So, as discussed previously, I'm a gamer. This doesn't necessarily imply that I actually play video games, but rather that, given free time and the choice of activities, I would frequently choose them. Anyway, while I do label myself a gamer, I am also someone who doesn't spend money on himself, and thus doesn't spend money on video games.
We live in an age where you can actually do quite well for a while without spending money. For example, there are lots of flash based games free to play on the internet, some of which don't suck. A man named Ben Leffler has produced three such diversions in the form of Ex Mortis, Ex Mortis 2, and Purgatorium, three entertaining and occasionally disturbing little survival horror/adventure games. Many examples of free content like that can be found at sites such as Newgrounds. The catch is that a lot of that content sucks (and a lot of it is filth - don't go randomly clicking around until you read the rating), so you have to have some serious time to invest in looking for good stuff. (I used to have a job that included scheduled time where they knew they had no work for me to do. For weeks. So yeah, I've tested those waters pretty thoroughly.)
What if I don't want want some online trifle to mess with though? What if I want to play a real game, with production values and everything. Well, here we run into the dreaded moral gray area. See, I believe that downloading music and movies, when such things are not being offered by their creators, is a bad thing. We, as a generation, can try as hard as we want to justify such things by railing against the evils of the RIAA or MPAA, but the truth is that we all, deep down, know it's still stealing. Argue if you will, but it is.
What has this to do with the topic at hand? Well, like my book selections, I don't believe that a game's worth is inherently tied to it being the newest thing with the hottest graphics. I think of a lot of games as art, and if it's well done, if it moves you somehow, the value doesn't diminish with time. So when I look at an old review for something, or have to look up some reference in an effort to understand a joke I'm missing (I really don't like missing jokes), sometimes I find some game I really wish I had played, but simply can't go out and buy anymore unless I feel like getting swindled on Ebay.
It turns out there are whole sites dedicated to this very topic. It's referred to as abandonware. It software that no one distributes any more. They had their run, they made their sales, and now they've moved on. Hell, some of these companies don't even exist any more. So you have sites like Home of the Underdogs that does nothing but catalog images of this software and make it available for download.
And therein lies my issue. Technically, no one who made this product is trying to make money on it any more. In fact, I couldn't go out and buy a copy if I wanted to, unless I got some old used copy online that might not even run. Still, I feel like I'm doing something wrong when I download these games, and each time I do, I feel like I'm a bad, bad man.
On the bright side, I probably won't have time to play them anyway, so it's really more of a light gray moral area. Maybe even an off-white. Maybe beige. Maybe I just really want to play System Shock 2.
Stupid morality.
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