Friday 3 February 2012

a quest for meaning

This weekend's GOG sale is 'activision' (ZOMBIE SIERRA) quest games - King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest.

I went to a lot of trouble many years ago to find a legit police quest collection CD. After I did, I never actually played the games because they were a bit hard to get running smoothly on my computer setup at the time. (Similarly, I have obtained Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail but not gotten very far into it because running it was a little awkward.)

I never owned KQ7 afaik, but my then-boyfriend bought a copy, so I did play it through once. Means my memory of it is much hazier than it is for the others. Mask Of Eternity, which is a travesty and not KQ8 at all, I have not played. That probably doesn't surprise you.

And weekend sale or no, I don't think that's likely to change now.

2 comments:

Ian N said...

I wonder if the original creators will ever see a dime from these sales.

Whiner said...

For which definition of 'original creators', though? It does get tricky.

Most games have at the very least _somebody_ who worked on them for a flat fee rather than a percentage of sales. A game that involved hundreds of employees, there's no way they're all getting profit-shares, even when the games are new.

Certainly I'm not going to hassle anyone who obtains games that are twenty years old via methods that don't involve direct payment to a company, but neither am I going to say that buying things from someone who bought out the IP well down the line is wrong. And I should cut it at that point rather than get into a REALLY long discussion of hypothetical economics in the comments. :)