why finland sucks..

[niguel]

You can't find any good old games like phantasmagoria, blood and realms of the haunted ANYWHERE! what the hell is wrong with this country? there're nothing but new shit like grand theft auto 3 in the shops...

[Little Faith]

It's not much better in Denmark.

[Grazza]

I think old games are difficult to find anywhere. For some reason games shops tend to stock a small range of the newer titles, and little else. Why they can't operate more like book shops, I don't know.

[Arioch]

Not like conventional book stores stock out-of-print books.

[pritch]

I think you'll find that problem pretty much everywhere niguel, especially with chain-stores.

[Grazza]

Arioch said:

Not like conventional book stores stock out-of-print books.

They tend to have a much wider range of new and recent titles, and will (partly in consequence) often have a larger number of recently out-of-stock and out-of-print titles (while their stocks last, obviously). The fact that bookshops are more willing to carry slower-selling titles also encourages publishers to keep books in print longer than they would if they knew they would not receive any shelf-space.

Sorry, this is getting a bit off-topic. Er, I quite like Finland, actually.

[myk]

Grazza said:

I think old games are difficult to find anywhere. For some reason games shops tend to stock a small range of the newer titles, and little else. Why they can't operate more like book shops, I don't know.

You can always read a book, they have hardly changed in hundreds of years... games become obsolete quite rapidly with the changes in technology.

[dsm]

Heh, I remember half a year ago, I was desperately trying to hunt down a copy of HeXen and I couldn't find it anywhere. I couldn't even find HeXen 2 and I kept searching in all sorts of stores that could be thought to sell games.

Finally I got a visa card and bought it off of id's site (pretty expensive for such an old game, but I had stopped caring).

Yeah it sucks that you can't find old titles in stores, but I don't blame my country or the stores. It's all a matter of customer preference - most potential customers don't give a hoot about games older than five years and as such, there is next to no demand for these titles.

And any shop chain in their right mind wouldn't waste resources buying old games if there isn't much demand for 'em.

[Zaldron]

Ah yes, going through the insane effort of acquiring sealed boxes of Phantasmagoria, an old '95 game from the mediocre FMV Era instead of GTA3 copies, which you'll most likely will be able to sell, makes all the sense in the fucking World.

You can't expect game stores to stock up on old games, no matter how good they are, since quite often the original publishers are dead, the IP was lost in some adquisition/merging grey area, or they just fucking loose the master copy and/or source code. And even if there's no real problem, who's gonna ask for these games? Probably just 2% of the gaming population, and the repertory is so fantastically big it just doesn't make sense either finding the shelf space for them or attempting to contact every single publisher/distributor to get the stuff.

[Ichor]

And just three days after you bought Hexen, you see four copies of it in a store for one twentieth of its original price.

I hate it when that happens...

[dsm]

Ichor said:

And just three days after you bought Hexen, you see four copies of it in a store for one twentieth of its original price.

I hate it when that happens...

Nope, that didn't happen to me - I'm still looking into stores from time to time, and I STILL can't even find HeXen 2: Portal Praevus.
:-)

[Ichor]

Well, you're in for a very long and difficult quest. It took me years of searching in nearly every store, pawn shop, and computer show in the area, but only recently did I come across one. It seemed to be missing an essential file, but I got it working with NewHexen. I also ran across what might be an even more rare game by sheer luck. It's called CyClones and it too was by Raven, but I haven't been able to get it to work yet.

[david_a]

I'm not going to post any links because it's technically still warez, but some of the games you guys are talking about fall under the category of abandonwarez. This is a more ethical category of illegal software that only deals with titles that have been abandoned by their original copyright holders, i.e. the people who made the games make no money off them anymore. Most companies really don't give a damn at that stage, and couldn't care less if you download it for free. Plus, most of these games are damn near impossible to find legally anywhere, even used.

Some fully legal examples are System Shock and Betrayal at Krondor, both of which were released for free by their respective companies.

[Grazza]

I'm not suggesting that stores should seek out old games and start stocking them. I'm just saying that a policy of buying in a small range of new titles and stocking them for a short time has the inevitable consequence of leaving them with a very limited range of slightly older titles, and this has an impact on the viability of some games and in turn on the decisions game companies make.

myk: in many areas of book publishing (mine for instances), a high proportion of the books have only a short life before they lose their relevance, but they still tend to get a fair chance in the stores (a few years, say).

david_a said:

This is a more ethical category of illegal software ...

LOL! I can just imagine Raffles the Gentleman Thief downloading it. :)

And yes, you're right not to give links. AFAIK, Doomworld policy is still:
abandonwarez = warez
warez links = instaban

[Zaldron]

I don't think so, up to 2000, you could still find Bethesda's Daggerfall copies in stores, and that's a '96 game. I can pull a Hexen : Deathkings, Duke3D or Shadow Warrior box from a store just two blocks away from me. Should I even mention Half-Life? Game companies have marketing wizkids that actually tossed this idea around long long ago, because afterall, the prospect of making more money with minimal effort (as in "we don't need to make another game to keep profiting") is VERY tempting. It probably turned out that it wasn't worth it, because lets face it folks, classic gaming hunting is more the hobby of few than a populi trend.

[Job]

At least Finland, and the Netherlands, don't have all of the same idiotic mores and social bullshit that the Western societies generally do (i.e. US). The states try to live in a hyprocritcal Puritinian environment and fail miserably. When they try to tether human nature, they see that it often blows up in their face in a humiliating sort of way.

[david_a]

Grazza said:

LOL! I can just imagine Raffles the Gentleman Thief downloading it. :)

Well... Obviously "ethical" is a bit subjective, but abandonwarez doen't hurt the people who actually made the game.

Take the game "Syndicate" for example. I think everyone who played it will agree it's quite good, but just try finding a new copy for sale somewhere. Bullfrog doesn't even exist anymore; they got bought by EA and most of the team split. Should this game just disappear because it's impossible to find?

[nxn]

Man, I'm so fucking stressed out from the finals in school I thought the topic said "why finals suck.."

[Job]

Damn, finals are still going on in the public school system?

[Use]

david_a said:

Take the game "Syndicate" for example. I think everyone who played it will agree it's quite good, but just try finding a new copy for sale somewhere.

That was a sweet game. Played it on my old pentium 90, good times.

[King II]

Old games must be bought from somewhere else than from largests shops. For example internet. It's not wise for shops to have enormous stock of old stuff in stock room. You know, we have taxes.

There are many more bigger things that make Finland suck: We must study language of Sweden without really good reasons. :P

...but I like this place anyway.

[Sharessa]

This newbie is called:
King II

I once knew a guy named King David III. Any relation? :P

[Fletcher`]

david_a said:

Well... Obviously "ethical" is a bit subjective, but abandonwarez doen't hurt the people who actually made the game.

Take the game "Syndicate" for example. I think everyone who played it will agree it's quite good, but just try finding a new copy for sale somewhere. Bullfrog doesn't even exist anymore; they got bought by EA and most of the team split. Should this game just disappear because it's impossible to find?

My friend still has his copy of Theme Hospital by bullfrog. I still play it every once in a while. :)

Can you say Bloaty Head? :)

[Sharessa]

Somone left that game at my house. It rules. It's like Dungeon Keeper in a hospital. :P

[david_a]

Yeah, Bullfrog made some damn fine games. Anyone remember High Octane? I played that demo countless times. My neighbor ended up getting it for christmas one year, but his sound card wasn't supported or something.