Apologies and thanks to David Braben

HectorSmarties

H
I would like to start by offering my apologies to David Braben for having pirated his first three Elite games. I was 11 years old when I have played for the first time Elite 1. Since I did not have a computer at that time, I used to play on a friend's computer, and I remember I would just do round trips between the station and the sun, destroying ships along the way and scooping the cargo.
When Elite 2 was launched, I finally had a 80386 to play it. Since I could barely pay for computer hardware, I did not have enough money to pay for games and software, so I remember receiving the 3-1/2'' floppy disks with a copy of the game, and being blown away with a game with billions of star systems and the possibility to land on them!
Elite 3 came, and same old story; I have shamelessly pirated it..
Games such as Elite constructed my childhood imaginary. I loved computers, science, space; and you, and so many others designers, created wonderful worlds and universes to play in.


Almost 25 years fast forward, I have now a successful career as a Software Engineer. I am blessed with many opportunities and a beautiful life; and I feel I owe part of that to all the people in the past that somehow transferred part of their dream world to mine. So now-a-days I try to buy the games that I once played when I was younger, even if I don't intend to re-play them.
Because of my humble beginnings, I am very careful where I spend money, even if it's money that I would not miss at all. I will promise you that it is extremely painful for me to pay $60 for a computer game, when I know I can just wait for a sale to buy it at max at $20. But after remembering how many times I have pirated David's games, and the legacy his games left in my imaginary, it was only fair to pay the $60 for Elite: Dangerous.


As for Elite: Dangerous itself, despite some shortcomings that I am sure will eventually be ironed out, it is a real pleasure to play and let myself be immersed in space. Thank you David, for sharing your passion and dream world with us, and I am sure that there is a younger version of myself being wow'ed by Elite: Dangerous today. Thanks as well to the development team for the hard work you have put in E:D; the level of detail in the simulation is just delicious!


TL;DR: today's software pirates might be tomorrow's loyal customers. Elite games are awesome and rich for the imagination.
 

PrometheusDarko

PrometheusDarko
If you want to do something awesome, there are actually ways to pay the developers for "pirated" software. Frontier and Frontier: First Encounters have been released as Shareware, but if used for more than 30 days, it's recommended to send a $5 registration fee to Frontier. How exactly that is done I'm not certain, as I no longer have my copies, but had both games purchased for me as a child.
.
In any case, I'm glad that you enjoyed the prequels, and hope you are enjoying the latest installment as much as I am. See you out in the black commander!
 

Runnybabbit

Runnybabbit
Heck, HectorSmarties, I hope you realize that with your confession, you've probably just got yourself an all-systems Kill-On-Sight order, and a 2,000,000 credit bounty on your head?? (David said, thanks for the apology, but let's teach him a lesson!!)..:p

On a more serious note, good posting, plus 1 from me..:cool:
 

DextersIndignation

D
HectorSmarties said:
I would like to start by offering my apologies to David Braben for having pirated his first three Elite games. I was 11 years old when I have played for the first time Elite 1. Since I did not have a computer at that time, I used to play on a friend's computer, and I remember I would just do round trips between the station and the sun, destroying ships along the way and scooping the cargo.
When Elite 2 was launched, I finally had a 80386 to play it. Since I could barely pay for computer hardware, I did not have enough money to pay for games and software, so I remember receiving the 3-1/2'' floppy disks with a copy of the game, and being blown away with a game with billions of star systems and the possibility to land on them!
Elite 3 came, and same old story; I have shamelessly pirated it..
Games such as Elite constructed my childhood imaginary. I loved computers, science, space; and you, and so many others designers, created wonderful worlds and universes to play in.


Almost 25 years fast forward, I have now a successful career as a Software Engineer. I am blessed with many opportunities and a beautiful life; and I feel I owe part of that to all the people in the past that somehow transferred part of their dream world to mine. So now-a-days I try to buy the games that I once played when I was younger, even if I don't intend to re-play them.
Because of my humble beginnings, I am very careful where I spend money, even if it's money that I would not miss at all. I will promise you that it is extremely painful for me to pay $60 for a computer game, when I know I can just wait for a sale to buy it at max at $20. But after remembering how many times I have pirated David's games, and the legacy his games left in my imaginary, it was only fair to pay the $60 for Elite: Dangerous.


As for Elite: Dangerous itself, despite some shortcomings that I am sure will eventually be ironed out, it is a real pleasure to play and let myself be immersed in space. Thank you David, for sharing your passion and dream world with us, and I am sure that there is a younger version of myself being wow'ed by Elite: Dangerous today. Thanks as well to the development team for the hard work you have put in E:D; the level of detail in the simulation is just delicious!


TL;DR: today's software pirates might be tomorrow's loyal customers. Elite games are awesome and rich for the imagination.
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As I understand it, you are the only person on earth that ever used a pirate video game.
lol


have some rep.

If you feel guilty send a fiver to Iain Bell
 

Retrograde

Retrograde
Ha! Ok, I'll confess as well. We all pirated like crazy in my school, visiting each other after classes, copying piles of games for our Commodore 64/128 computers. I only ever purchased one game for that computer - Ultima V - after saving my allowance for months! A few months ago I found the photocopied Elite manual, yay! A copy of a copy of a copy... So I'm happy to throw some money at FD to assuage my guilt now. :D
 

Tinman

Tinman
Pirated pretty much everything when I was younger...didn't actually even know how to buy the things legally. There where no shops that carried these kinds of merchandise where I grew up. Only way I knew how to get hold of games was by copying them from friends. ;)

Anyway...payed £200 for Alpha level...I think we're even...:D

(At least with David...there is quite some more people out there that I owe money...:eek::eek:)
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
The only version I actually played was Frontier. And no, I couldn't afford games then either.

Needing to have a printed copy of the manual to dock...

But I've bought ED twice now. And I'll keep buying paint jobs. We all have a past :)
 

Ancipital

Ancipital
Hah, I had a day one legit copy of Frontier. I had to look after a friend's slightly shady games shop while he drove to the wholesaler to pick it up for me, so exciting. My little brother inherited the game (and the starmap!) when I left home. That said, it turned out to be necessary to use a shady version, as the crackers actually fixed a few irritating bugs (and I didn't want to use my original game disk more than I could help).
 
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DextersIndignation

D
I actually had the real deal, with the book too!

But being the 80's the tape was a bit duff. You could not always save a game, I had to get a copy to make it work!

Those were the good old days, finding the secret missions...!

The music was better too!
 
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