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.
No I don't hate the artists I hate that a company is asking people to do free work for them with the slim hopes of getting paid.
I also dislike the fact that said company is creating a game based on backer dollars and is using that same money for said-contest.
Like they're having a contest, which requires people to work for free, and as prize money they're using money that was given to them on faith to create a game. It's the height of hubris to throw other people's money around like that when it's been given to you for an express purpose.
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.
What bothers me is that a professional company is asking artists to do a ton of free work for what is basically a taste of that company's table scraps. And adding insult to injury but the table scraps are from a meal that the company didn't prepare themselves, it was money given to them for the promise of a game.
Contests like these have been around for decades -
The fact that the work of artists has been undervalued for decades doesn't make it okay to perpetuate it.
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.
Paying for it with whose money?
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.
And what about the other 195 or more artists that did dozens or hundreds of hours of work and didn't get anything for it?
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.
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