Imagine a speaker is in front of 300 random people in an auditorium. Starting at the first row, he asks that person their date of birth. Then he asks the next person, and so on. Assume that everyone will give an honest answer. We are only interested in the day and month, not the year.

Question 1 : On average, how many people will the speaker have to ask before a birthdate is repeated?

Question 2 : What is the chance that he will make it through all 300 people and not have any birthdate repeated?

I've never downloaded pirate PC software, thus don't know the ins and outs of how it is acquired and distributed, so I don't know if this 'solution' would work. Perhaps the developers themselves could release a modified version of the game and distribute it to torrent sites, where it would proliferate quickly around the world.

Have it be like a demo, and an hour or something into the game,have it lock up with a message about piracy. Obviously this would not end piracy, as other full copies would still be floating around, but perhaps it will frustrate some of these people enough to not bother. So long as there is no malicious software involved, I don't think there would be any legal ramifications from this 'deception'.

I really like the idea of making games open format so that they work on any console, and then you pick consoles based on price, controls, and reliability.

Even better is buying a game console which no longer needs media! Because it comes with every game ever made on it already. The games would all be in thier optimal forms as well, not scrubbed down ports.

Or like an iPod - like device that comes with every song ever made in a non compressed format. That would be sweet.

Well maybe both of those could have like one little tiny drive you could buy every year to contain every game and every song made in the past year so that you can get all the new stuff too. Put it all on a flashcard or something. That way everyone can have everything available to them, and can play anything anytime.

There would be no more need for music or game stores at all.

I imagine the same thing could be done with books as well.

super_police

"Buy now and we will throw in a set of steak knives free of charge! Only $999-95 per month!"

Developers still need to make the games. They would like to get paid.

The problem is punishment goes to mass pirates who treat piracy as a business, which affects supply. If one gets taken down, another will take its place. If they were to fine individuals for possession of pirated goods (say $50 a disc) and began enforcing it, demand would go down in a hurry. I'm sure thereare too many problems with such a proposal to get it off the ground (here in Oz, or in the US) though. For example, what if you have backed up your legitimate product, then lent the original disc to a friend?

But if there was a legitimate threatthat thecops could knock on your door with a warrant, you wouldn't want to be owning any pirate discs.

Any sort of trivia game, Pictionary, Monopoly, Scrabble (in Latin or English), Dirty Minds, Clue, etc.

I dig board games.

t3hrubikscube

I have Dirty Minds at home which is certainly my sort of game, but haven't played it for years. I must play it again soon! I've played some Clue recently; not my favourite game (maybe cos I never seem to win) but enjoyable nonetheless.

I assume that many video gamers also like non-video games. What are some of your favourites?

After trying the demo of Catan on XBLA, I had to pony up the money and buy the actual board game to play with my friends. It's an absolute blast to play. I just got the 5-6 player expansion; I'm not sure I like it as much as the standard 3-4 players, but that's after experiencing only one game.

I haven't played a lot of it, but I got Guillotine for Christmas, and it's great because it's simple, fast paced, and easy to rope people into playing because of its simplicity.

I'm also a Magic : The Gathering nerd (collectable card game), though my interest in it waxes and wanes, usually based on how my friends feel about the game as I'm a pretty casual player.

There are a bunch of others I'd like to try, but not having friends who want to play them sucks. I have Citadels which I haven't had enough games of to really form an opinion; after the first few games most of my friends weren't interested, so I haven't been able to play.

So what are some of your favourites?

Hi all,

I'm wondering how you system link 2 consoles, because it doesn't have any info in the manual. I was thinking you just needed to plug either end of the ethernet cable into the consoles, but perhaps there is more to it?

Any help appreciated, I don't want to get all the extra equipment in the lounge room to find out I can't link them!