Author Topic: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest  (Read 8867 times)

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Don't mind Angel, his comment was silly to the extreme. According to such a view, art contests are somehow a moral crime.

Are you an artist by trade? If not, then screw off.

And if you do something else would you be willing to perform your job for a week or more with only a slim chance of getting paid for it?


Professional companies should be hiring an artist to do the work. Not soliciting thousands of unpaid man-hours from the player-base.
And in this case they're not even spending their own ****ing money. They got a bunch of donations, then they asked for a bunch of free work so they can pick and choose the best and give the guy money that they were given to do the game. What a racket.
Pretty sure RSI does in fact employ a number of artists.  I don't think they'd hire another for just one ship, so I don't think anyone is being deprived of paid work because of this contest.  As for the participants, they know they've only got a slim chance of getting paid.  They don't seem to have a problem with it.  Did you know that some people enjoy doing this as a hobby and don't care that much about getting paid?  If I had the skills, I'd have participated just for the chance of getting my ship ingame.

And whether someone works as a professional artist or not has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of an opinion.

That's where you're wrong.
Being a professional artist gives actual perspective to the contest. There are lots of jobs out there that people wouldn't do for free with slim to no chance of being paid, yet people ask artists to work for free? Would you work in a supermarket, or a warehouse or at a gas station with slim chance of being paid? Would you have a highschool full of teachers doing work for free and only one of them will get paid? Let's have a contest to see who can write the best legal contract. Let's have a restaurant full of cooks and waiters and hostesses and only one of them will get paid at the end of the week and even that individual wont have a job.


And again. This is their backers money.

So I'm going to give a company money so they can use my money to ask me to work for free in the hopes of getting some cash?



This is like thousands of people giving a guy cash to open a restaurant, then the restaurant manager asks for people to create new dishes for his restaurant and 200 wanna-be-cooks spend hours perfecting fabuluous new dishes and at the end of the day, they give one guy some money and tell him to take a hike (no job) and then profit from his creativity by selling it their restaurant. Who would participate in such a contest?
« Last Edit: February 05, 2014, 04:44:26 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 
Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Jeez, lighten up. It's a fun little contest that gets the fan base involved in the creation of the game. Look at all the modelers here that work for free with no hope of winning any cash. At the very least modelers are getting their work looked at by people who might hire them in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the top contenders in the contest get asked to do freelance work.
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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Jeez, lighten up. It's a fun little contest that gets the fan base involved in the creation of the game. Look at all the modelers here that work for free with no hope of winning any cash. At the very least modelers are getting their work looked at by people who might hire them in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the top contenders in the contest get asked to do freelance work.

There's a difference.
The modellers here do so for fun and to add to their own personal portfolio.

This contest is asking people to work for free so that a company can make money off the winning product essentially.
Like if this were a contest where the best designs get added to the game as DLC and each designer gets royalties from each sale of that item for as long as the game is available, that would be okay.  I think Valve does that with user-modelled TF2 items and that sort of thing.

But no, this a contest where a crowd-funded project is asking for crowd-produced free work from which they can pick and choose the best, probably claim all rights the design and sell millions of copies of the game and give the guy 30K which is probably what, 3-5 months wages of a game-industry modeller and send him on his way. It's borderline scam in my opinion, as is any company which profits from such "contests", and is not too far off the many Craiglist adds which ask for a student to produce artwork with the payment being they can use it in their portfolio.

 

Offline Black Wolf

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
The people who enter this contest are doing so with their eyes wide open, accepting the risk/reward payoff of doing so (I'm no expert, but I suspect $30000 for a singe ship model is likely significantly above market value). They know what they're getting into, and they've obviously decided to accept that. Remember that contests like this aren't the primary source of assets for the game - they almost certainly have either staff artists or they've commissioned contract work for the vast majority if what they'll need. This contest is over and above that, and open to people who either weren't good enough or lucky enough to get access to that work. From Star Citizen's perspective, this is throwing  money at advertising the game, and at community interaction, not asset acquisition.

As for it being backers money, well, that's a whole separate argument. Personally, I don't like the kickstarter model - it seems very much open to abuse, and frankly I'm uncomfortable with giving away money for either nothing, or for a product of uncertain quality. As such, I personally don't generally contribute to them as a general rule (HLPs drive for the SCP one was an exception, since we were basically paying for coding services). However, when people chose to back Chris Roberts for Star Citizen, they made a decision to demonstrate a level of trust in him and his company. The backers have said "here's my money, make this game", and surely that gives him the right to spend that money as he sees fit, within the confines of making the game that is? If he decides that the advertising this contest gives, or the goodwill it'll generate from the community is worth the cost of putting it on, then that's his call to make, not yours, surely?
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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
The people who enter this contest are doing so with their eyes wide open, accepting the risk/reward payoff of doing so (I'm no expert, but I suspect $30000 for a singe ship model is likely significantly above market value). They know what they're getting into, and they've obviously decided to accept that. Remember that contests like this aren't the primary source of assets for the game - they almost certainly have either staff artists or they've commissioned contract work for the vast majority if what they'll need. This contest is over and above that, and open to people who either weren't good enough or lucky enough to get access to that work. From Star Citizen's perspective, this is throwing  money at advertising the game, and at community interaction, not asset acquisition.

As for it being backers money, well, that's a whole separate argument. Personally, I don't like the kickstarter model - it seems very much open to abuse, and frankly I'm uncomfortable with giving away money for either nothing, or for a product of uncertain quality. As such, I personally don't generally contribute to them as a general rule (HLPs drive for the SCP one was an exception, since we were basically paying for coding services). However, when people chose to back Chris Roberts for Star Citizen, they made a decision to demonstrate a level of trust in him and his company. The backers have said "here's my money, make this game", and surely that gives him the right to spend that money as he sees fit, within the confines of making the game that is? If he decides that the advertising this contest gives, or the goodwill it'll generate from the community is worth the cost of putting it on, then that's his call to make, not yours, surely?

1. Use regular font colour like the rest of the forum ya doofus
2. I don't give a **** who's call it is. This is a discussion forum, I'm giving my opinion.  I'm not suggest that you or any other individual can't present their opinion so why are you calling into question the right or place to present mine?

Art contests like these are an insult to profession. The fact that some artists are willing to work for free for the betterment of someone else's product doesn't change that fact.

It's irrelevant that the winners are getting paid 30 grand. The fact is Star Citizen just got 200 free ideas.
In the professional world an artist creates a bunch of concepts while being PAID. Then if you don't like one, he reworks those concepts while being PAID. Then they continue to develop those concepts, while being PAID. If the end product isn't exactly what you want then that's too bad because that's the artist you hired and those are the time constraints of the project. You don't hire a guy and look at his concept work and say "oh I don't like these, you're not getting paid this week" (unless you're doing freelance work then it's a whole other pile of ****) and you certainly don't bring 200 guys, ask them to do work and then send 199 of them away or whatnot unpaid for the time they invested.

And as for backers. I don't think any backer gave them money so that they could give it away to someone else. They didn't give them money so they could work for free either.

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
That's where you're wrong.
Being a professional artist gives actual perspective to the contest. There are lots of jobs out there that people wouldn't do for free with slim to no chance of being paid, yet people ask artists to work for free? Would you work in a supermarket, or a warehouse or at a gas station with slim chance of being paid? Would you have a highschool full of teachers doing work for free and only one of them will get paid? Let's have a contest to see who can write the best legal contract. Let's have a restaurant full of cooks and waiters and hostesses and only one of them will get paid at the end of the week and even that individual wont have a job.


And again. This is their backers money.

So I'm going to give a company money so they can use my money to ask me to work for free in the hopes of getting some cash?



This is like thousands of people giving a guy cash to open a restaurant, then the restaurant manager asks for people to create new dishes for his restaurant and 200 wanna-be-cooks spend hours perfecting fabuluous new dishes and at the end of the day, they give one guy some money and tell him to take a hike (no job) and then profit from his creativity by selling it their restaurant. Who would participate in such a contest?
So, what? You're insulted that CIG is asking people to work for free?  It's not like they're hiding the fact that contestants aren't getting paid.  The people participating in this contest are very aware they probably won't get paid.  No one is being forced to work, and no one is being lied to.  Has it occurred to you that the contestants are actually ok with not getting paid?   That they find the experience rewarding in and of itself?

And no, I wouldn't work in a supermarket or something like that for free.  However, I'd happily make some 3d models for free.  And I do.  The only reason I didn't participate here is that I don't have the skillset to work with Cryengine, and neither do the people I'd be comfortable working with.

So please, just because you're insulted at the notion of people doing graphics design work for free doesn't mean everyone else needs to abide by your standards.


Quote
And as for backers. I don't think any backer gave them money so that they could give it away to someone else. They didn't give them money so they could work for free either.
Hahahaha.  Do you seriously think backers gave CIG money so that they'd hoard it and do nothing with it?  Money is meant to be given to someone else in exchange for goods and services.  Backers gave GIG money to see the game get made.  If this contest produces something that is up to SC's existing standards, I really don't see the problem.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2014, 07:27:25 pm by Aesaar »

 
Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
I kind of agree with him (independently of my scepticism of SC, even), the way a lot of companies have realised that they can make skilled people provide them with labour on the cheap because if you're ~passionate~ then you should be happy just working on something even if someone else gets most of the profit is really quite seedy.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 
Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
So, what? You're insulted that CIG is asking people to work for free?  It's not like they're hiding the fact that contestants aren't getting paid.  The people participating in this contest are very aware they probably won't get paid.  No one is being forced to work, and no one is being lied to.  Has it occurred to you that the contestants are actually ok with not getting paid?   That they find the experience rewarding in and of itself?

And no, I wouldn't work in a supermarket or something like that for free.  However, I'd happily make some 3d models for free.  And I do.  The only reason I didn't participate here is that I don't have the skillset to work with Cryengine, and neither do the people I'd be comfortable working with.

So please, just because you're insulted at the notion of people doing graphics design work for free doesn't mean everyone else needs to abide by your standards.

You don't get it.
Artistic work is undervalued in society as it is. It's part of why a Visual FX house like Rhythm and Hues can win an academy award for VFX and go Bankrupt in the same year.

Contests like this just reinforce the view that society views artistic work as cheap **** and people participating in these contests only further devalues the medium as a whole.

As someone who actually makes a living in an artistic field, I have a vested interest in artists everywhere getting proper compensation because if they don't, it devalues my own work.


So yes, I'm sorry if I take offence at a company effectively insulting my entire profession with another one of these bull**** contests.

  

Offline Aesaar

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a scam, and it doesn't make it immoral.  Every single person involved knows what's going on.  No one is being lied to, and no one is being cheated.  They probably won't get paid, and they clearly don't care.  Some of these guys are probably professionals, and they also don't seem to care that they're working for free.  Not everyone needs to abide by your moral standards.

Would you have a problem with this if there was no money involved?  If it was just an open call for the community to make a ship and the better ones would get used, would there be a problem?  Because CIG has said they were doing that too.

Honestly, it just seems to me that you're generally against someone who can pay for a service getting that service provided to them for free by people who don't care about payment.

 
Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a scam, and it doesn't make it immoral.  Every single person involved knows what's going on.  No one is being lied to, and no one is being cheated.

that this results in a fair, unexploitative economic system is pretty much the basic delusion of capitalism. it's very definitely untrue.
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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
1. Use regular font colour like the rest of the forum ya doofus

No. And do remember the rule about personal attacks.

2. I don't give a **** who's call it is. This is a discussion forum, I'm giving my opinion.  I'm not suggest that you or any other individual can't present their opinion so why are you calling into question the right or place to present mine?

Are you an artist by trade? If not, then screw off.

A very good example of your commitment to open and free debate from this very thread. :doubt:

Look, if you're a professional artist who feels these contests are insulting, don't enter them. If that's felt by the entire professional artistic community, no worries. If you're a professional, then your work should be so far above that of the amateurs that enter these sorts of contests that they should be no threat to your profession (and if you're not, then you're probably in the wrong career). People deride game design these days as being all about flashy graphics at the expense of gameplay, but one place where that pays dividends is that art assets for a game are critical to its success - contests like this aren't going to replace in house or commissioned artists any time soon because they can't offer the kind of consistently high quality work game designers need in the modern market. It's just a fun way for enthusiastic amateurs to get involved, and for professionals who weren't successful in getting paid work to try and get noticed (and maybe make some coin along the way). I really don't see an issue with it.
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Offline Aesaar

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a scam, and it doesn't make it immoral.  Every single person involved knows what's going on.  No one is being lied to, and no one is being cheated.

that this results in a fair, unexploitative economic system is pretty much the basic delusion of capitalism. it's very definitely untrue.
So only non-profit projects can morally ask people to work for free.  If what you're working on is a for-profit project and you're doing for free, it doesn't matter if you enjoy it, it doesn't matter if you don't care about getting paid, you're being exploited.  Even if you do it as a hobby in your spare time, you're being exploited because the people you're doing it for COULD be paying you.  Doesn't matter what you think.

Yeah, no, I'm sorry.  I don't buy that.  If people have all the information, they're capable of making their own choices. 

This whole thread just reeks of objectivist "working for free is immoral" bull****.

 
Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
ahahahahahahaha yes aesaar i'm an objectivist that is an accurate appraisal of my political views (you realise that trade unions have a general interest in stamping this sort of **** out too, right?)
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 
Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's a scam, and it doesn't make it immoral.  Every single person involved knows what's going on.  No one is being lied to, and no one is being cheated.  They probably won't get paid, and they clearly don't care.  Some of these guys are probably professionals, and they also don't seem to care that they're working for free.  Not everyone needs to abide by your moral standards.

Would you have a problem with this if there was no money involved?  If it was just an open call for the community to make a ship and the better ones would get used, would there be a problem?  Because CIG has said they were doing that too.

Honestly, it just seems to me that you're generally against someone who can pay for a service getting that service provided to them for free by people who don't care about payment.

The problem is that a bunch of people are doing free work and a company is profiting from it. Whether they profit it from from the marketing, from lifting ideas, or from using the designs directly to help sell their game it's still profiting from it. If you're going to make a product, and sell it to people, you should as hell should pay the people who are helping to make your product a success.


If this was similar to Valve's practice of adding user content as paid DLC from which the content creators get royalties and on-going revenue I would be okay with it. Particularly if the game itself, like TF2, is free to play.

Or if this was a contest by a bunch of random nobodies for the sake of creating artists getting together and doing some practice, then it would be fine too (in the same way Ludum Dare is a game-design contest with no prize). Or for example another website is the 11secondclub where animators create a scene and the winner gets feedback from some industry professional (and all entries can get some tips). Or even the recent HLP modelling contest.

But this contest? No. The entries are what, doing concept design, modelling, rigging, maybe scripting and texturing? In a proper production that's five or six different people get paid.
Particularly when the cash prize being given out was given to them on faith to make the game themselves.

No. And do remember the rule about personal attacks.

I don't particular care about rules regarding personal attacks after other people have called my comments "silly" or responded with sarcasm or trying to say my opinion doesn't matter. For the same reason I'll tell someone to screw off as well.



Look, if you're a professional artist who feels these contests are insulting, don't enter them. If that's felt by the entire professional artistic community, no worries. If you're a professional, then your work should be so far above that of the amateurs that enter these sorts of contests that they should be no threat to your profession (and if you're not, then you're probably in the wrong career). People deride game design these days as being all about flashy graphics at the expense of gameplay, but one place where that pays dividends is that art assets for a game are critical to its success - contests like this aren't going to replace in house or commissioned artists any time soon because they can't offer the kind of consistently high quality work game designers need in the modern market. It's just a fun way for enthusiastic amateurs to get involved, and for professionals who weren't successful in getting paid work to try and get noticed (and maybe make some coin along the way). I really don't see an issue with it.


You don't see an issue with it because you're not an artist. You're a hobbyist.

« Last Edit: February 05, 2014, 08:12:54 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 

Offline Black Wolf

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
You don't see an issue with it because you're not an artist. You're a hobbyist.

And so are the people who enter these contests! Your perspective seems to be that there are no circumstances where this is okay. So, in your ideal world, if I'm a passionate SC fan who also happens to be a talented amateur modeler but not a professional artist, well, too bad, my work can never go into the game ever under any circumstances. Is it the prize that bothers you? They would still be getting all of these "ideas" that bother you so much if there was no prize but the fun of seeing your ship in Star Citizen and they'd probably still get tonnes of entries.

Contests like these have been around for decades - get your name/character/spaceship/whatever in the next big game! It's never been about taking work away from artists, it's purely about marketing - all the youtube views on the contest, all the people talking about it on forums, all of that is the kind of exposure that they wont get from releasing gameplay trailers or screenshots or whatever. Would you expect another kind of corporation to pay every entrant in a contest they run? Should coke pay everyone who types in a code off one of their labels? Of course not - it's the same here. The benefit to the company isn't in the actual individual entires/entrants; it's in the buzz that the competition creates, and they are paying for that, well beyond the cost of the prize pool. You think that that youtube video was shot, mixed, directed and edited by a volunteer? You think the woman presenting it didn't get paid? Of course not. The company is paying for the contest in all sorts of ways to generate marketting buzz - it's no different from their perspective than running TV ads.

[EDIT]The woman presenting it, as it turns out, is the company's head of marketing, which tells you a lot I think about their goals for this project.[/EDIT]

Look, if they were sourcing their entire asset base this way, then maybe (maybe) you'd have a point. But as it stands, with one ship getting added to the game this way, those five or six people you're talking about - they're still getting paid. And locking everyone (amateurs and professionals alike) of a fun little contest like this, preventing them from engaging with a game that has excited people like very few others in recent memory just because the professional artistic community don't appear to enjoy the competition is petty.



Oh, and as for the rules about personal attacks, you may not care about them, but they are being enforced. Play the ball (people's opinions), not the man.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2014, 08:37:15 pm by Black Wolf »
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Offline An4ximandros

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
Okay, I really don't want to get into this thread, it took a bad turn and is becoming toxic at lightspeed in my opinion. I'll just quickly drop my opinion regarding one thing Akalabeth Angel said.

According to your view, you hate that lesser artists take a chance at improving themselves and creating art and making a name for themselves through this contest. It's a very negative and elitist view in my eyes. Which becomes puzzling to me because you are saying it here, on HLP. A site dedicated towards modding and indirectly promoting a video game made by a studio that no longer even profits form it now a days as the publisher now holds all rights to the franchise. Interplay keeps making cheap money without having to put any work whatsoever into the Freespace franchise because of this community. The people who actually made this game don't even get a dime out of it anymore. All their sweat and blood had dried up, it is us who keep this game going, it is us who encourage Interplay to exploit the fans of the products they publish. It is esarai, Aesaar, Hades, Oddgrim, Goober, niffiwan, The E and everyone else who makes any mods, models, audio, special effects or coding who, from what I understand from your view, are damaging all artists everywhere.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
You don't see an issue with it because you're not an artist. You're a hobbyist.
Since when is being labeled an "artist" contingent on getting paid for said art?

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
I don't generally ascribe any ill will to the individual capitalists (or artists for that matter) who do this sort of thing. From their (admittedly rather privileged) perspective of having the extra money/time, it seems like it should be a win-win for everyone involved. It definitely does make it harder on artists who can't afford to work for free though. Class struggle alas :(

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
You don't see an issue with it because you're not an artist.  You're a hobbyist.

This is not the attitude of the artist, it is the attitude of a professional craftsman. Do not speak of things which you manifestly do not understand. Artistry is the act of creation and divorced from anything unrelated to said act.
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Offline 666maslo666

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Re: The Next Great Starship - SC Contest
that this results in a fair, unexploitative economic system is pretty much the basic delusion of capitalism. it's very definitely untrue.

Maybe when it comes to things like third world sweatshops it can be a delusion. But a contest of fans contributing to a game they love because of their own free and informed choice? There is not a shred of exploitation here. And I as a backer consider this a very good use of my money.
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