Ever since the PQube announcement, we've had new folks tuning in to see what Arcade Spirits is all about. Hello, new folks! We've got a blog (which we mirror to Tumblr and Steam), we've got a Twitter for announcements and arcade culture tidbits, a Discord to connect with other arcade fans, a Patreon if you want to support us on a deeper level, and finally a website. That's a lot of stuff! Just pick your favorite way to follow us, and enjoy.
But also, I'd like to direct you to an old blog post you probably missed, which describes the pillars of our game, and why we made the choices we did when designing the game. To summarize so you don't HAVE to go digging through the blog if you don't wanna, we've got four guiding principles in telling our lighthearted tale of love and quarters...
- We’re inclusive by not restricting player choice of romance. Be who you want to be, romance who you want to romance (or nobody at all). We're LGBTQ+ friendly without specifically being a game about LGBQT+. Notably: coding in restrictions based on your preferred pronoun takes effort and we're too lazy for that. But it's laziness in favor of player choice, so hey!
- We want you to be able to choose how to react to things around you. Player agency is sometimes missing in visual novels, so we want as much as we can pour in. We focus heavily on roleplaying and self-expression, letting you react as you like.
- There should be clear signposts for easy decision-making. We don't like blind choices, or needing to play with a FAQ open on your second monitor. We're going to be relatively clear what each choice is going to mean for you -- who you'll spend time with and how they'll react. You have some leeway, too, so you don't have to scoop up EVERY point to get the ending you want.
- One tale, with your own personal path chosen from beginning to end. We'll say up front this isn't about massively branching paths and multiple distinct endings. It's about a personal experience that's never exactly the same as any other player's, thanks to the choices you make along the way and who you decide to be.
We're aiming to deliver one heck of a tale for you, a story that you participate in rather than passively read, a story you can insert yourself into or play whatever other personality type you like. Play things straight, romance or don't, get wild, be snarky, do as you want. And we hope you enjoy that story.
...
Okay! That's our introduction out of the way. Let's talk this week's actual (slightly depressing) topic, based on Recent Topical News -- specifically Nintendo squishing several ROM and emulation sites with legal papers. Pirated retro games are no longer quite so easy to find, thanks to their actions.
In Arcade Spirits we've added a mini-documentary hosted by Naomi which is all about building your own emulation cabinet. It's pretty detailed on the hardware and software you'll need, but one thing we skim over is obtaining ROMs -- because let's be totally honest here, Nintendo and their ilk have every legal right to say "Hey, uh, please stop giving away our games for free, okay?" You just can't condone that sort of thing, not if you work in the game industry like I do. There's no ethical leg to stand on.
But unfortunately, this also poses a serious problem for video game preservation efforts. Many of these games are a tangled mess of copyright holders, many of which are out of business or were sold again and again, to the point where it's unclear WHO owns the copyright on a game anymore. Therefore, there is no legal way to play some of these games short of tracking down original arcade hardware and spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on it -- and if that hardware is just flat out gone, cabinets junked and sitting in landfills, a game can be lost forever. Look at the movie industry, where the majority of films from the dawn of cinema in the 30s are simply gone, because nobody thought to preserve them.
Emulation and abandonware archives were one way to keep those dimly lit and flickering candles alive. Legal? No, but given the copyright holders cannot -- or in many cases, will not -- provide a legal means of obtaining the game, not many options remain. Even games which aren't exactly in danger of vanishing can be withheld... Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a good recent example. It never had a physical release, only digital downloads, and as licenses expired it was pulled from digital storefronts. You literally cannot legally obtain this game anymore and likely never will be able to again, and because it was loaded on DRM-locked modern game consoles, any act of preservation runs afoul of the DMCA.
So... what to do? There's really not a good solution in the hands of gamers. And again, I can't and won't condone piracy. It's up to the companies involved to be willing to loosen their grip on these games, and many refuse to budge. As noted, they're even actively fighting websites that preserve games. And thus, an impasse.
Hopefully we as an industry will find a way past this issue, to make these classic games available conveniently and without legal problems. Either that, or as fans of arcade classics, we'll have to mourn the passing of more and more great games.