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PARENTS' BASEMENT-- Jesse Bergevin (not his real name) is not satisfied with the quality of computer games he has been pirating off of the Internet lately. "Jesse", an avid gamer, doesn't believe he's getting his "time's worth" with the recent crop of PC games he has illegally obtained. Jesse has been pirating gaming software since he was 13 and thinks that this year has been the worst year yet for quality titles.
Jesse Bergevin is not impressed with the quality of pirated software out there these days.
Most of Jesse's gaming software is acquired through binaries newsgroups, FTP sites, and through friends. Over the years he has played many high-quality games, such as Quake, Unreal, and Half-Life, none of which he paid retail for, yet all of which he enjoyed. However, recently, Jesse has found that many of the programs being distributed are disappointing, and he has become disinterested after playing them to completion.
"I spent two-and-a-half hours downloading Dungeon Siege off of a private FTP server, and another twenty minutes finding a crack for the executable file," said Jesse. "After playing the game for a week, putting in approximately 29 hours of gameplay, I was absolutely bored with the point-and-click style of game. That's two blank CDs I'll never get back."
Jesse is concerned that computer game producers are not spending enough effort on gameplay, and that they are not really trying to impress his demographic--young males living at home with little or no disposable income. He thinks that they're all just interested in packaging a fancy title with showy graphics, recognizable acting voices, and glitzy cinematics.
"These big-game companies just don't appreciate our consumer group," said Jesse, who has two Pentium 4's, with GeForce III video cards, and two 19" monitors. He also has a 24x speed CD-burner for "backing-up" his programs. "If I was inclined to go out and buy any of these software titles, I would be sending e-mails and letters complaining about the lack of playability in these games."
Jesse recently got a copy of Bioware's "Neverwinter Nights" from a friend, and has been barely been able to keep interest in it, while playing it for up to fourteen hours a day for each of the past twelve days.
"It's a good thing I have two machines, and I was able to play a bootleg version of 'Warcraft III--Reign Of Chaos' at the same time," said Jesse. "I was also playing Medal Of Honor, which I played from start to finish, but if that's the best that these designers can do, that'll be the last war game I ever download. I mean it."
"As a consumer, I go out and purchase CD-writers, blank CDs on which to burn copyrighted software illegally, and of course jewel cases, CD binders, labels, and felt-tipped markers," said Jesse. "After that investment I feel cheated when a game producer distributes a game that I'm only going to play solidly for a month before storing it on the shelf."
Jesse expressed his disappointment by deleting his hacked version of Zoo Tycoon from his hard drive, without burning the image onto a CD. He then pulled out an old "copy" of Total Annihilation, and proceeded to install it onto his machine using a cd-key generator.
And these comapnies have the nerve to ask people to pay for their product. 