Patreon: Obligation and Entitlement

[KoolHndLuke]

1 hour ago, Kendo 2 said:

Todd Howard is on record saying he doesn't care about what the fans want.  Pete Hines is on record belittling people when they ask basic questions. 

Todd is just their tool and Pete has the look of a shifty-eyed used car salesman (or worse). I would kinda enjoy watching the spectacle of them squirm as the Bethtanic fucking sinks under the weight of their dubious decisions and wanton greed. 

 

 

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

Somebody was saying that the gaming industry needs to crash.....and maybe they're right.

It kind of did crash, repeatedly. There's been implosion after implosion of the big publishers.

Between failures and acquisitions, the number of publishers now is far, far fewer than in the golden days of the SNES, despite a much larger overall market.

 

The companies that survived did so because of a combination of favourable local conditions (subsidies, tax-breaks, easy access to credit), some luck, and size.

The best predictor of safety for a publisher is size. Sheer size means that a publisher can spread its risk and market harder.

 

Due to the demonstrable inability of the executive to make good judgement on what product to develop and release, it's this ability to perform "spread betting", combined with an ability to outspend others in marketing - or at least attempt to buy a product's route to success - has been critical for publisher survival.

 

This indicator is another reason that small publishers didn't win. They only had to guess wrong on one big product, and they were financially crippled.

The end of Interplay is a good example of a path to failure that was primarily navigated by key failures in a few areas where they spent heavily.

For example, Star Trek was an expensive license, but did not deliver big returns for them. They had some D&D licensed titles, but those were not profitable enough overall to make up for other failures. Despite not selling badly, Interplay were contributing to building a "brand" that they would not live to benefit from.

Their debt to Titus, who were an even bigger disaster, saw their IP fall into the hands of a gang of French accountants who had singularly destroyed every game company their acquired. The extent to which I have a well justified grudge against Titus notwithstanding - Titus was the exemplar of a company run by accountants and financiers, who had had absolutely zero understanding of the business they'd chosen to enter, and who leveraged a supply of cheap credit, enabled by favourable French laws to leave a trail of s**t and wreckage throughout the gaming industry. If any of the Caen's are reading this, my advice to you is to spend the next decade reflecting on what a terrible human being you are. They are effectively responsible for Fallout being totally estranged from its original creators and handed over to ... our friends at Bethesda. There was at least some appreciation of what Fallout was, and who made it good, and what its good qualities were at Interplay - but Fago (another toxic money man) was the enabler, and ultimate wrecker of the company he "made" - by which I mean it was made by dozens of actual industry professionals and development companies contracted to them. It would be ludicrous to suggest that any money problems there revolved excessive parties at night clubs, drugs, and seedy guys who just wanted to impress women half their age (and by that means have sex with them).

 

Those robber barons are a toxic poison that embitters creative people.

It's hard to keep your enthusiasm up. It's at its worst whenever they start to talk about games for girls or women. This invariably means an attempt to access an "untapped market", usually with trite sexist drivel, or (in by rare exception) dull feminist cliches of perky empowered heroines who succeed when the dumb men fail. Neither kind of product advances gaming, or offers any kind of real equality. If the only people who choose what you can do are old rich white men who can't even pick a decent product that young white men want to buy, the odds of them selecting anything for anyone else is slim to none. The tragic success of a small number of incredibly shallow pony games has not helped close any gaps there.

 

But it all comes back to the problem that these people make bad decisions that seem utterly incomprehensible to the consumers of the product that they finance.

 

They believe that a big brand name will always triumph over a quality product.

Though way they allocate advertising spend tends to make this a self fulfilling prophecy, the results have been somewhat mixed.

Hype cannot save a bad game any more than it can save a bad movie. People are able to decide for themselves what they like. Certainly, you cannot trick them consistently.

 

While there's been progress in the mobile space, and all kinds of innovative games there, those products are so constrained by development cost that its an industry that is dominated by low-cost-of-living locations, like India and China, where good developers exist, but can live well off fairly modest profits in US$ terms.

 

If you live in the US, Europe, or Japan, you can't make a living from mobile games so easily because your cost of living is much higher.

 

Similar issues exist with "Indie" titles on the PC.

 

Perhaps Kimy could just about live off her Patreon, if she was resident in Bali or Vietnam, but you need to make more money if you want to live somewhere like Chicago, London, Oslo, or Sydney.

 

On the positive side, the modders will always be around, modding something.

 

Personally, I would prefer it if the "thing" everyone is working on is an open source engine, that isn't owned by some company that can change the rules any time they like.

I would also prefer it if there were some clear rules about openness and how you can reasonably profit from your work, that followed from that license.

People should be able to make money from their work, if they want, and others are prepared to pay for it.

On the other hand, work that is abandoned shouldn't end up locked away in a silo.

There should, by rights, be some kind of obligation to maintain if you want to retain exploitative rights to something.

And maybe some kind of pyramid scheme  whereby somebody who makes an animation that gets used in a mod that makes money should be able to profit from it somehow, without having to lock all their animations away inside Patreon.

It should be self-evident that the main beneficiaries of everything ending up in Patreon are the operators of Patreon, not the creators.

Sure, their terms are better than Apple, but if they're the only (practical) game in town, then you have to play there.

[27X]

The games industry is going to crash just like movies did, but you'll notice while there are far FAR less movies being made, those that continue to be are making the producers far more cash than they used to per company/venue.

 

Video games are going to be the new movies, and in the literal sense, where you will not own the media at all, even in electronic form. You'll own permission and nothing else. This has been the plan for over a decade, and for a lot of countries the infrastructure is now in place on both sides of the equation.

 

When something becomes so lucrative it becomes universally ubiquitous, controlled corporate commoditization is inevitable.

 

While modding is never going to completely disappear, it is by and large going to be like the old games-made-in-assembler days, and even the PC native platforms will be affected by this.

 

While games are never going to completely disappear either, the formats and platforms are going to change, and mostly for the worse before it gets better, because greed is a hell of a drug.

 

[Kendo 2]

28 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

If you live in the US, Europe, or Japan, you can't make a living from mobile games so easily because your cost of living is much higher.

Similar issues exist with "Indie" titles on the PC.

On the positive side, the modders will always be around, modding something.

Modding games isn't a reliable way to get income.  Look at what happened to Youtubers.  A lot of big names on Youtube went from being almost-millionaires to barely being able to pay their bills.  One policy change at Patreon or one complaint from a game company derails the gravy train.  Not to mention that these Patreon modders are most likely not paying taxes on the earned income.  If they make enough money to do it full-time then it's a 'job' and thus taxable.  Look at all of the cam girls, Twitch streamers and Instagram thots that got got smacked with hefty penalties for not declaring their incomes.  If the IRS gets wind of what's going on at Patreon...well, sorry about your tax-dodging luck.  I'm legitimately self-employed and the 15% gross tax eats a big chunk of my profits, so I have zero sympathy for people who cheat on their taxes.

[R-Lo]

3 hours ago, Kendo 2 said:

Modding games isn't a reliable way to get income.  Look at what happened to Youtubers.  A lot of big names on Youtube went from being almost-millionaires to barely being able to pay their bills.  One policy change at Patreon or one complaint from a game company derails the gravy train.  Not to mention that these Patreon modders are most likely not paying taxes on the earned income.  If they make enough money to do it full-time then it's a 'job' and thus taxable.  Look at all of the cam girls, Twitch streamers and Instagram thots that got got smacked with hefty penalties for not declaring their incomes.  If the IRS gets wind of what's going on at Patreon...well, sorry about your tax-dodging luck.  I'm legitimately self-employed and the 15% gross tax eats a big chunk of my profits, so I have zero sympathy for people who cheat on their taxes.

Patreon is subject to tax already and forms to fill out if using outside of US, 

The earnings amount you see when visiting a page(if shown) is actually subject already to tax deductions, 

Tax is paid per pledge, not on the overall amount, 

In my case, it's $3 to gain access to my early access, for every $3 paid I receive between $2.50 - $2.57 on average, 

On my $10 tier I receive around $8.67 of that, 

Each year we receive documentation related to tax and earnings. 

[KoolHndLuke]

7 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

 

Personally, I would prefer it if the "thing" everyone is working on is an open source engine, that isn't owned by some company that can change the rules any time they like.

You mean something like these?

 

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, KoolHndLuke said:

You mean something like these?

Basically... No.

 

What you did there, is confuse modding a game for a bit of fun, with making a game from scratch, which is work.

 

There is a huge difference between modding a finished game I already enjoy playing - that's a hobby - and making an entirely new game - that's a JOB.

 

I already have a job, so it's a non-starter of a proposition.

 

Also, if I wanted to make a new game from scratch, I wouldn't make it for free, I'd make it purely for profit, with a commercial engine and a decent sized team - so it could be released in a practical time frame to make money.

 

 

Most modders are modding for a hobby, so they don't want to pay.

 

But there's no need to rely on free stuff if you're making commercial product; it's just another business cost you balance cost vs benefit.

[KoolHndLuke]

55 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

What you did there, is confuse modding a game for a bit of fun, with making a game from scratch, which is work.

Ughh, no I didn't. Of course any game made would be for profit. But I thought that was what you were talking about. That's what I'm talking about anyway. If the industry is going to change, it will be through indies and far away from corporate fuckheads only interested in money, that don't care about games in the first place.

 

Besides, who says making games can't be both profitable and fun? When a person is passionate about what they do, they don't mind the work as much. You said yourself that it is the environment they create that saps creativity and passion.

[Lupine00]

25 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

If the industry is going to change, it will be through indies and far away from corporate fuckheads only interested in money/ that don't care about games.

I wonder how long idealists in the music business have been saying that?  

Bob Dylan got a prize, but he made a lot of money for the businessmen, despite his lyrics.

 

I don't think there's a huge amount of dispute about the general direction the industry is headed in.

 

There's room for a little indie project here or there, room for some hobbyist modders, but for the industry heading, just scroll back down.

[KoolHndLuke]

37 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

I wonder how long idealists in the music business have been saying that?  

Bob Dylan got a prize, but he made a lot of money for the businessmen, despite his lyrics.

 

I don't think there's a huge amount of dispute about the general direction the industry is headed in.

 

There's room for a little indie project here or there, room for some hobbyist modders, but for the industry heading, just scroll back down.

Well, some "idealists" are trying despite the current trajectory of the industry because of their passion......and I applaud them for that and support them when I can. The industry could crash a thousand times over, but games will still be made because they will always be in demand. In fact the industry is the victim of it's own success you might say. Seems we have a very different philosophical approach to this, but thank you for your insight all the same.

 

Huh, look at that- post # 2000. I spend way too much time on this site, lol. 

[winny257]

5 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Spoiler

Basically... No.

 

What you did there, is confuse modding a game for a bit of fun, with making a game from scratch, which is work.

 

There is a huge difference between modding a finished game I already enjoy playing - that's a hobby - and making an entirely new game - that's a JOB.

 

I already have a job, so it's a non-starter of a proposition.

 

Also, if I wanted to make a new game from scratch, I wouldn't make it for free, I'd make it purely for profit, with a commercial engine and a decent sized team - so it could be released in a practical time frame to make money.

 

 

Most modders are modding for a hobby, so they don't want to pay.

 

But there's no need to rely on free stuff if you're making commercial product; it's just another business cost you balance cost vs benefit.

 

Lol, these people to have for Oblivion and Skyrim a completely independent game developed and that for nothing. 

https://sureai.net/games/enderal/?lang=de

 

there are such Humans and there are the others!
those who only see that. 

[full_inu]

40 minutes ago, winny257 said:

there are such Humans and there are the others!
those who only see that. 

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

[Ankahet]

On 5/28/2019 at 6:15 AM, KoolHndLuke said:

I'm curious as an half-way decent artist, how this works in practice. Do the people who donate expect things or sort of make demands disguised as "suggestions"? And do the recipients of donations feel more obligated to do things- aka it's more like a job? What are some of the pitfalls of Patreon, if any?

As a professional artist, I have come to find a lot of things about the industry, and Patreon.

 

As far as the industry goes, you have good commissioners and bad ones. But the ones who want things for less, or free, sadly, far outweigh the ones who dont mind paying what you are asking. Anyone whom produces art at a cost (IE. takes money for it) is operating on a professional platform. They are providing a service for a cost. Some do it now and then, but others do it full time. I do it as a full time job. Over the many years I have been doing it, I have noticed that even people whom are not actually customers, (IE people who donate, or dont buy at all) seem to have a level of expectation that they shouldnt. So I suppose you could classify it as entitlement. What people dont understand is that art takes a lot of time and skill. If the person is charging for their time, chances are they aren't even making minimum wage. At my prices, I am barely making minimum wage. It is a common misconception that artists have all this money and are so well off, when that simply isn't the case when it comes to a lot of people. For instance, I live in a 3 bedroom apartment with 2 other people and we still struggle with bills because of how expensive things are, and I draw from the time I get up until the time I go to sleep, working on commissions. I MIGHT have enough to out to eat maybe once a month... The rest goes to bills.

 

As far as Patreon goes... It is much like any other crowd-funding platform. It's very difficult to get and keep it going. Yes, there are a lot of people who expect things for donating, instead of understanding that their donation is out of support and as a reward they get to see updates and such that others do not. In the eyes of many, they are "paying" (not donating) for something and they want something for their money (even though they are already getting something).

 

Take mods for skyrim for example, works slightly differently, but is similar in many many ways. You have to have quite a bit of knowledge to make an in-depth mod, and it takes a good while. Now granted, you cannot "sell" your mod, but people could still donate to show their support for the amount of time you put into making it. Look at it this way. If I write a mod, that takes me a month with an average investment of 4 hours a day, that's 120 hours I could have been working to make money, but was producing something else for people to enjoy for free. I firmly believe if someone is going to put their time into something for others to enjoy at no cost, then it is only appropriate for those whom do enjoy it to show their support for what it is costing the artist, programmer (what-have-you) to do so.

 

I myself am still learning a lot about creating mods and meandering my way through the joke of a Creation Kit, so I am not worried about compensation as I dont put a TON of time into it. I just work on little things here and there, and when I have a good chunk of time, devote it to learning more. However, if I were putting in the kind of hours it takes to develop framework, reworking NavMesh through the entire game. Designing complicated ENB's, while comments and appreciation are awesome, at the same time, it doesn't put food on my table, and if it got to the point that I couldn't survive doing what I was doing, I would naturally have to retire from it and choose a path that would.

 

Many people don't think about all these things, but it is a hell of a lot harder to do these things than people might think. Also considering you are basically the CEO, Production, Marketing and everything else all in one. But, anyhow, thats my view on things with the experience I have, I can only hope it was insightful.

[Ankahet]

17 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Certainly, you cannot trick them consistently.

Sure they can, they have been doing it for ages. Big name companies are putting out garbage, and idiots are still buying it.

 

Call of Duty - Same game, but people buy it year after year.

WoW - Went to complete trash, but people still subbed and buying cash shop items.

Fallout 76 - Reused garbage, people still buying it despite he MANY fiasco's it's been involved with.

 

So long as these companies remain in profit margins and are technically still making money, they have absolutely ZERO incentive to change or produce a better product. Sad thing is, it is the consumer that teaches them it is passable to design a bad product, because people KEEP buying it. Even if it is commonly and widely know that it's a BAD product.

[KoolHndLuke]

43 minutes ago, Ankahet said:

Sure they can, they have been doing it for ages. Big name companies are putting out garbage, and idiots are still buying it.

 

Call of Duty - Same game, but people buy it year after year.

WoW - Went to complete trash, but people still subbed and buying cash shop items.

Fallout 76 - Reused garbage, people still buying it despite he MANY fiasco's it's been involved with.

 

So long as these companies remain in profit margins and are technically still making money, they have absolutely ZERO incentive to change or produce a better product. Sad thing is, it is the consumer that teaches them it is passable to design a bad product, because people KEEP buying it. Even if it is commonly and widely know that it's a BAD product.

You have to remember that the young kids buying that shit have no frame of reference to know that they're bad games or that there was a time when games were different/better (or what it means in the grand scheme).........and this is part of what the industry relies on I think. Of course there are a fair number of gamers that do know the difference and buy shit anyway because hey- it probably ain't their money that they're spending. What does that leave........about a third or quarter of the market that won't buy garbage just so they can play it long enough to be absolutely certain it's dogshit? 

[Ankahet]

6 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

You have to remember that the young kids buying that shit have no frame of reference to know that they're bad games or that there was a time when games were different/better.........and this is part of what the industry relies on. Of course there is a fair number of gamers that do know the difference and buy shit anyway because hey- it probably ain't their money that they're spending.

True, very true. Although, they have less wiggle-room as far as I am concerned, due to the fact that our age of information is so expansive that you can literally find anything and everything about one of those games online. So, the likelihood that they dont know what they are buying is significantly less xP

[Kendo 2]

15 minutes ago, KoolHndLuke said:

You have to remember that the young kids buying that shit have no frame of reference to know that they're bad games...

That goes for supposed adults too.  'It's a masterpiece!'  'Angry Joe's 10-out-of-10 Bad-ass Seal of Approval!'  'Criticizing Bethesda is disrespectful.'  Gaming got sucked into Clown World years ago.

[27X]

8 minutes ago, Kendo 2 said:

That goes for supposed adults too.  'It's a masterpiece!'  'Angry Joe's 10-out-of-10 Bad-ass Seal of Approval!'  'Criticizing Bethesda is disrespectful.'  Gaming got sucked into Clown World years ago.

Literal lol.

 

Nobody needs to like or dislike what you like or dislike.

[Kendo 2]

37 minutes ago, 27X said:

Nobody needs to like or dislike what you like or dislike.

Stop using projection.

[27X]

The only person projecting here on a regular basis is you and pork type, liberals this, youtube that, google this, global warming that, the progressive regressive media this, blah blah blah.

 

 You can certainly make predictions based on human nature and weaknesses, but your schtick never deviates past political handwringing about the poor childrens stuck in the liberal zombie apocalypse, and considering what state and country you live in that's pretty damn funny.

 

[Kendo 2]

Me, rent-free in your head.

[GrimReaper]

why don't we keep /pol/shit where it belongs, on /pol/.

[DoctaSax]

On topic, pretty please.

[Ankahet]

On 5/30/2019 at 10:12 PM, Kendo 2 said:

Could ask that same question about Star Wars, the MCU, anything EA touches (outside of FIFA), and any other situation where creators and bean-counters say 'Fuck the fans'.  WeTodd Howard is on record saying he doesn't care about what the fans want.  Pete Hines is on record belittling people when they ask basic questions.  Look at the direction Bethesda games are going and look at how they treated FO76 players.  That was the appetizer course in a banquet of Bethesda fans eating shit.  And 'We love the modding community and there will always be mods' doesn't translate to 'free mods for everyone'.

 

I'll NEVER pay/donate for a Bethesda game mod, but I don't care if people do or if modders put their content behind paywalls.  Bethesda and their fan-base relationship is a toxic cluster-fuck anyway.  Modders locking Bethesda IP behind paywalls is as tasty as Bethesda charging for mods themselves.  I'm looking forward to the shit-show that will follow Bethesda's next release.

 

I would never charge for anything I make mod wise. But as a programmer and professional artist, I very well understand the amount of work that goes into them. While it might be true that a majority of things are created using the base files in creation kit, that shouldnt suggest that all of it is just layed out on a plate for them and put together as easy as legos. I support the artists I enjoy because I choose to, and know the amount of work they do. I support the mod authors I enjoy, because I know the amount of work they do and I believe they should be compensated in some way for the effort they are putting into the project. A project that is uploaded for free. Forgive me, but it very much seems you have an entitled attitude. One that suggests you should be able to use and have everything for free regardless of how hard others worked on it. At the end of the day, comments and endorsements are lovely, however, these things take hours, days, even months to put together, and comments or endorsements dont put food on the table of someone whom is creating something that is used in mass, for free.

[Ankahet]

On 5/31/2019 at 8:36 AM, Lupine00 said:

Basically... No.

 

What you did there, is confuse modding a game for a bit of fun, with making a game from scratch, which is work.

 

There is a huge difference between modding a finished game I already enjoy playing - that's a hobby - and making an entirely new game - that's a JOB.

 

I already have a job, so it's a non-starter of a proposition.

 

Also, if I wanted to make a new game from scratch, I wouldn't make it for free, I'd make it purely for profit, with a commercial engine and a decent sized team - so it could be released in a practical time frame to make money.

 

 

Most modders are modding for a hobby, so they don't want to pay.

 

But there's no need to rely on free stuff if you're making commercial product; it's just another business cost you balance cost vs benefit.

It also seems you severely underestimate the time and work it takes to make some of these "Mods". The only reason it is considered a mod, is because the base game is indeed finished. However that shouldnt suggest that these frameworks, or completely new quest lines, scripts and such, are not work intensive. It takes a lot of time and effort to create them. If you believe it doesnt, then you havent done anything like that, and if you have, then sad to say, you are just a fool for believing it.