[UPDATED] Pre-Dom War V - Caution
UPDATE: December 6th 2010 - Fred, founder and organizer of the DominanceWar, has put the contest on hold.
Due to recent events, Dominance War V has been suspended. To read up on what is happening, visit: http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18042
This challenge will resume once the Founder, Fredrik Hultqvist, makes an official comment about recent events and the state of DominanceWar.com and GameArtisans.org.
Dominance War V will resume shortly. Thank you for your patience ....
ORIGINAL STORY:
The submission date is looming ever so close and there have been some amazing entries from the talented members of the Polycount Community. A bunch of new faces came to represent for the Green and Black and massive props go out to everyone who participated in the challenge.
However, I need to bring something to the attention to all the entrants (present and future). You may have noticed this small disclaimer at the bottom of the submissions page (you must be logged in at Game-Artisans to get to the submissions form).
This may be something harmless and a way to generate funds to expand the ever growing Game-Artisans Community. But bare in mind that there was no mention of selling artwork in the rules/brief before the contest started, it wasn't added during the contests duration and it was only brought to the attention of all the forum mods/admins involved less than a week ago. So this is new to us as it is to you.
So why have we flagged this as a caution? Because we at Polycount like to protect our community and all the members within it.
Polycount has dealt with Fred and Game-Artisans since the first Dominance War and we continued the relationship to the Unearthly Challenge also. In that time, the practice and conduct of these contests have been sketchy at best with the constant delays, poor judging system, missing prizes, lack of communication and always in search of donations and sponsors.
Now we have a new addition to that list, where Game-Artisans will be selling your artwork for their own financial gain. That's right! The artwork you've spent the last several weeks producing in your own spare time will be put onto the market and sold.
I personally asked Fred if the contributing artists would be compensated from the sale of their artwork. And was met with an abrupt no. Followed by this direct quote from Fred himself:
"Yup, this might make a few artists angry... but, not my problem." - Fred Hultqvist
I have dealt with Fred and Game-Artisans personally and I'm also in direct contact with others in the same position and have experienced this kind of misconduct first hand time and time again. This latest incident has broken any trust that we at Polycount had left and we'll question any further relationship Polycount has with Game-Artisans.
Replies
however, I don't see this as any different than getting paid for a character model you do for a job... If you win, you get a prize that you agreed upon. assuming that prize goes to the winner... just like a pay check. After you recieve compensation for the model, the owner of that model can do whatever they want with it...
I think the whole thing could have been handled better... but I also can't see what the real problem is.
If you didn't place in the contest, then your artwork probably won't be sold...
I'm just sayin (everyone has their opinion)
Cheers
That is bullshit, A prize is not payment. It never has been considered payment and never should be. It is simply an incentive to do better and isnt design isnt for compensation of work done.
This is approaching spec work a little too much for my liking...
Is this EXACTLY what he's doing? If he says he's doing it to keep GA running, then take it as that till proven otherwise. He could have been shifty and not mention his intentions of this. The notice can't be missed. You have to read and agree to one or the other.
But...
If I hear of Fred rolling in a new car, and paying his bills and stuff with money he's collected for this instead of turning it back into the site and things GA needs. Hell yeah I'll have an issue with it.
Would be better if it was $2.99 and the artist gets $1.99 per sale and retain rights. Every contest rules and regs should be read fully. If you don't understand, get someone who does. If your work is important to you, then you owe it to yourself to protect it.
"Yup, this might make a few artists angry… but, not my problem. "
Always be careful of what you say. But please un-snip the quote if it's much longer than that.
My e-mail:
Fred,
One thing in particular stuck me from reading your e-mail. You are going to be selling the entries as a pack for educational use? Will the contributing artists be compensated financially from the sales? If not, will the contributing artists be informed that you will be selling their work for your own financial gain?
Thanks,
Emil.
Fred's full reply:
"Hi Emil,
Check the submissions page I gave you (2d or 3d, not animation), it has
the note in there. Yup, this might make a few artists angry... but, not my
problem.
~ Fred"
Initially the submissions page didn't have an option to choose whether or not your artwork is sold. It was going to get sold regardless. The e-mail I sent was CC'd all the contributing admins/mods from the other forums and they agreed that this was unacceptable.
The submissions links were taken down and brought back up a day or so later with the added the check box options.
Still sounds a bit fishy to have a rule like that. But oh well..
Either way, with all the sponsors and stuff going on, I would have never thought he would need to do something like this to keep it going. What about asking the users if he can use their art for a compilation artbook sold to support the whole event? It should be the same end result, but asked on a much nicer way and without sounding nearly as fishy...
"Initially the submissions page didn't have an option to choose whether or not your artwork is sold. It was going to get sold regardless."
Most definitely not cool. If GA is to be run like a "business", then it's a route that either needs to be planned CAREFULLY with the community that supports it in mind or abandoned all together.
This is why there has been an update to the rules for people to submit their work in progress images as well as their final images. This shouldn't be sold... This should be available for free for anyone to download. Considering they are already sitting there in the work in progress threads already.
The submissions links were taken down and brought back up a day or so later with the added the check box options."
that's seriously not cool.
"All art, sketches, and photographs submitted in or during Dominance War remains yours to do with as you wish. You retain all rights, ownerships, and/or copyrights for your work."
Source: http://www.dominancewar.com/2010/preliminary/en_rules.php
I think it's good to offer the choice to participate in returning something to DW and GA. However i feel that this should have
been introduced before the competition begun. Had this been clear from day.1 and i would have been given the CHOICE upfront i feel this would have worked out much better.
I think i would actually embrace the chance for me to get world wide PR. To promote my name as an artist. If i still retain the rights to my work i don't see a problem.
I dont see how he could of profited from this either, a book showcasing Dominance war entries would have made much more sense.
On top of that ... I don't see how he CAN'T profit from this either while some are saying that he might be doing this for GA. He gets the artworks for free and the amount of money made from this would most definitely be kept to him alone if he wasn't even planning to ask the artists' opinions on this. Not to spread rumors about Fred here, but the way it was handled made it a possibility that he could be doing this for his own profit. If anything "not my problem" wasn't exactly the best thing to say when it comes to this.
Anyhow, uncool it is for sure : /
I remember reading the DW description on the GA site: DW is a non lucrative world wide challenge or something like that. Yes It would be easier to say we do not care seeing our work sold, yes it would be a better way to see the contest reach its end in shot delays and maybe some fun be payed back as artist if it was the case.
Then if fred wants to get money for GA it's his right and thanks god he did it in some repsect of artists by giving them the choice. If the fact of not accepting to see our work sold does not deny us to participate and maybe win so I agree with that.
Nevertheless I understand that Emil judge important to prevent us directly and clearly. And I understand some of us to disagree with the proceed even if it's not a crime. Hope a solution will be found and that the challenge will continue.
i wish that this news was presented more OBJECTIVELY . too many sentences are opinionated , attacking FredH , causing uneeded DRAMA. the Dominance War has benefited all of us, to both push and help each other to complete personal works, that are then seen by the entire game art community and get you noticed. then consider how small of an impact the profit from the high res image pack is , where your ownership is still complete. please reconsider everyone and help Dominance War to grow.
This challenge will resume once the Founder, Fredrik Hultqvist, makes an official comment about recent events and the state of DominanceWar.com and GameArtisans.org.
Dominance War V will resume shortly. Thank you for your patience ...."
Haha, good.
Your artwork is already going to be freely available to download from your forum posts. GA are simply charging $1.99 for providing a service - i.e. compressing all the entries into a .zip file for you to easily download, thus saving you a ton of time. I'd actually be quite happy to pay this as I often download loads of the images for use in my classes.
They are not profiting from your work - you've already given it away for free by putting it online. There is really no reason why anyone who created the artwork should profit from this 'zipping service', unless it was actually your intent to sell these images (in which case you wouldn't have entered them in a public contest) or it was announced at the start of the contest that this scheme would be in place and entrants could expect some kind of royalties.
However having said this - it is quite devious to change the terms and conditions of a contest half way through, and downright dishonest not to publicly announce these changes. Whoever's running DW should profit from it I think - they're providing an excellent service and putting a lot of hard work into the site. I'd have no problem with them making some cash... so long as they're clear about it up-front.
To the victor should go the spoils of war. Holy hell would that be a true forum battle royal. But then... the GA judges would just vote GA...
I think DW needs to separate from GA and any proceeds from DW need to go back to DW to fund prizes, bandwidth and create new DW contests. Now I understand that Fred is DW and GA and they aren't non-profit but it just seems like this is a GA contest and even if GA loses big they still win...
Although that would probably take a while.
Anyway, I was and am still looking forward to Dominance war V, the wait has been to long. Hopefully these things are getting sorted out asap so we can continue with this war.
This is me thinking out loud; How about for Unearthly challenge, drop the prizes and split the workload between PC and GA as much as possible? Alot of people are saying that GA tends to overreach with these competitions, and the prizes are by far not the main draw. As long as our communities don't explode over this, there's no reason lessons can't be learned.
I hope we can all get past this and it will not have any serious effect on future Dominance Wars to come. It is a fantastic learning experience and really brings everyone together in the spirit of friendly competition.
Ok, Selling our work, NOT COOL. Without express, upfront and EARLY notice of a choice to lose the rights to our work this is not cool people.
Im not sure what to do from here...so thats it? The comp is off for now?
Guess I should get back to the painting I suppose : S
Also, many people have mentioned that our work is put out for free to begin with once you enter the competition because htis is the internet and by joining the contest the "work for free" concept should automatically apply? I have to really disagree with that. Even if it was put out for free, we remain the right to do whatever with our artwork. Same as our portfolio websites, images are up on there free for viewing, downloading and what not. However any person with common sense would approach the artists for permission to use their work even if it's for something on a personal level.
Now in this case, the artworks were about to be sold for money and we weren't even given an "option" until someone brought this up to Fred? What would you think if you see your portfolio piece in an auction on Ebay by some random dudes for 25 dollars and you had no idea about it?
Fred has done a lot and I thank him for that, but not enough to have handled things this way, imho.
They are not profiting from your work – you've already given it away for free by putting it online. There is really no reason why anyone who created the artwork should profit from this 'zipping service', unless it was actually your intent to sell these images (in which case you wouldn't have entered them in a public contest) or it was announced at the start of the contest that this scheme would be in place and entrants could expect some kind of royalties.[/QUOTE]
To echo what others have said: This is so incredibly, horribly wrong. The fact that I put something on the internet for free gives anyone else the right to sell it under the guise of a "service"? That is ridiculous beyond words. Yet sadly, an oft used justification by people who would sell prints, cd's, etc. of other people's hard work.
But yeah, that aside. Even if this option had been a last minute addition, I would've thought to myself, ehh, that's kind of a turnaround, but I'll just click "no" and be done with it. I wouldn't even really have cared about the "not my problem" comment. I wouldn't really get angry about being given an option that I can turn down.
The part that really ticks me off is that they were going to do this secretly at first, without anyone's consent, while the official page actually stated an outright lie about your model not being used for anything but "checking if you followed the rules".
I've had a busy weekend, so allow me to chime in now on the whole matter.
Emil's post comes off fairly subjective, while reporting on what happened, simply because he is one of the community members here in addition to being an editor and was (is?) pretty fed up with Fred's approach to contests. It could have been written far more objectively, no doubt, but he's a member, supporter, and contributor to the community and wanted to put his 2 cents on the table in addition to filling everyone in as to what is going on. Moving forward, we can save this style of approach to comments if the subjective nature of such a news posts throws mud all over the news itself.
Behind the scenes, we - that is the PC team - often get the impression that Fred's intent on these contests aren't the most respectable. It's fantastic to see communities come together in such events - I personally love these months - but when there's this seemingly underlying motive we cannot, under our best judgement, let it lay privately.
Fred said, in a quote, that upsetting the artists (read: the communities) is not his problem. We discussed the entire matter, and decided to force his hand and make it his problem as the sole organizer of the events.
We do not take issue with Fred wanting to support his site financially so he can pay for hosting, bandwidth, and back-end systems. We 100% understand the importance and frustrations that come with such duties to running a community 'behind the scenes'. However, when such an initiative is taken - where you charge members $2 (yes, even $2) - for a service that would probably be done for free from the community itself - and try to shoe-horn that in to a contest that has already begun, we take issue with it. It felt scheming, unmoral and disrespectful to those who are entering and the rest of the communities. When we brought this up to Fred, his reply made his motives questionable.
Since the artists here at Polycount and the rest of the global community are within our best interest we decided to go public with it, beyond 'Look for the checkbox about selling a package containing your entry'. While the subjective nature of the original News post is an approach we won't take so heavily in the future the News itself is something we would definitely share again if given the chance.
Contest should be about challenging people to do their very best art work, under tight restrictions and deadlines, all within a compelling theme. From that, exposure will come to all participating artists AND the communities & websites that are involved. That alone is priceless on all fronts and should never be tainted by admission fee's, premium services, or any other method of revenue that is in direct relation to the contest.
With that said, many people have brought up the idea of Polycount running its own contest. I will say this: We hear you. We have a small team working with publishers, developers and sponsors to bring you guys a contest to the scale of Dominance War while making it effective, efficient and something that can actually be organized.
Our Polycount Pack contest was a test run on our approach to contests: Have the sponsors, prizes, judges and deadlines setup and approved BEFORE the contest is ever even announced. We did this with Valve leading up to the website and contest launch back in May and it went off without a hitch and we'll do it with our next one. So trust me, we hear you, and we're aiming to give you guys what you want.
-Adam
what about keeping dominance war afloat? comic con? and unearthly? with all the prizes. now he has Montreal to support which anybody can walk in there. Hes even spent money out his own pocket to support some of the events. and like others said on the forums, with all the managing of the forum and comps, he should be making so kind of profit from all the effort to donate for the next comps.?
But my concern should be (and everyone elses) why he slipped this in now unnoticed
just my 2 cents :P
A competitive environment forces you to learn faster, and I'll bet that one free contest is better than an expensive workshop.
You aren't losing that much, and I dbout that he' s spending the revenue on himself. if he is, I think that he's contributed enough to the communities that he deserves it.
plus what's with this paying for pics, doesn't he get free Canadian monies?
While Emil was quite right to bring this change to our attention, the correct response to this situation should be to just click 'yes' and continue with your entry, happy in the knowledge that you are supporting the organizers financially and that more people will be downloading your work.
The pack is basically worthless now that some people can opt out of it, because if I wanted to download all the entries I'd still have to trawl the forums for the missing art after buying the pack. Fred should remove the opt out button - if you're not happy with it, don't enter.
2) This doesn't have anything to do with inter-forum rivalry between PC and GA. If the original news post was really heated, it's because the author was justifiably angry. Fred should not have responded to criticism by saying he didn't care about the upsetting the artists. His position is basically that of a community relations manager, and he handled it poorly.
3) It doesn't necessarily mean he's a crazy money-grubbing madman either, folks. Running a site and multiple contests like he does is not a low-stress job. We all let stress get to us from time to time, which leads to bad decisions. Let him make a few, and help him through it as a community. If that means making donations or contributing to an art/tutorial book/dvd to be sold to keep the sites afloat, then I'll be first in line to contribute.
4) @Adam - Thanks for the diplomatic and level-headed response to this mess. Also, I'm sure I speak for the majority of the Polycount community when I say I can't freaking wait to see what you and your team come up with for a new competition. The Polycount Pack and Side-Scroller comps were loads of fun to follow from the sidelines, and now that I have a real job (yay, no more retail!) I may even get to participate for once. /excitement
What? That would be a bit too late now, wouldn't it? After we've already worked hard on our entries for weeks.
People are upset because they were plainly lied to, right there on the rules page, and only found out about it in the final few days. Yes they could have chosen not to participate... if they had known about it.
Do you seriously see nothing wrong with this?
Me, I don't even really care anymore, I'm just hoping this thing will be resolved. What irks me now is some people trying to make justifications that are totally wrong.
if you check no, not a whole lot of exposure.
the reason the charge is hes providing a service. hes zipping the imgs of a lot of entries and saving you the time of finding them.
why are people assuming hes taking the 2 bucks and buying his fav sandwich?
patience.........and see what he replys
The forum rivalries are usually a very positive thing, enhancing the competitive spirit and bringing the community within each forum to become even more tightly knit, but for the particular case of this controversy it is sad to see forum rivalry take a turn for the uglier. Let's try to keep things classy -- in the end we are all in this industry for the same reason: we love games, and we love art. That's the same no matter what forum you call home.
When you wipe away all the drama, and all the vitriol, it's really a pretty simple issue. When the pre-Dom competition started, the rules page said your submitted 3D model would ONLY be used to assure that you were following the rules. And then it turns out that Fred intended to change that without allowing competitors to opt out. Given the organizational difficulties of past DWs, even the opt-out system could be a cause for concern. Simply put, this is an abuse of the good faith that competitors have placed in the contest organizers.
The best resolution for this is just for Fred to apologize for trying to shoehorn this in at the end of the Pre-Dom, get the Pre-Dom back on track, and try out the idea on the upcoming main event so that people will know about it in advance. That would give him plenty of time to explain exactly what would be done with the artwork if he decides to do so. I don't understand how staying quiet and letting this situation keep stewing is doing any good to anyone.
its funny tho, what about last year DW when they were selling posters of the winners and what not? no one said anything about that? and i believe the artist made no profit from it either.