Publicity of Emulation

[§ Gideon §]

Pssst! Over here!

Be quiet, because they might be listening. You know who I'm talking about--the video game companies. Do you think they've turned a blind eye to emulation, placing faith in the fact that (for the most part) it's an underground community? I mean, all the big names know it exists. And, you and I both know it's illegal. But, people still do it.

Lately, though, things have been changing. Have you noticed? Emulation is getting a little more publicity: a CNN news story (that's television, not the web-site), magazine articles, maybe you've seen a local report or two? The media seems to like it; it makes a good story--like the whole RIAA business.

Will there be a major crack-down like the music industry experienced? Or, is the emulation community actually capable of not stepping on too many toes? What do you think?

[Flack]

Wow. That's so unreadable at 1600x1200.

Emulation still has the overall appearance of being complicated. I'm a senior network engineer for the FAA, and it took me about three days of fiddling with video drivers and whatnot to finally get ePSXe to run -- and it's still flakey. Sure, some (most?) emulators are not quite that cantankerous, but they all seem to have their own little quirks.

The difference between MP3's and ROMs is simple -- MP3's are copies of music CDs which people are still selling in stores. If you download a Metallica album then you are stealing that music. You are getting a copy of music that you would otherwise have to pay money for. That money goes to a lot of people; a little to the band, a little to the store, and a majority of it to the record company. But the point is still the same; you are getting something for free that is still for sale.

If you were to get arrested for downloading MP3's and had to go to court, the prosecutor would say, "here are 10 albums this person downloaded. All 10 can be purchased at Wal-Mart for $15 each. Therefore, this person stole $150 from my client, the RIAA." That is pretty easy for a jury to understand. You own copies of something you should have bought.

ROMs, on the other hand, are not so simple. Let's say you're the unluckiest bastard on the face of the earth and tomorrow you get arrested for having 10 NES ROMs on your computer. Back to court you go, and again the prosecutor makes his case. Only this time the jury begins to wonder. For example, who actually lost money here? If you wanted to play the original version of, oh, Duck Hunt, at what store would you buy that game? Not Wal-Mart. More likely a thrift store, garage sale, eBay, or any number of venues that Nintendo wouldn't see a dime from. Likewise, what would you play it on? Again, a piece of hardware that is long gone from store shelves. I would think for a serious case Nintendo would have to prove how they lost money in this incident, and I don't really see how they can do it.

The only loophole are these retro gaming packages. I think Nintendo might have a case against someone downloading Super Mario Brothers, as they are now selling it for the Gameboy Advance. It would be much easier for them to show a loss if they have it on the shelves.

Of course we're talking about one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. If you change this example to say, Pirates! by Epyx for the C64 ... somebody would have a hell of a time convincing anyone in their right mind that I am hurting anyone in the world by playing a copy of Pirates! on my laptop. The C64 is long out of production (sniff), Epyx is no longer selling Pirates! or anything else for that matter as they filed for bankruptcy long ago ... so, who again am I hurting by playing Pirates! on my computer?

MP3's floated under the radar for a couple of years before the media (and the law) caught on. They caught on for two reasons. 1, because MP3 quality had progressed to a level where it basically equalled the sound quality of a CD. When people were trading MP3's encoded at 56k nobody gave a shit. When record execs heard songs at 192k they shit a brick. To the average music listener, a 192k quality MP3 is indistinguishable from the actual CD. 2, because making and trading MP3's got too damn easy. I remember putting a CD into my drive, extracting all the files as WAV files, and then converting them one by one into MP3's. A CD of music could hold 650 meg of data -- I had a one gig drive. I didn't even have enough storage space to hold two albums in WAV format back then! Now you shove a CD in your drive, click "Rip", and away it goes -- if it's in CDDB, it'll name your tracks for you too. MP3's were originally traded in IRC back rooms and FTP sites. No one in the mainstream cared because they didn't know. When Napster came along, everything changed. Napster was the library of music files. Want the new album from x? Type their name in and download away. Finally, you had a way for the average person to find and download CD quality music that was still being sold in stores. That's when someone stood up and took notice.

And I think that's what'll happen with emulation. I think a case over someone playing some 20 year old kid's games on their computer would get laughed out of any court. But if it got to the point where you could emulate current generation games on your computer, and the games could be easily copied, then someone would stand up and take notice. If someone ever figures out a way to play Xbox games on the PC and you can just copy them with a plain ol' DVD burner, shit will hit the fan. I can't see someone going to jail over downloading one or all of the SNES games though.

When you hang out on a retro gaming website all day long, you start to think that everyone is into retro gaming. They're not. I work with 9 other computer guys in a basement and the oldest console any of them own is a PSX. It's just from spending so much time here that your view of reality gets warped. I really thought that modding consoles was bigger than it is. I've talked to people at work who had no idea a console could be modded. It's not the rampant problem we think it is, it's just because we're closer to it (at least that's what I think). I see bootleg music CDs every time I go to the flea market but I very rarely see bootleg games.

Ok, it's late and I gotta finish this round of Pirates! before bed.

[Milk]

Every once in a while, there's some buzz about emulation. Bleem! got a fair bit of publicity almost a decade ago. However, that was only because it could contemporary games. The stuff we're doing is a niche hobby. I'm certain the majors know it goes on, but it's just not worth it for them to be aggressive. Thousands upon thousands used Napster. How many emulate the Sega Master System? On top of that, the lines through which you get ROMs are diffuse. The record companies could point to Napster or Kazaa and say, "These are the bad guys". There's not really a clear equivalent for emulators or ROMs.

[§ Gideon §]

Heh. Sorry about the text size. I'll fix it.

But if it got to the point where you could emulate current generation games on your computer, and the games could be easily copied, then someone would stand up and take notice. If someone ever figures out a way to play Xbox games on the PC and you can just copy them with a plain ol' DVD burner, shit will hit the fan.

Bamo. That's one of the things I'm wondering about. I think this will be possible in the future.

Something else I'm wondering about is StarROMs. Let's say that it catches on, and StarROMs licenses a major portion of the MAME library. Several competing services sprout up. Maybe, it will even happen for console systems. That would totally defeat the analogy you bring up about music vs. game piracy; the prosecutor would be able to say, "The portion of ROMs you pirated may be purchased from several web sites for approximately x number of dollars. Therefore, you owe Acme Video Games x number of dollars. You also get a spanking." Do you see this as possible?

you start to think that everyone is into retro gaming. They're not.

I think you're right about a number of points, and this is somewhat comforting. Most people simply aren't interested in emulation or retrogaming--regardless of whether or not they know it exists. Meh, they don't know what they're missing...

[Flack]

MAME gets kind of tricky. On MAME ROMs I think they could show monitary loss because a lot of popular games have ports. In other words, if you've downloaded Pac-Man for MAME, you kind of are hurting NAMCO because you could have bought whichever anthology had Pac-Man on it for the PSX. And if both versions are using the arcade code then I think they could say that yes, you have caused them monitary loss by not buying that instead of downloading it (like the MP3 thing). Again though, if you flip through the pages of MAME, how many of those games have been commercially emulated on consoles? 100? 200? MAME plays somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 games. I guess a case could be made for any game that has a home port really, although if it was a game that was ported 10 years ago then I'd fall back to my old argument (not that it's not illegal, but that nobody cares).

If it weren't for the ports I think they'd have a tough time justifying anything. Video game companies obviously have a vested interest in selling games, but if you're talking about ... um, Elevator Action. I'm pretty sure no arcade in Oklahoma still has Elevator Action sitting in a corner, ready to take my quarter.

[Daniel Thomas]

I think these are all good points. However, I'm still firmly of the belief that emulation is the best thing that's ever happened to gaming.

Because of the nature of technology, we have to keep upgrading to new hardware every five years, which means the previous generation of consoles and computers become obsolete. This is like going from 33's to 78's to 8-track to cassette to CD in just a few years' time.

And don't forget that the lion's share of new games are just that: NEW games. The occasional retro disc can be found, but those are only limited to the best of the best. Imagine, again, that you have to toss away your vinyl collection (you'd be insane, btw) in favor of CD, but only "Blonde on Blonde," "Beggars Banquet, and "Abbey Road" will be released in the new format. Everything will just be forgotten.

And that's where the strength of emulation comes in. It connects gaming with its history, which will become longer and more diverse and more complex. There's a whole generation now that likes videogames, but has never heard of Warlords, Adventure, Pirates, MULE, Revenge of Shinobi, Devil's Crush, etc, etc, blah blah blah.

There's a mountain of great games just waiting to be discovered again. And I also think these classics serve as a standard against today's games. Audiences would demand better games (beyond tired name-brands) if they knew how good the classics are.

In the future, there may have to be a way for game companies to profit from the emulation model, but I honestly don't know how that could be done. But the industry should embrace emulation. Somebody could come up with a novel idea that makes money.

If not, whatever. If some college kid misses out on Bomberman and Herzog Zwei, it's his loss.

[whoisKeel]

wow flack, i agree with almost everything you have to say

I think the the motion picture association will strike next. i used to collect divx, but have since abandoned the 'scene' and thrown out all my cdrs. i can tell you though, the movie pirating scene is very organized (much more so than the mp3 scene ever was or ever will be). It is incredibly easy to get new movies or old...but have you heard about it? Sure, but not as much as napster. That's the thing. The more news stories you publish, the more publicity pirating gets. So the movie industry saw the napster deal go down, and it didn't limit mp3 trading by much at all, they're keeping pretty low key about it, not mentioning names of where to get it, etc, but still mentioning it (ie, i've seen trailers in theaters proclaiming 'don't pirate movies'). Somebody's going to come along and make it easier than irc or newsgroups, and i'm curious to see how the motion picture association handles it.

after that blows up, the video game industry will have no choice but to ignore it...why inform the public that you can mod an xbox or download thousands of old games? If the choose to fight it, they'll lose money.

on a side note:

i doubt it will be long before the xbox is emulated...i foresee at least a few games running full speed before the next xbox is released.

i'm also amazed that no one's been producing pocket dvd-rs (gamecube size) they've already got ones for cds. and, although i know nothing of this sort of thing, i have a feeling nintendo slacked on their 'protection' because of the small disk size.