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Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

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Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#81

Post by bscphil »

caslon wrote: post #75
bscphil wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiments do not have to be things that would have happened in the real world.

That's not a thought experiment! That's using a false, unlikely example that goes against all evidence to scarecrow.

Let me try to spell it out for you.

ddevault:

> Even with all of that said, I support piracy. Information wants to be free, and games are made of information. No one has lost anything when a game is copied.

"Information wants to be free, and games are made of information" is a defense of piracy that has nothing whatsoever to do with the consequences of piracy. The argument is that copyright claims are morally invalid because they go against the nature of information as such.

This is used to make the claim that "no one has lost anything when a game is copied".

That claim is a bit of verbal trickery, and that's what my comment is complaining about. If a developer has a copy of a game on their hard drive, and after releasing the game, someone pirates it, the developer still has a copy of the game on their hard drive. This is one sense of "not having lost anything", and it's what ddevault understands to be the nature of information that underlies the moral argument I gave above.

But what that moral argument can not tell you is that "no one has lost anything" in the fairly conventional, pragmatic sense that one can "lose a job".

My comment is a theoretical example (or thought experiment) that highlights the difference in a way that makes clear how the words "no one has lost anything" are at least misleading, and potentially hurtful. That is why I begin with the words "suppose" (which is how philosophers often introduce thought experiments) and proceed to give a highly theoretical example about a indie dev studio which does not exist. The upshot is the philosophical point that people can "lose something" (a livelihood) without "losing anything" (a piece of intellectual property).

I have no idea whether, on the whole, piracy is good or bad for video games. Despite your apparent certainty, I do think the jury is still out on that point. But that is most emphatically not the point that I am making in my comment.

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#82

Post by bscphil »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #79
bscphil wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has lost anything when a game is copied. Suppose an indie developer working alone hires an intern. They release a game developed together for a console. Suddenly the console becomes possible to emulate, and most of the people who would have bought the game play a cracked and pirated version on an emulator instead. Because of the unexpected lack of sales, the developer has to fire the intern. The intern no lo…

If you oppose intellectual property rights, it's important to work productively towards creating a world without it in which developers can work on a piece of software as their job and still have a livelihood, not joke about them not standing to lose anything through piracy. Thank you for speaking up. I try to make similar points at times, though I'm usually talking about writing and content creation and I'm a woman…

Thanks. I think there's a whole interesting discussion about classes of intellectual work like writing and photography that are less respected in the digital world (from the standpoint of copyright) than software and films.

Your comment also highlights another aspect of theoretical arguments of the sort ddevault gives that I think is interesting. If you take them seriously, then there ought not to be any intellectual property at all, so someone should be able to just set up a website like "get your stuff here dot com" where you can download whatever you like, with no legal prohibition or moral inhibition.

If this were true, the piracy landscape would look vastly different than what it looks like today, and I think this seriously undermines the kind of pragmatic responses my comment has gotten along the lines of "actually, piracy is helpful to the industry". Because in all likelihood, that can only be true (if it is true) up to a point.

The ultimate question is, do we see the point of making sure artists and creators have a way to live off the work they do for us? A copyright system may not be the best way to ensure this, or it might even be outright unethical! If so, let's come up with a better one.

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#83

Post by RHSeeger »

caslon wrote: post #61
bscphil wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has lost anything when a game is copied. Suppose an indie developer working alone hires an intern. They release a game developed together for a console. Suddenly the console becomes possible to emulate, and most of the people who would have bought the game play a cracked and pirated version on an emulator instead. Because of the unexpected lack of sales, the developer has to fire the intern. The intern no lo…

https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira... "In 2013, the European Commission ordered a €360,000 ($430,000) study on how piracy affects sales of music, books, movies and games in the EU. However, it never ended up showing it to the public except for one cherry-picked section. That's possibly because the study concluded that there was no evidence that piracy affects copyrighted sales, and in the ca…

To be fair, those studies were done in a world where software piracy is against the law in many places, considered wrong by many, and can have real consequences to those that engage in it. Those facts have direct impacts on the amount of piracy that happens. If piracy were completely legal and the average person was comfortable doing it, then the impact on the sales of software would likely be much higher.

It is not unreasonable to argue that some piracy is not a big deal and may, in fact, be helping developers (and producers of other content). However, as soon as you start arguing that it should be legal, expected, and normal to do so, you change the entire landscape.

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#85

Post by jb775 »

Is there a way to intercept data between the Switch and online Fortnite services?

I recently bought a Switch and have been playing Fortnite online...noticed more and more "online gamers" have been behaving like bots, so I'd like to take a look at the data if possible (to see if I'm playing against actual people)

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#86

Post by DoctorOW »

bitexploder wrote: post #69
tester756 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people just pick the languages they're most proficent in so they can move fast maybe that's the case here

Or as a “Look, you can do X in language Y, a lot of people assumed this was not possible.” Situation. Seen that a few times.

In my opinion this is the exact reason C# was picked. Almost everything C# is either Windows-only or Console/Server app. This is neither and that's what's interesting to me.

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#87

Post by emodendroket »

jb775 wrote: post #85

Is there a way to intercept data between the Switch and online Fortnite services? I recently bought a Switch and have been playing Fortnite online...noticed more and more "online gamers" have been behaving like bots, so I'd like to take a look at the data if possible (to see if I'm playing against actual people)

Seems like you could intercept the traffic with your router.

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#88

Post by david-cako »

bitexploder wrote: post #69
tester756 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people just pick the languages they're most proficent in so they can move fast maybe that's the case here

Or as a “Look, you can do X in language Y, a lot of people assumed this was not possible.” Situation. Seen that a few times.

true, the first thing I thought was "wow, I didn't realize you could do this with C#"

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#89

Post by caslon »

bscphil wrote: post #81
caslon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a thought experiment! That's using a false, unlikely example that goes against all evidence to scarecrow.

Let me try to spell it out for you. ddevault: > Even with all of that said, I support piracy. Information wants to be free, and games are made of information. No one has lost anything when a game is copied. "Information wants to be free, and games are made of information" is a defense of piracy that has nothing whatsoever to do with the consequences of piracy. The argument is that copyright claims are morally invalid…

> My comment is a theoretical example (or thought experiment)

That goes against all evidence and all studies on the topic and has no supporting evidence to back it up.

Re: Experimental Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C#

#90

Post by cdubzzz »

brundolf wrote: post #13

I have mixed feelings about emulating current-gen consoles. I think there's a very strong ethical case for emulating consoles whose games are no longer made (despite Nintendo's best efforts to shut that down too). But emulating something whose games can still be bought new would tend to encourage piracy, I expect. Edit: "cracking" -> "piracy", for clarity

> I think there's a very strong ethical case for emulating consoles whose games are no longer made (despite Nintendo's best efforts to shut that down too).

Do you differentiate between games being “made” and “sold”? If not, which consoles specifically are thinking of as ethical to emulate? Nintendo still sells NES, SNES, N64, etc. games via Virtual Console.

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