I shouldn't be able to do something as vile and evil as this, should I?

Probably not, but it sure was fun, wasn't it?

One way to think about it, if you are searching for a place for it in your moral framework, is that it is not at all akin to piracy. Had the crackers downloaded the source, compiled it and run it on their own computer, and felt 133+, it might simply be piracy. However, by DISTRIBUTING the software on the web, it becomes a case of illegitimate competition -- not akin to downloading and watching a movie, but rather to making bootleg DVDs in Hong Kong and hawking them on street corners. The comparison is flawed as the crackers are presumably not making any money off of it (yet), but it's just a quick thought to add to your ethical dilemma.

For myself; I am not strongly against the stealing of software tools by a private individual to assist in their tasks. AKA your Photoshop example. However, I think it's much better to support open source alternatives (I ♥ Gimp), and therefore think stealing tools is rather lame, if not a vile sin. As your example mentions, software tools are by and large made so that corporations can exchange huge amounts of money for productivity. You are not stopping them.

However, I think stealing games is ridiculous. You do not need games. Games will not help you get an A on your history homework or make your website for your C++ project look neat. The people made the game so people can exchange money for fun. By stealing the fun, you ARE stopping them. Read a book, download a FREE game, read some webcomics. You are not entitled to games. Lame does not cover it.

The above is my opinion. It is my further opinion that Carthage must be destroyed. She is a threat to Rome.

I don't mind them going after people who are stealing music, games and software. What I don't like is that they can scan our computers with impunity just because they happen to be on at the time.

If some jewels were to be stolen from a shop here in town, the police couldn't just start busting into houses and searching them because there is a slim posibility that one of the houses might have the jewels in them.

It's immoral, indecent, and against the law.

Um, I just said that because I actually posted that before you created this thread.

But yes, it was fun.

Yes, I had gathered that. Probably something I should fix.

I agree with the distinction you make between use and distribution of pirated IP. Even the law (as enforced at least) distinguished between illegal distribution of copyrighted works and simply consumption.

The terrible thing about the theft of the HL2 source is that it will probably have a huge impact on the game. Not just Valve's revenue, but on the players' enjoyment (which will, ultimately, affect revenue).

I seriously doubt many people will play compiled pre-release code instead of buying the game. I don't think sales will be directly affected. I do, however, worry that those who have access to the code will now have a much easier time writing multiplayer cheats. Crafting an FPS multiplayer protocol that performs as required is hard. Making it difficult to develop cheats while maintaining performance is even harder. Doing so when your source is out in the open is probably impossible.

Obscurity is the best defense against cheaters, in the case of a modern networked game. Of course, employing crypto would be better. But that costs far too many CPU cycles. As is, the CPU is split between unit AI, game logic, modeling and graphics. Even weak crypto is too expensive to add to that equation. So we are at the mercy of those who would cheat. And their work just got easier; they don't have to reverse engineer the protocol because they have the source now.

Oh, god, you're right, I hadn't even thought of that. That really really sucks, and is probably far more harmful than IP theft in this case. Damn.

I guess I'll stick to Q3.

QUAKE 3?!?? You'll stick to Quake 3?!

Pardon me while I poop my pants and try not to remember what an utter disappointment Quake 3 was.

A) I like it.
B) I run Linux.

A) I like(d) it too, but that doesn't mean I wasn't disappointed when it came out. There's a real lack of good maps, and it really wasn't any more fun or innovative than any other game out at the time, which was sad.

B) Unreal Tournament 2003 is better than Q3 in every possible way and runs just fine on Linux.

I didn't know that -- I pretty much only know what Mithrandir tells me about what games I can run. And I like Quake III. I really do. So I have no reason to be unhappy. Besides, the only PC game I've played remotely recently is NWN.

P.S. I hear that America's Army also runs well on Linux, it being based on UT2K3 and all. You could learn how to be a SOLDIER and fight TERRORISTS!

Umm, no thanks. I can't even get into how many ways, "NO THANKS."

I think another reason I'm not very up on FPS's is that so many of them now are WWII-based, and I really hate that.

Really? One of my favorite multiplayer games is Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I like it mostly for the incredible maps and excellent teamplay features, and the WWII environments and slightly more realistic damage model lend it a very realistic feel.

But I suspect you object to them for reasons other than gameplay...

now u need to make a forum i pay u $20

Well, I haven't seen that much of Castle Wolfenstein, but what I saw involved fighting the undead. Not only is fighting the undead NEVER a wrong thing, but it places the game squarely in Pulpworld, where Indiana Jones stops the Nazis from conquering the world with the Ark of the Covenant, et cetera. I could be wrong on that, though.

However, games like Battlefield: 1942 are different.

My grandfather was at the Battle of the Bulge. He was shot four times in the arm by an SS machine-gunner, burned in the face with a phosphorus grenade, and escaped the rout by walking through the frozen canals between fields until both feet were frost-bitten. He got two purple hearts, assorted other medals, and nightmares for decades. That is not a game. I think it is an insult to the men that struggled and died in World War II to reduce it to one.

So yes, I have no opinions on the gameplay.

Where do you draw the line? What makes a certain subject sacred? Is it the fact that someone you know experienced something similar, or is it the fact that war is violent and bloody and not something people generally enjoy in real life?

When you have kids and maybe one of them is a boy and he wants to build forts and have "battles" with his friends, will you forbid this, because war is not a game?

I imagine it'd be better for everyone involved if people played games about wars rather than actually fighting wars. Saying a game cheapens the meaning of your grandfather's experience seems to me like saying that watching ER cheapens the experience of being rushed to the emergency room with life-threatening injuries.

Certainly, what your grandfather went through was hellish and serious and he endured great personal hardship and injury for the good of many people. However, that is something entirely different, and entirely more real, than a simulation in which people pretend to kill each other with vintage firearms in virtual World War II battles. Whether or not it's virtual zombies or virtual soldiers being killed doesn't make the game any less a game.

It's an excellent question, and one that I have pondered quite a bit -- I'm sorry if my emotional response to the production of those games has offended anybody.

As I see it, it boils down to this; we are the descendants of violent, territorial animals. We admire strength, we are excited by combat. On the other hand, we are sentient beings with the ability to reason, and hence the capacity to recognize that war is destructive to the bodies, countries, and souls of those involved in it. It's not a small contradiction.

Thus, I decry the Bush administration acting without the sanction of the international community to topple a dictator, but my character in Exalted sneaks into the castle of an evil queen and abets her assassination. Thus, I find the violence of gang warfare abhorrent, but play FPS shoot-em-ups.

I think where my uneasiness over WWII FPS's finds a home is in the problem of defining clear boundaries for escapism. When you are shooting zombies, it is obvious to everyone but the fringest of the fringe that the activity being simulated is Not Real. Zombies, space battles, lightning guns, vampires, centaurs, teens mutated by green meteor rocks, and suave war gods are good markers of escapism. When you are watching or playing something that includes such things, it is marking itself as beyond your possible range of experience, an acceptable outlet for the aggressive feelings your rational mind knows are destructive. The inverse can also occur -- after decades of truly escapist movies about WWII, where the Germans can't shoot for shit; all GI's are clean, well-shaven, strong, and blessed with awesome luck; and all nurses are shapely and virtuous with bee-stung lips; Steven Spielberg was essentially stamping a huge "NOT AN ESCAPIST FILM" on "Saving Private Ryan" with those 15 minutes of hell.

My concern is that some games are being made that have no markers of escapism -- you may argue that all games are intrinsically escapist, but some are simulationist (god help me, I'm using game theory terms. WHY CAN'T I JUST SHUT UP?); flight sims and many racing games come to mind. Some games may file off the signals of escapism because they find WWII compelling or the range of vehicles and weapons used in that conflict fun to use or model. Others may have more sinister motives -- which I am not ashamed to say is what I feel about the "America's Army" game. While you, a 20-year-old who's presumably taken U.S. History and has a good IQ, may find these games harmless, the 13-year-old who grows up thinking that the Army is this toadally kewl place where you get to play with 133+z0r guns (from America's Army), that real wars are also fun games, and that the men on the other side are faceless ciphers who make one of three noises when they die, may have something wrong with him.

As I've said, it's a complex issue, and largely depends on the individual involved -- his/her ability to separate fantasy and reality. Certainly most of us CAN -- otherwise, as every rabid conservative group would tell you, I would be a horrible threat to all of you because I like to play Quake. I may be totally off-base, and reacting with my emotion, rather than the much-vaunted reason that separates us from the violent chimpanzee. However, I think the consequence-light environment of first-person shooters in particular -- not games in general -- is a totally inappropriate environment in which to fictionalize a real conflict. We will, inevitably, fictionalize, soften, and familiarize the conflicts we go through as a species; but health packs and respawning are not a good way to come to terms with WWII, WWI, Vietnam, or Korea, in my opinion as a person and a storyteller.

I think if a 13 year old grows up to enjoy killing people because he played a video game when he was 13, has some horrible parents. I have been playing violent video games since I was probably 10 years old. I am now 22, and I have never even hit someone in anger. Kids who shoot up their school, or grow up to be violence-loving had much more drama in their lives when they were growing up than a few video games could provide.

Oh and about Bush, since we (America) are the most powerful country in the world, alot of people will hate us for that pure fact. We need to flex our muscle every once in awhile to show we aren't just playing arround. I think the Iraq thing probably could have been handled better, but over all Bush did the right thing. And how many more Iraq's would have died if Saddam had stayed in power. He seemed to enjoy killing his own people.

First off, I agree with slippingaway. I think anyone who grows up thinking war is fun and glory because it was in a video game has a whole slew of problems unrelated to that game. Such an individual must have made it to adulthood without a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher, friend, book or movie to tell him that war is hell. Chances are, he'll join up at 18 and remove himself from society until he learns the hard way.

Video games aim to be fun. That's what sells, so that's what it's about. They don't try to be high art or literature. Those that do, generally don't make much money. This is not to say that they can't tell a story, but rather the story is secondary to the gameplay in determining financial success.

Beyond gameplay, what makes a game fun? Plot, character and atmosphere are important, but the essential fact is that the player wants to go somewhere he cannot go. That's what modern games are about. Gran Tourismo lets you drive many expensive cars on a number of race tracks with realistic physics but no consideration for the destruction of the car when it hits a wall. If I were to drive like I do in Gran Tourismo in real life, I would be dead dozens of times over, not to mention out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The strategy genra is similar. To engange in a six-way armed conflict with hundreds of men a piece for an evening's amusement is not an option for even the world's most powerful (to say nothing of the moral implications). But it's an awful lot of fun to play StarCraft with a few friends.

First person shooters follow in the same vein. Running around killing people and fighting for your life is not a viable entertainment option. But certain elements of it are a lot of fun. So we have games that simulate those elements (glory of the kill, rush of the hunted) and not the others (actually being wounded and dying).

Video games offer us extremes of experience without the hardship and danger. That's what makes it fun.

Some of these things happen for real though. Real people are forced to experience real live war, often against their will. The experience is horrific and changes them forever. We who have not been there cannot understand.

To abstract the real experiences of real people into a sanitized entertainment seems callus. It trivializes the horror of such an experience.

There are plenty of settings available in fiction, in ancient history, and in the creative minds of game developers. There is no justification for using the real horrors of living memory as a setting for an evening's entertainment. We ought to at least wait until these events have passed from living memory.

So, in conclusion, I have no problem with games that simulate war as an hour's tactical thinking and mouse twitching, but they should not use recent conflicts as a setting. Think of it as a moment of silence for everyone who lost something in the war that extends for as long as they live. When the last person on earth who was born before 1946 dies, then you can make your WWII games.