Should old games be considered communal property?

[Tanooki]

This is a question I've been dealing with for a bit now and as things have got more expensive, more competitive, and more aggressive that question seemed to keep leaning for some more and more towards yes.

Personally I don't like being told that if I own a hunk of plastic, paper, sticker, silicon, chips and the data on them that there are certain rules basically one must follow. It seems it can go as far as threats and getting all personal over it if someone wants to do something as a simple sticker or paper restoration or repair because it's not all original and it allows pollutants out into the public supposedly because something COULD end up being sold in the future and not everyone is honest. I don't think it really should be for other people to threaten, block information, or harass others what they do with what they spend their cold hard cash on. One person may view a game being worth a few hundred bucks while someone else sees it as a game, not a cash grab and would like to fix something up because it's non-sense to just replace it blowing a lot more dough on it. Do you all fell that way about it? I'm curious.

[Flojomojo]

I think it's reasonable for copyright holders to retain rights to their stuff for a reasonable amount of time. I think the current length is way too long. If the expiration were set to 30 years, we'd still get to buy "classics collections" while legally enjoying convenient, legal digital copies in our lifetime.

Also see https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2014/pre-1976

[Bojay1997]

As far as I'm concerned, people can do what they want with their own property as long as they aren't asking others to violate copyright to provide materials for them to do the restorations. Similarly, people need to be honest about the restorations and not try to pass them off as original. I still don't think there is any legitimate reason to maintain large databases of copyrighted materials so that people can create or restore exact duplicates of original packaging, manuals, stickers, etc...Collectors have a legitimate interest in not having the market flooded with fraudulent materials. I'm failing to see what legitimate interest someone buying damaged or incomplete games has in trying to make their game look like an exact duplicate of the original release other than maybe self delusion.

[Tanooki]

Well perhaps someone who has an entertainment budget of $20 a month due to their circumstances can only afford shitty copies and a $5 printed up label so it doesn't look like it was shit all over by a roach motel would be happy with it. Alcohol, magic eraser and the rest can only do so much in doing wonders on plastics and pins, but labels not at all.

[Zthun]

I think it's reasonable for copyright holders to retain rights to their stuff for a reasonable amount of time. I think the current length is way too long. If the expiration were set to 30 years, we'd still get to buy "classics collections" while legally enjoying convenient, legal digital copies in our lifetime.

Also see https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2014/pre-1976

30 years is too long, and I will argue that the original proposal of 28 years is too long. 10-15 years seems more reasonable.

A lot of people like to blindly follow and agree with laws no matter what. Copyright on media is not a trademark. Copyrights only focus on individual pieces of media; trademarks protect ideas and concepts. Having a copyright for 50+ years is ridiculous. It only benefits big companies that wish to resell the old media to newer generations. This makes innovation optional and rehashing the same old product year after year outrageously profitable.

[Bojay1997]

Well perhaps someone who has an entertainment budget of $20 a month due to their circumstances can only afford shitty copies and a $5 printed up label so it doesn't look like it was shit all over by a roach motel would be happy with it. Alcohol, magic eraser and the rest can only do so much in doing wonders on plastics and pins, but labels not at all.

As someone who grew up relatively poor myself, I would suggest that if your entertainment budget is only $20 a month, your focus should be on making an effort to do everything you can to better your economic situation through education or entrepreneurialism rather than worrying about how your games look.

[Tanooki]

It's in progress. Last august my wife came down with a crippling illness that took two trips to the Cleveland Clinic to get a diagnosis and treatment plan, but her boss at the time fired her as she was temp to hire so the money just isn't there now as it was a year ago. She's better now being managed but we're borrowing heavily each month off my family and she's going to school now to develop a skill in the medical field for the next couple years. And yes I'd agree with your statement for an adult in general under normal circumstances, but also you could keep in mind there are people down in the jr high and high school level who are on allowances or burger flipper bucks and that just is the situation they're stuck with too as I was being broad with the statement.

I should add though personally I want Little Samson. I would any time straight up go buy the parts online and make my own new board copy cat of the game and the high resolution shots of the sticker to copy that too than go and pay $500 on a video game cartridge as I find that insane. As soon as the quality is there I've got images of a couple snes game labels I hvae that are jacked I intend to replace too as I see no reason to sell a game that works to buy another more expensive copy over a sticker. Maybe if that kind of dough was teepee money I'd think otherwise but I don't know.

[o.pwuaioc]

This is a question I've been dealing with for a bit now and as things have got more expensive, more competitive, and more aggressive that question seemed to keep leaning for some more and more towards yes.

Personally I don't like being told that if I own a hunk of plastic, paper, sticker, silicon, chips and the data on them that there are certain rules basically one must follow. It seems it can go as far as threats and getting all personal over it if someone wants to do something as a simple sticker or paper restoration or repair because it's not all original and it allows pollutants out into the public supposedly because something COULD end up being sold in the future and not everyone is honest. I don't think it really should be for other people to threaten, block information, or harass others what they do with what they spend their cold hard cash on. One person may view a game being worth a few hundred bucks while someone else sees it as a game, not a cash grab and would like to fix something up because it's non-sense to just replace it blowing a lot more dough on it. Do you all fell that way about it? I'm curious.

You must be spending too much time at NA. I never saw anyone threatening shit like this except for the brief window when I frequented that site. What a pockmark on the community.

[Tupin]

COOOOOOOMRADE! LET US DRINK VODKA AND PLAY THE COMMUNAL COPY OF STREET FIGHTER II!

Personally, I think the biggest thing about this is that companies need to learn you cannot price digital copies even close to that of physical ones, and that depends on the age. Yes, a Mega Man X cartridge is worth more than $8. But that's because the physical game is over twenty years old and its in demand. You have a theoretically infinite number of copies of the game to sell. They should be far, far, FAR cheaper than even the $8 you sell it for.

[Bojay1997]

COOOOOOOMRADE! LET US DRINK VODKA AND PLAY THE COMMUNAL COPY OF STREET FIGHTER II!

Personally, I think the biggest thing about this is that companies need to learn you cannot price digital copies even close to that of physical ones, and that depends on the age. Yes, a Mega Man X cartridge is worth more than $8. But that's because the physical game is over twenty years old and its in demand. You have a theoretically infinite number of copies of the game to sell. They should be far, far, FAR cheaper than even the $8 you sell it for.

I don't know what the "right" price for digital versions of games should be, but I think it's hard for companies to make much money selling older titles anyway because most of what they sell is available out there for free on easy to find ROM sites and frankly, the market for digital copies of classic games is pretty small to begin with. Even if digital games were $1, there will still be plenty of people who think that's too much.

[Tanooki]

You must be spending too much time at NA. I never saw anyone threatening shit like this except for the brief window when I frequented that site. What a pockmark on the community.

I'm done with there, and actually it was common and got to the point where certain conversations crossed into the taboo and others could get you banned as well (for offering how to on making labels and things if they could be used in theory to dupe people being too close to real, and making them too.) Often various people would get into spats on there by the week or two and I'd throw my two cents in as well because the harder collectors felt that just because people owned a game they didn't have the right to do certain stuff or have free access to information on how to do things to the games. The argument of sell the crap game for $50 and buy the one with the sticker you like for $200 was a stupid argument when you could just get a like quality label made for like five bucks. I'm not playing the label, it's the game, a physical one and it's in great shape otherwise so why toss something over a sticker when you can restore it at a fraction of the cost.

It is a classic argument of restoration versus paying far more to replace with a nicer copy that got beat to death so helping with it got shut down. I for one am just like with other hobbies totally cool with having restoration work done on an old item to improve its outward appearance, the collector base wasn't because things like that could leak out and get fakes out as well as just the information how to do it so they could be made would be equally bad.

I've wanted to have a free conversation about it and it just wasn't allowed so I put the thread here to see how a non-collector centric site would feel about communal treatment of property to guard collector value.


Tupin you make a good point for certain about the cost of re-released old games in the digital format, but Bojay is right too because for some a buck is asking a lot considering it's so freely stolen online anyways for nothing. The reality of it is that digital copies people don't have much attachment value to because they're just digital rentals really as they don't last for one reason or another.

[Tupin]

Opening up another can of worms: undumped prototypes.

I've never really understood why. Even if the ROM were uploaded, the physical prototype itself still retains its value. It's like the difference between a CD recording of an Edison wax cylinder and the actual cylinder. I won't mention specific titles, but I've always felt the practice of not dumping is for bragging rights before anything else.

[Rickstilwell1]

I'm done with there, and actually it was common and got to the point where certain conversations crossed into the taboo and others could get you banned as well (for offering how to on making labels and things if they could be used in theory to dupe people being too close to real, and making them too.) Often various people would get into spats on there by the week or two and I'd throw my two cents in as well because the harder collectors felt that just because people owned a game they didn't have the right to do certain stuff or have free access to information on how to do things to the games. The argument of sell the crap game for $50 and buy the one with the sticker you like for $200 was a stupid argument when you could just get a like quality label made for like five bucks. I'm not playing the label, it's the game, a physical one and it's in great shape otherwise so why toss something over a sticker when you can restore it at a fraction of the cost.

It is a classic argument of restoration versus paying far more to replace with a nicer copy that got beat to death so helping with it got shut down. I for one am just like with other hobbies totally cool with having restoration work done on an old item to improve its outward appearance, the collector base wasn't because things like that could leak out and get fakes out as well as just the information how to do it so they could be made would be equally bad.

I've wanted to have a free conversation about it and it just wasn't allowed so I put the thread here to see how a non-collector centric site would feel about communal treatment of property to guard collector value.


Tupin you make a good point for certain about the cost of re-released old games in the digital format, but Bojay is right too because for some a buck is asking a lot considering it's so freely stolen online anyways for nothing. The reality of it is that digital copies people don't have much attachment value to because they're just digital rentals really as they don't last for one reason or another.

Solution: Stick a disclaimer in the box you store your games in with a label that says which ones have replaced labels. That way if you die, the real estate agents know what is what. lol