The Save Spot

Fallout 3 Diary: Day 13

 

 

 

I’m playing Fallout 3, and it’s captured my imagination like few other games have.  So instead of writing about the game in a standard “journalist” way, I want to capture my impressions in a more “immersive” way.  Every time I fire up the game, I can’t help but envision myself as a survivor of a post-nuclear world.  How would it feel to roam the wastelands?  How would I respond to the strange, terrifying, and brutal world?  Would I choose to remain faithful to God?  Or would I respond to the horrors around me by becoming a monster myself?

All of those reactions are captured in these diary features. 

 

Today was a hard day.
 
I had a long hike today.  Frankly I never thought I’d make it.  I ran out of water a few clicks back, and I am starting to feel the heat of that thing the upworlders call “the Sun”.  I have to admit, I miss the comforts of the vault.  Living underground wasn’t great, but at least I had food and water. 
 
Eventually I made it to a place called “Germantown police HQ”  I’m not really sure what that means, but it looked like I might be able to scavenge for some parts.  That was a mistake.  Instead of finding parts, I found supermutants.  With clubs.  Why must supermutants always have clubs?  With nails?
 
It took some work, but I found through trial and error that my shotgun was pretty effective.  It only has 2 rounds, so I have to let them get pretty close before I squeeze off a few rounds.  I’m glad my dad taught me how to shoot back in the Vault. 
 
In many ways today was the most disturbing day yet – I hacked into an old computer terminal.  Looks like it was an old abandoned medical facility for people immediately following the nuclear blast.  I found myself surprisingly disturbed by what I read.  For some reason it made all of this miserable wasteland feel more personal.  All those people who died.  Are we humans destined to kill one another for ever?  Am I destined to kill people to survive?
 
Today was a hard day.

   

Fallout 3 Pirated

 

 

 

When I first read that headline I thought, “great just one more game some yahoo’s (yes I actually use words like ‘yahoo’) pirated for the PC.”  Much to my surprise though I realized someone pirated a copy for the 360.  After months and months of executives telling us that the reason the PC market is in decline is because of piracy we see that the same can be said of the Xbox market.

The problem isn’t the system, the problem is the people.  But I’m not going to write about why piracy is no different than theft.  And why piracy is most certainly immoral.  What I’m more interested in today is the vast number of gamers who are not pirates, yet sit around saying, “I never would pirate anything, but I understand why they pirate it.”

How can you hold such a position? 

Let me ask a simple question: Do you believe software piracy is wrong?

If you do, why do you support it?

If you don’t, why don’t you actively engage in it?

I hear a lot of justifications for piracy from the “I would never pirate, but I understand…” crowd.  Yet none of them are particularly satisfying.  If Microsoft is the epitome of greed, how is being greedy ourselves going to teach them a lesson?  If EA is evil for using DRM, how is stealing their game going to solve the DRM issue?

We will never change the structure of DRM and corporate pricing if our answer is to steal.  We need a better solution.  Martin Luther King Jr taught civil disobedience, but he emphasized nonviolent methods.  He didn’t advocate breaking into “the man’s” bank and stealing “his” money.  He offered wisdom, visible protests, and boycotts.  While the issues of the computer industry can never be compared to the serious stakes in the Civil Rights movement, King knew that repaying violence with violence was not a winnable solution.

That’s why I don’t see how stealing to prevent piracy will ever improve the situation.  I don’t like DRM any more than anyone else.  But as the cliche goes, two wrongs don’t make a right.