I have spiritually evolved to not pirating games anymore since years. Now I just watch them on youtube
some worthless apologistic 0,02$ from me ahead
Back in the day, when I bought a game, it meant I bought a system. The ratio of a $ compared to amount of fun I was getting was better than from the movies. A ticket to a movie could cost 300 potatoes or more, depending if I went there during day or night, even 500 potatoes. A movie would entertain me for about an 1.5 hours. A game would cost same or much less, but could entertain me for weeks, if not months. Cause reasons. It could be difficult enough (mm I dunno, like Hitman), replayable and addictive as cocaine (Diablo) or just fucking big (Baldur's Gate saga, Morrowind come to mind). Curiously enough, as 3D and consoles progressed, the value changed and created dissonance and confusion in my head. The movies became more expensive, but price for watching theatrical release stayed same or even went down. Some of them even got to be longer, like Jackson's monsters who would make you sit in a chair for two or three hours. Games, on the other hand, also became expensive, but started to shrank. From buying a gaming system which would produce entertainment on itself and never really get old, I got to more expensive set of moving scenes and pretty pictures.
Developers struggle to get even 20 hours of content for you, which, compared to hundreds you could put into full scale RPG or strategy of old is laughable. But they didn't stop there. Here's that AngryJoe chum who could write for book of records - in his videos, he shouts how a game ends after 14, then 12, even 8 hours. I think his last record was Star Wars kinect or somethin, with 4 or 6 hours of gameplay. Think about it, 6 hours of gameplay must be less than Jackson's LoTR saga in director's cut. Or a DVD full of Indiana Jones movies.
There is a full Babylon 5 collection for a 100$ on Amazon now. That would entertain me for weeks, if not months, depending on how fast I'd watch it. And stories in those moving pictures called modern games do not hold up to something like B5, you know.
You could never tell if some games are worth of paying your money for them nowadays. Not for the story heavy for sure - watching youtube would just spoil it for you. Not for games like Skyrim, cause you'll have to try it out and see what modders did, and then decide. Even not for the indies. Like Expedition: Conquistador, that game looked like a complete mess in the beginning, but as I struggled, I got to love it. And because I couldn't be bothered with abandoning old saves, hey, I finished it. Then bought it from Steam, and finished again. Same with Dark Souls. Heck, at first I scorned at it because of horrible controls and camera, but now I think I've put as many hours in it as in New Vegas. You never know if you buy a game, or a set of cutscenes nowadays. Game must be replayable, or I feel cheated for spending my money on it, because I do not believe in modern $-to-hour ratio.
Of course, it does not justify the moments when I pirate something and finish the game and don't buy it because it's shit, "but it is so short and I spent time downloading it and it will entertain me for an evening, so what the heck". But hey, how about you deal with it, you can hate me and call me a commie. Although it has been a long time since I felt like that, because not only games became shorter, they also became goddamn big, so now I am too lazy to pirate 20 GB of some poorly cracked, DRM heavy laggy garbage. I'd rather watch some old movie I've missed.
Wait, why did I quote about youtube... right, I wanted to say that, yeah, because of all of the above... I'd often watch shit on youtube and say "eeh, I know everything about the game now" and forget about that game. And sometimes I don't cause youtube video wouldn't be enough to get what the game is about.
