Pokémon Release Day
Nov. 19th, 2021 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingA new set of Pokémon games is being released today, which means that my corner of the internet is filled with people talking about how bad the games are, and how bad Nintendo is, and how it’s always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.
And they’re right. Nintendo is a horrible corporation. It’s true and people should say it. I personally hate Nintendo and have made my share of memes about pirating their games.
That being said, I think something a lot of internet people tend to forget is that piracy is not necessarily more accessible than just going to the store and buying a game.
I don’t have a lot of money or a lot of space, and my internet connection is shit. In terms of computers, I have a smartphone I bought in 2019 and a laptop I bought in 2017. The smartphone and laptop are good machines, and I put effort into maintaining them, but neither is capable of archiving large files or running anything more advanced than a PS1 emulator. I have an external hard drive that I use to archive music and PDF copies of books, as well as a solid library of handheld console ROMs and indie games from Itchio, but I use it as a backup and don’t have it connected to my laptop, which I basically treat like a word processor. Granted, it's a word processor that runs Photoshop, but not for too long or it overheats.
In other words, it would be extremely difficult for me to pirate most current-generation games. Given that 80% of people in America live in urban areas, I don’t think I’m an outlier in terms of my level of access to the resources necessary to have a sophisticated desktop computer with a high-speed broadband connection that could be used for gaming.
I’m aware that university libraries are not without problems, but I think giant institutions with incredible amounts of funding should bear a portion of the burden of creating and maintaining digital archives. This is something I advocated for at my former university, but I made no progress for complicated reasons I don’t want to get into here. I can’t do anything at my current university because the library system is still mostly shut down due to the pandemic, but I absolutely intend to start advocating for the creation of a digital game archive here once it’s possible to do so.
In the meantime, I am just going to ignore the internet and play my stupid Pokémon game in peace.
And they’re right. Nintendo is a horrible corporation. It’s true and people should say it. I personally hate Nintendo and have made my share of memes about pirating their games.
That being said, I think something a lot of internet people tend to forget is that piracy is not necessarily more accessible than just going to the store and buying a game.
I don’t have a lot of money or a lot of space, and my internet connection is shit. In terms of computers, I have a smartphone I bought in 2019 and a laptop I bought in 2017. The smartphone and laptop are good machines, and I put effort into maintaining them, but neither is capable of archiving large files or running anything more advanced than a PS1 emulator. I have an external hard drive that I use to archive music and PDF copies of books, as well as a solid library of handheld console ROMs and indie games from Itchio, but I use it as a backup and don’t have it connected to my laptop, which I basically treat like a word processor. Granted, it's a word processor that runs Photoshop, but not for too long or it overheats.
In other words, it would be extremely difficult for me to pirate most current-generation games. Given that 80% of people in America live in urban areas, I don’t think I’m an outlier in terms of my level of access to the resources necessary to have a sophisticated desktop computer with a high-speed broadband connection that could be used for gaming.
I’m aware that university libraries are not without problems, but I think giant institutions with incredible amounts of funding should bear a portion of the burden of creating and maintaining digital archives. This is something I advocated for at my former university, but I made no progress for complicated reasons I don’t want to get into here. I can’t do anything at my current university because the library system is still mostly shut down due to the pandemic, but I absolutely intend to start advocating for the creation of a digital game archive here once it’s possible to do so.
In the meantime, I am just going to ignore the internet and play my stupid Pokémon game in peace.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-19 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-20 01:52 pm (UTC)- Nintendo contracted a third-party developer and forced them to work under horrible crunch conditions.
- Nintendo is charging $60 for a fifteen-year-old game that doesn't have any substantial changes aside from its updated graphics.
- Nintendo has made a few questionable decisions about how this game fits into competitive multiplayer tournaments. I haven't played Pokémon competitively in almost ten years, so I'm not sure I understand what people are saying here. But they sure are saying it.
My own impression is that it's a cute game that took me right back to 2006. It's a bit uncanny to see the polished graphics transposed against the super-retro gameplay, especially after playing Sword and Shield, and I think Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee were much better remakes. Nintendo really shouldn't have charged $60 for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, but what can you do. They were fishing for people who have more nostalgia than sense, and they got me.