WarZone 2100

As I have mentioned before, I am cheap. I don't like to spend money.

Don't get me wrong, I can spend money - I'm a Mac owner after-all! But, if I can get away with it, I like to keep my money in the bank.

Gaming, in all it's forms, is a great hobby. But, it can be a downright expensive one. Since role playing companies have gone back to the idea of hard bound books, a new gaming book can run $50 or more - it's silly.

Computer games are worse. A game you might play for a month or two can also run you $50 or $60 new. When I think about computer games, I think about two things a) how much play will I get for my money and b) do I need to buy it now? How soon will it be in the bargain bin for $15.

When I buy a game, I want to be able to play it for years. Games like The Sims and SimCity and Civilization are nearly infinitely replayable. Heck, I played Civ II on the Mac up until Civ IV for the Mac came out. I wish they would com out with a newer version of Tropico - if I play my current one anymore, the disc will melt!

On the PC side, I'm big on waiting a year to pick up "the latest games". I picked up Warhammer 40k Dawn of War and it's first expansion six months ago for $20. When those came out, they were $60 each.

Often, I prefer free or low cost online games. If you look at my Project Wonderful ads, you might spy a button for TinyWarz. Very cool, you can play for free, check it out! I consider my monthly payment to World of Warcraft to be pretty low cost. I think it's silly that they charge anything for their supplements - much less what they actually charge! But, they are making money on it. I think we will see a day when MORPGs will be entirely free to download and play, they will find other ways to support themselves. To a degree, we are already seeing this with Second Life and other games.

And, although I shouldn't admit it here, I have been a pirate from time to time. Being cheap means I will go to some extraordinary lengths. This doesn't mean I have a hard drive full of warez - quite the opposite. I have gone out and downloaded some abandonware here and there. Abandonware is such a funny thing. It's illegal to download the game, yet, if I was given the original disk by a friend, it would be legal. If I paid a quarter for the disk at a used shop - it would be legal. Silly. I want to play the old games, the copyright holders don't make them available, so I have to break the law to play them. Go figure.

However, I like that a few companies have gotten smart. Nearly 10 years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a game called WarZone 2100. Fun game. I didn't buy a copy at the time - I didn't own a PC so there was no reason. I did however do a review of the game for Epinions, I hope that made up in karma what I didn't pay in dollars.

A few days ago, I looked back at that review. I think someone had linked to my blog from that review and I caught it on the site monitoring software. I decided to Google WarZone to see if maybe someone had it on eBay or ... who knows?

Google gave me a gift in the first link: The WarZone 2100 Resurrection Project! Apparently, the copyright holder, Eidos-Interactive, made the game open source on the GNU license. So, a group of geeks are rebuilding the game - they even put out a release for the Mac!

I downloaded it and played it. The game is still awesome! Yes, the graphics are simple and look at least 10 years old - who cares? Most chessmen don't have a kung-fu grip, either! This is what all companies should do with their old games! Allow the gaming community to rebuild their games as we wish and allow me to download them for free!

Role-playing companies should take a cue here. Wizards has already come up with open source gaming with their d20 product. Why not release old games as a .PDF - this would promote the new games and bring more people into playing those games. I would love to be able to download old modules and source books instead of trying to scrounge them up in used book stores. My game shelf at home would be a lot cleaner if I could! Even charging a buck for an old supplement would be better than that material just fading away. Or, release it to the public domain and let the players do great things with those materials.

In this day, it's too easy to make an illegal copy. Instead of making interested players into criminals, make them into customers. Game-makers, what do you have to lose?