How to beat pirate's syndrome?

[WiiUBricker]

Pirate syndrom aka lack of appreciation.

You appreciate a game a lot more if you bought it with your own hard earned money and enjoy playing it.
If you pirate a game, you dont appreciate it and with less enjoyment while playing the game.

 

[Schizoanalysis]

Update to 1.4.2


POW!

 

[pubert09]

My syndrome merely stems from that the fact that pretty much any game I've downloaded, I wouldn't have bought anyway.
I hardly ever will buy a game unless I know it will be good. I won't buy a game if there's any chance I won't like it.
With piracy, I pretty much will download anything that "might be fun."
So I think I basically subconsciously think these games are bad or something. Easiest way I can explain it for me.

 

[CCNaru]

Dunno, this happens with bought games for me as well. Recently bought Orange Box for HL2 and all I play is TF2 (well, it's getting some use), GTA4 I've stopped playing after a few, and all the 3DS games... I use 3DS to play DS games now. I've built this obligation to buy games but I'm afraid that it would be a waste of money to just buy games and not play it.

Also I've had Persona 2 which I've only started after deciding to sell it then Schlupi offering me big bucks for it... lol. haven't finished yet still =_=

 

[emigre]

I've never "suffered" from Piracy syndrome. What I did was use a small memory card and just play games I wanted to play. For my DS I use a 2 GB MSD and I only have five games on it, whilst with my PSP, I use a 4 Gb and it isn't even half full. The problem a lot of people seem to have is because Micro SD cards are inexpensive, they'll buy an 8GB or heaven forbid a 16GB and put on a stupid number of generic JRPGS and try and play all of them at once. They than struggle to keep interest and than delete all of them.

 

[Rayder]

Thing is though, even when I bought my games (I didn't pirate console games between all the years from the C64 to the DS. Truth.), I still got to a point where I never actually finished most games anymore, even though I bought them. While "Pirate Syndrome" does indeed exist, the affliction is not exclusive to a person pirating everything, although that's when it becomes most apparent. That's all I'm saying.

As to how to avoid falling into the PS trap.....I don't know, other than not trying to get EVERY game that interests you right away. Easier said than done when they are so easy to acquire nowadays. Forcing yourself to play only one game until you finish it really isn't the answer, because you just end up rushing through the game to get to the next and end up not enjoying it properly. Cutting down how much you play games doesn't work either because then you just end up with an ever-increasing backlog.

Every person is different, but it seems to me that after having played games for so long (see my sig), they lose their wondrous nature and aren't as fun as they used to be, no matter what you do. It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, catch-22 situation any way you look at it.

I think the biggest problem is that games have become so derivative. Very rarely are games truly original anymore, they always have that been-there, done-that feel to them. Makes it very easy to tire of them. Companies are so worried about profit, they balk originality in favor of (what they think will be) a guaranteed sell and it's perpetuating a growing amount of lethargy in the industry.

I think the best thing to do is to just say, to hell with games. Go outside and play the game of life instead. Maybe find a girlfriend/boyfriend to play with instead. (and I don't mean videogames

) If you spend more time outside than in front of a video screen, maybe when you DO play a game, you'll enjoy it more. Don't think you have to play EVERY game that comes out, just play the ones you KNOW you will enjoy. Skip over the ones that seem merely interesting in favor of the ones that make you go ooh, ooh, ooh!

But I'm in the same boat as most of you guys, so what do I know? We have all become slaves to the industry. We are all different and will have to come up with our own separate solutions that work for us as individuals. For me, that means quitting gaming after the DS dies completely.


I could go on and on discussing this subject, but I'll shut up now. I've got real-life issues I need to be concerning myself with. Very few read my walls-of-text anyway, especially when they amount to little more than rambling with no real substance.

 

[Arm73]

It will naturally end when console makers will build unhackable consoles.
If for example hackers won't manage to hack the 3DS mode, we will have to buy games, hence the end of your problems.
If the Wii 2 will be much more difficult to hack, let's say in the 2nd or 3rd year of its life, then we will buy games, have less content but give it more appreciation.

The thing is I'm a grown up person, with a steady job, and I could afford to buy games for a long time. However, it was just the same as pirating games, I had so many at one point ( between DC, PS2, GBA, N64 and so on about 10 years ago ) that I still didn't manage to play them all, with or without piracy. And I felt bad about my wasting money on games I wanted to own just to check them out and put them in storage.
Now at least I'm not buying many games ( thanks to piracy ) and I still check them all out, with the occasional instance in which I actually have enough interest in a game to actually play it trough.
But like I said, I pray the day when console will be impossible to hack,so I will have no excuse

 

[Wizerzak]

Thing is though, even when I bought my games (I didn't pirate console games between all the years from the C64 to the DS. Truth.), I still got to a point where I never actually finished most games anymore, even though I bought them. While "Pirate Syndrome" does indeed exist, the affliction is not exclusive to a person pirating everything, although that's when it becomes most apparent. That's all I'm saying.

As to how to avoid falling into the PS trap.....I don't know, other than not trying to get EVERY game that interests you right away. Easier said than done when they are so easy to acquire nowadays. Forcing yourself to play only one game until you finish it really isn't the answer, because you just end up rushing through the game to get to the next and end up not enjoying it properly. Cutting down how much you play games doesn't work either because then you just end up with an ever-increasing backlog.

Every person is different, but it seems to me that after having played games for so long (see my sig), they lose their wondrous nature and aren't as fun as they used to be, no matter what you do. It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, catch-22 situation any way you look at it.

THIS is very true. What I do is just close my eyes, scroll up/down and click 'A' on a random game (is there not a HB app to do that, that would be good). I find once I've started the game up I get into it.

And @Arm73: I can almost guarantee the the 3DS WILL be hacked....

 

[Schlupi]

I know how you feel. It's so different when you actually buy it... it MOTIVATES YOU to play it!

Think in the mindset of me when I was a young'n. Pretend... that you just rented this game. Every weekend your Dad rents you ONE game, and you can play it for a weekend. No school, no work, you get a new game to play! You got the game with your hard earned allowance and it took forever to sweep out those pesky dead rat fetuses from your drain. So you are DETERMINED to play this game!

No matter how crappy it is, no matter how fun it is, try playing it all the way through. get your money's worth (Blockbuster AIN'T CHEAP BRO!). If you get tired of it so be it, but if you don't play it then all that time washing your Dad's leopard print G-string (coated in Hooker Sweat and Trace amounts of cocaine) BY HAND would have been for naught.

Even though what you said indicates you've been watching a little too much Gurren Lagann...
...That image you presented was very nostalgic, as I was in almost the same position when I was younger.

Maybe I have. Don't worry though... we all had to wash our Dad's G string by hand at some point right?

 

[Fishaman P]

1) Pirate the game. Get a little into it, maybe around 20%. It helps if you have some reason not to play it all the time, i.e. don't want to get caught by someone.
2) Buy the game. Play it as much as you can.
3) Go right back to the pirated version.

Or maybe the game's just so dang good that I can't stop playing it.

 

[jalaneme]

i have the same dilemma as Cyan, i buy buy and buy and just chuck them aside, some games in my collection are still not even opened! it doesn't help that a lot of well wanted games come out all at once in 1 month so you can't afford all of them at once.

what i do then is to just ignore the new releases and play the games that i haven't touched and wait till the new releases are very cheap in price that way i have enough time to complete the games i haven't touched before, it's not easy doing this though, especially when you go on forums and everyone is talking about the game you want lol.

as for pirating, i don't do it as much as i used to do, the wii scene has completely dried up till skyward sword comes out (last decent release)
i still have ds games that i have download and never touched i have all the time to play them if i am really bored because there hasn't been a decent ds game for a long while so no rush and all those games will keep me busy away from 3ds hype and buy incentives.


so these days i hardly do anything much anyway, if i am gaming max i play is for a couple of hours and then i take a LONG break so i am not as active as i used to be back in the day, i guess that is why i don't care as much about new releases cause i know i will just buy and chuck them aside to gather dust.

 

[Fudge]

Yeah, PS sucks. I'm slowly getting better with it though, and I'm actually starting to finish a lot of my pirated games.

 

[ninditsu]

get a smaller memory card. that way, you limit how many games you can have. and thus only having worthwhile games.

 

[Deleted member 473940]

The solution is finishing one of then moving to next one lol.
For me, it started in the GBA era.
As a little kid, was so excited about roms and yeah.. but actually I have played through most of those GBA games

.

 

[pokefloote]

I''ve downsized... a lot. Now my two main games are Professor Layton and the Unwound Future for quick puzzle time, and Golden Sun DD for my RPG. Side games include LOZH, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Sky, and maybe two more but I'm focusing on those.

It's worked for me! Now I'm hooked on GS. Weird that I never got past the first dungeon when it came out, considering I bought the first two games when they came out and loved them to death.

 

[koimayeul]

buy second hands, good price make you appreciate games again, the pleasure of a good deal

 

[pokefloote]

I'm saving up for the 3DS, hopefully it doesn't get hacked so soon so I can savor every moment of my purchased OoT.

 

[Cyan]

Very few read my walls-of-text anyway, especially when they amount to little more than rambling with no real substance.

I did

I think Pirate Syndrome is only when you lose interest and have so many games to play that you don't know which one to pick up.
The video game industry making the same known-best-selling game doesn't help either, but it really depend on the player.
Some players like doing the same game-type again and again without loosing interest (pokémon, again ?).


Other users like me don't have the lost-interest or "I didn't buy it, I don't care if I don't play it" feeling.
There are still a lot of games I would like to play, but I'm spending my time on the net after my job, IRC, Forum, reading about hacking news, hacking and developing myself, helping other users, more than playing

I like learning things and be kept informed about the new releases and scenes advancement.
As a result I don't spend time playing the games I want.

Unfortunately, the games I like are usually adventure or RPG, that's the kind of games you can't play when you have 15 min free time between social life and house chores, it's like reading 2 pages of a book once every week :/
I need to know that I have enough time in front on me to be part of the story.
If time could freeze, I'll be happy to finally enjoy all my games.

 

[Panzer Tacticer]

Comically I have the same problem with digitally delivered downloadable purchases of games. So I can relate to the guys saying sometimes buying games when it is easy to buy can be a problem as well.

In 2010, I bought several games, admittedly good games at the design aspect, but games I simply didn't need (finite time to work with eh like the rest here), and now I have games going unplayed, I likely shouldn't have got, because I only managed to beat up the credit card and fill up computer hard drive space for no real gain.

Back in the 70-80s wargames (which I assume all realize are my passion) were lucky to arrive with anything like speed. Waiting 3 years for a new game was not unusual at all. Today, heck even my niche in a niche market wargaming is producing wargames worth mention about every 3 months (you guys never here of them, as they are not made for console is all, it's a PC based hobby).

 

[thaddius]

Comically I have the same problem with digitally delivered downloadable purchases of games.

I'm the same way.

Quite honestly guys, the best way to beat Pirate/Digital Distribution Syndrome is to simply be tenacious. Choose one game and only play that one until you finish it. Ignore every other game out there.