The Ethics of Emulation

Overall I am agreeing with the posts in this thread. There is a selfish reason not to download games that are currently on the shelves. If a company is not making a profit on a certain type of game, they will stop producing it. If they are making a profit, they will produce more...which is why you get LucasArts making a bazillion Star Wars games, banking on just the title to sell a range of great to horribly mediocre games.
By supporting genres of games, you also support completely new titles. I love FF, but I think my gaming would be stunted if they were the only titles available. When gaming companies profit they are more likely to spend money on riskier sells. Which means we get some great, innovative games.
With an emulator I can dig in and enjoy my FF addiction and refresh myself on old FF history, so that when I buy new titles I can sigh nerdily and pat myself on the back when I see a newer game referring to an older game.
As far as why someone would want to emulate a newer game for NES, well you see it in "fine art" all the time. People would take traditional scenes and deconstruct them...examples abound in surrealism, pop art and abstract art to say the least. It pays homage to the original artist, but also is an expression of the new.

[Moondancer]

Here is what I DON'T understand about emulations and roms. I know that the copyright on anything expires 75 years after the product is copyrighted. Which means that even if the system is no longer supported, such as NES, SNES, just about any Sega console, those companies and the companies that made the games for them still own the copyrights as of right now, correct? That explains right then and there why roms of older games are currently illegal....
HOWEVER... why don't these companies see the money they COULD be making by selling emulators and roms straight from thier own sites? They don't have to charge much considering how many people still love the "classics" (case and point... uh, this forum!). It could be like the yahoo music dl system. You either pay per item, or pay a monthly or yearly fee and then dl as much as you want. One it would, in my opinion, disourage people from "giving away" free rooms that have not been altered from the original game, and two it woudl give a way to play outdated games LEGALLY, and three the companies would get more $$, which is what they really only care about.

Now, I think I will hunt down that FFX to put into my NES EMU....

[Xasierus]

I don't recall a url, or anything, but I saw a site stating changes to techological and software copyright laws. Anything that is considered obsolete is considered free to download. It was kind of fuzzy regarding videogames, and the like, but any applications, programs, etc are freeware, once considered obsolete.

[Rusty]

Here are my thoughts.

Now, I know that companies spend months on games, belive me I know.

However, its not the 90s anymore, games are pricy.

Too pricy for adults with not so much cash anymore(tax, rent, bills, food)

So what do you expect me to do? I work seven days a week, and when I get home, I am beat dead tired.

I have an honest job, never cheated in my life, except for that time in High School where I got a history test answers, hey it was hard.

My parents do not even buy me a presents at Chirtsmas, Thanksgiving, or any time, so I am always low on cash. Because of that, as soon as I turned 18, I got the boot, and it was every man for himself.

Games cost fifty to thirty dollars now, way to much for me. The only time I play games is with my PS2 which I had to work over time many times in a long row to get.

Then I found a emulator, its legal and free. Come on, I am no buda or saint, even my friends would jump at like that.

So it may hurt companies a little, well they make games they will always make a bounce back. Video game companies make over a million dollars a year.

In words many people may know, "Better you than me". I barely have enough money to live normally, so can you blame me for trying to live like everyone else for a while?

Its not just me, or even one country who does this, many countires do. So before you call me a slacker, knowing full well that money isn't boundless with me, can you honestly say you would do anything diffrent.

People who have more money than me do this, and yet they don't get called slackers, lazy people or hackers. It comes down to a matter of money and how much honesty you have.

Teenage gamers who do this don't have a excuse except for "everyone else does it".

I have a reason, not a excuse.

[Georg Prime]

While emulation obviously is very illegal, it has given us the chance to play many rpgs that were never released stateside and fan-translated. That is what i like so much about it, for due to Nintendo of America's censorship during the SNES days, a whole lot of GREAT rpgs never made it to our shoes. (Tales of Phantasia, Seiken Densetsu 3, Fire Emblem 4, Star Ocean, Treasure Hunter G, Terranigma, Treasure of the Rudras, Dragon Quest VI, Magic Knight Rayearth, Live-A-Live, Bahamut Lagoon, etc) and since have been fan-translated.

This is the main reason I love emulation. I don't use it for other games for i still own my original SNES and it is still very functional. I own almost every classic RPG for the system(about 20-30 games total), from Final Fantasy II and III (IV and VI in reality) to Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Earthbound, Breath of Fire 1 and 2, both Lufia games, and so on. I don't think I would ever get rid of these original classics though I know i could make some money selling them on Ebay.

[Kaiser Dragoon]

Heh, Emulators and fan made games are legal. only the roms/source codes for some systems (i dont know what its really called) are whats illegal, some games are near impossible to get unless you want to spend a fckload of money for a classic game you will only put down after playing for a littlebit. and then there are fan translations of games that will never reach america in their original form, such as Bahamut Lagoon, Fire Emblem 4, Final Fantasy 3... emulation is a viable way to do this, and honestly, i dont see anything wrong, coming from a broke as fck and jobless 18 year old. you can do what you want, and i will do what i want, nobody has the right (aside from maybe the authorities) to tell me otherwise

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*calmed down* wow, went a lil emo there, lol, but yeah, i dont think old skool games should be illegal to emulate because of the simple fact they do cost so much money to get ahold of. And I think games that WONT be released are legit to emulate because importing to play a japanese game that i wont be able to understand, versus downloading a rom and patching it english, because there are alot of fansites that do that, it just seems more reasonable. *shrugs*

Edit by Djinn: Merged posts

[Silver]

I use emulation for all my portable gaming needs. I bought the technology needed to dump the bios files of my playstations 1 and 2 as well as for the games of most cartridge based systems. Why? Because there's nothing better than being able to play most games I own on one platform. My Acer laptop. And with modified versions of open source emulators such as PCSX2, I can. While 52 frames per second on Kingdom Hearts isn't as fast as the ol' ps2, it's still quite playable and enjoyable.

As for aquiring games, garage sale hunting and online auctions have gotten me all of the classics I could ever dream of.

On to the question of morality. Despite the fact that I own all of the consoles and games I emulate, I am still most likely breaking who knows how many laws.....
Well I say I can't really see what I'm doing as stealing or anything, so screw the applicable laws and screw anyone who would enforce them. I'm only to happy to jump out the window and pissbolt to a mate's place to avoid the powers that be.

Mine own and my emulation crazy friend's happiness could very well be at stake....

As for emulating things a person does not own, I think it is up to them as a person to weigh any moral risks. I don't have all that much faith in the law as I've seen countless people get screwed over by it in various ways, so I say to the individual, do what you think is right. If you act that way you have nothing to prove to anyone and can remain strong in your convictions and view of yourself.

Just my two cents. (After getting that out, I think I'm gonna faint from mental exhaustion)

[Final Fanatic]

OK, I use emulators alot, but hey, where I live, people don't even know what the hell is a NES, and even in the latest consoles, there aren't many stores selling good games(rpg's in my case, just crappy games).
Emulators should be free for old system, from which the companys don't make profit anymore.
There's no way, where i live I could ever get original carts like FFI.
When I first heard the word emulation, I was like suprised and amazed:
Finnally I could play all that gba pokemon I ever wanted for free( I was 10, gimme a break, ).
Then, when I got into FF, I learned about the NES and SNES, consoles full of FF.
How could I get them?
No way, just emulate till u faint.
And so I did.
There's not even an original copy of FFVII, which I couldn't get unless I download. Emulators are truly usefull for me, but whenever I have enough money, I allways buy the originals, they smell good and have manuals