Online still has active private servers going. Stuff like that would be great to have more of. Hell, even private servers for something like Battlefield Heroes could be great.

Nintendo doesn't like emulation because they like to rerelease old games on new consoles without updating anything. Kind of like Disney vault

[QUOTE=proboardslol;49983362]Nintendo doesn't like emulation because they like to rerelease old games on new consoles without updating anything. Kind of like Disney vault[/QUOTE] Which is nice but if Nintendo is going to continue to pull the "oh we MAY release this for virtual console so you can't emulate it" card, they need to shut the fuck up and make with actually releasing that shit for the virtual console. As of now the virtual console only supports a minority of games for NES, SNES, and N64.

[QUOTE=Solo Wing;49983575]Which is nice but if Nintendo is going to continue to pull the "oh we MAY release this for virtual console so you can't emulate it" card, they need to shut the fuck up and make with actually releasing that shit for the virtual console. As of now the virtual console only supports a minority of games for NES, SNES, and N64.[/QUOTE] Nintendo need to get shot of the idea entirely that people are genuinely going to pay One hundred and fifty plus pounds just to play years old games. Its only driving people further to piracy.

And, people already own those games, why would they want to pay for a shitty wii edition when they can legally emulate their own games on their pc for no cost, if they rip their own bios and games.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;49983911]And, people already own those games, why would they want to pay for a shitty wii edition when they can legally emulate their own games on their pc for no cost, if they rip their own bios and games.[/QUOTE]Almost nobody rips their own bios or games though. Even if they legally own the device.

[QUOTE=Samiam22;49981638]Actually, the current gen is probably going to be able to be emulated more easily than past gen because current gen is literally custom OSes for x86 whereas last gen was some PPC-based witchcraft.[/QUOTE] Interesting, I was already wondering why you can already perfectly emulate some xbox one games on PC while they're still working on most xbox360 games like Red Dead Redemption.