Tournaments and the workshop
polycounter lvl 14
Hey guys,
Looking for some feedback on your specific thoughts and experience with the state of the workshop and tournament items.
How many of you feel that tournaments are a guaranteed addition to the store?
if you have been offered a tournament colab, what is the lowest and highest rate they have offered?
How do you feel about tournaments and the unknown item to game quota per month?
Do you have any suggestions on how you would sell dota2TV tickets/ crowdfund a tournament without the current item bundles?
Thanks guys!
Looking for some feedback on your specific thoughts and experience with the state of the workshop and tournament items.
How many of you feel that tournaments are a guaranteed addition to the store?
if you have been offered a tournament colab, what is the lowest and highest rate they have offered?
How do you feel about tournaments and the unknown item to game quota per month?
Do you have any suggestions on how you would sell dota2TV tickets/ crowdfund a tournament without the current item bundles?
Thanks guys!
Replies
first of all i dont think that working with a tourney does anyhow guarant to get in store anymore. at this point valve has become very picky and also made the quality review rly tough. i have lots of friends who are admins for different tourneys and they all have problems to get the items they are looking for ingame because valve is rejecting their setwishes in a very high rate.
i have worked with some tourneys already (and i am working with one a the moment) as well as i declined alot of tourneys in the past. i have seen every number between 20% and 60% as rate they offered me, but it turned out that the rates are not as much the important thing. important is only if they can generate sales or not. such thing has alot to do with how high the pricepool is and if there is a community hyping the tourney in the background or not. after all i think the whole tourney system is shit at the moment and my advise would be that artists and organisations/tourneys/whatever eat their share from 2 different pots. what i mean is that artists still recieve 25% and maybe the tourney also 25% and valve 50. also i honestly think that valve should not allow so many tourneys itembundles because if the whole number would be reduced maybe they could use their power again to add more of their own chests.
-Items are definitely not guaranteed to be added. We got a peek into Valve's review process and received feedback on some of our concepts a couple months ago and again on the sets after they were uploaded to the workshop. Two of the sets involved were rejected, one of which was improved and we think accepted by redoing the wing slot and adjusting the colors and textures on the rest of the set.
-The percent split we did was 60 Artist/40 Organizer because I was under the impression the prizepool was going to be coming from their portion of the 40, but the system was recently changed to avoid complicating the percentages. If I was aware of that I would have pushed for 80/20 or 75/25. I've heard of much lower percents with other organizations though, even going to 25 Artist/75 Organizer, albeit that was before the change with how the prizepool's share is taken.
-Compendiums are being jam packed with items these days which means every artist involved gets just a sliver of it, especially because 12.5% of the Contributor/Organizer's 25% share goes towards the prize pool. For my Batrider mount for the Dota Pit Season 3 Compendium I received 8%, and it's adding up to a very small amount of profit for the work put in compared to other methods of sale like singles chests.
As for how I feel about this whole system, I feel it's getting way too stacked right now towards tournaments. There was so much response from Valve for the tournament items but I haven't received a comment on any of my personal items in over 8 months. BTS had a chest 2 months ago and are already lined up to have another one put in in the next couple months. I believe Teabiscuit had a chart that showed the percentage of Artist items to Tournament/Player items and it was stacked to at least 60% Tournament/Player items currently.
As for how to improve the system to crowdfund without the current item bundles, I have no idea. Obviously it works somewhat because more are constantly being created but it's hurting the workshop for individual artists who aren't pairing up with organizations and even hurting the artists who are pairing up and taking a lower percentage than they otherwise would.
Personally I would push for less quantity meaning every tournament doesn't get a chest full of 6 sets and push for higher value items, similar to the immortals for DAC and TI4. They obviously sell and would take less work to put in than 6 sets but it would oversaturate quickly and reduce the value of skill changing items.
I don't know how to fix the issues with the system currently, but from everything I've seen the last few months I feel like the way this is going is much more to the benefit of the tournament organizers with no benefits for the artists.
I don't feel like they're a 'guaranteed' addition, but it's close enough that you might as well say that. I've heard of maybe 6 things total being denied over two years. I've seen lots of things that should have never, ever, been accepted into the game bundled with some tickets (speaking strictly about quality but in many cases style/theme fit too)
highest: 50%
lowest: 14% ("And you should be grateful to even get that much")
As of the last 6 months? Abyssmal. We have more people than ever (including tournaments) saying they buy tickets for the items, and yet when you consider what is offered to the artist it's borderline insulting. When the tournament/org/pro is getting several times as much as any individual artist there's a serious issue here IMO.
It's even worse when you consider the drop in how many artist-friendly chests there are. I guess I just chose to make sets at the wrong time but there's been hardly anything from just contributors lately. Basically what it feels like is that org's not only reap all the benefits, but get to choose the people they want to succeed and everyone else gets left behind.
A couple of options.. maybe sell the ticket by itself and crowd fund it based on that? If people want to watch the tournament and care about it, as many orgs/tournaments say, then the item doesn't matter.
or, perhaps they can still bundle items, but can we please limit it greatly? maybe one set OR ward OR courier per tournament instead to avoid oversaturation.
another is, set a value for the ticket, set a value for the item. Org gets 100% of the ticket value, artist gets 100% of the item value. If sets are being sold at 8$ each on the store, and tickets are 2-5$, then have the 'bundle' price be maybe slightly discounted and the payments go out proportionally according to value.
lastly, and imo the best scenario, would be for valve to either add tournaments to the service provider list, or have a separate org list that is essentially the same functionality. If Valve wants to continue to support the scene they should not do it at our expense, because it has created a very bitter environment (but hey, maybe that's just me), which is causing many people to refuse to participate in that kind of work going forward. I understand Valve likes being hands off, but in this case they are clearly not thinking long-term and I urge them to come up with a solution that benefits everyone if they can.
Just going to echo pretty much everything Zip said.
Having something bundled with a tournament doesn't mean you suddenly have increased chances. Maybe it means you can get stuff in 'sooner', specially considering how many tournament items have been getting ingame recently, but it certainly doesn't mean you are able to bypass the Valve review.
We also split it 60/40 under the impression that the prizepool cut would be coming from the organizer's 40%, but in the end, it was actually coming from the entire contributors cut, which means the 25% from overall sales we usually receive was cut down.
On one hand, we have Valve allowing tournaments to have A LOT of items ingame, and on the other, tournaments keep pushing for more content in order to increase value and drive sales, while artists keep accepting deals that, from what I've heard, most times actually screw them over, just for a chance of getting something reviewed by Valve and possibly getting the item ingame soon or just ingame at all.
Unless Valve puts on restrictions on the amount of tournament items in a month or something of the sort, we are just going to see them increasing constantly. I really think that the change has to come from Valve, and just stop accepting chests and compendiums with so many items, while also offering more opportunities for artists to get their contributions accepted independently, without having to rely on a tournament schedule and special treatment they possibly wouldn't have otherwise.
Why would the tournaments ever stop pushing for "more more more" when they are the ones benefiting the most? It's essentially free extra money for them. They tell an artist to do something, even if the request is ridiculous, and the risk is all placed on the artist.
I agree with you Belkun, I think Valve needs to/should act. However, I also think a lot of the responsibility is on us as well. What sort of message are we sending to Valve if we continue to support things that are hurting us? Without us making tournament items, there wouldn't be so many. I know, most likely you will respond 'if we don't do them, someone else will take our spot'. Sure. This is probably true. Except if enough of us stand our ground and maintain some integrity, those that are picking up the scraps and trying to fill that gap most likely won't be able to output anywhere near as many items as we've been seeing these last few months.
but then again, everyone has their own reasons for doing stuff, and I wouldn't fault anyone whatsoever if they're OK with the rates/deals they are offered. It really does come down to Valve in the end since they choose what passes their gates or not. It's all super interesting to me.
If 60% of items added to game are tournament items then that's really high. If valve has a quota to add per month, say 20 sets per month, and tournaments get 12 sets out of the 20, then you gotta be in the lucky 8 to even try to get in independently.
This makes the dota2 workshop more business like, and less indi. Though if that is a good thing or bad thing is up to the individual.
It also bodes concern for the power shift back into the hands of the organisations. If artists start to feel that only items that get added are from 3rd parties, they will be more inclined to perhaps lower their % to work with a 3rd party to even get added.
I would like to see valve have a visible quota of sets per month minimum they could add. Tell the community that, we aim to have 20 sets in the store per month and no more that 40% 3rd party items.
A suggestion on how this could be remedied is that org's who want to bundle chests into their compendium get ONE custom set, and the rest are choosing from the workshop by valve. The artists all get 100% and valve makes the tourney chest a bit more expensive so that extra charge can go to the tourney, or take the funds out of the valve 75%.
this is a really neat and interesting idea
1 - gets in more quickly.
2 - gets in more easily (either thanks to less quality screening, or "priority")
3 - is more (or at least, equally) profitable than a regular set or item.
- 1 is certainly true, as one week turnarounds for tournament bundles have happened (I think).
- 2 is false as explained by Zip.
- 3 seems to be false too, according to what I have heard recently and read here ; and the fact that such items do not go into regular chests makes them less interesting in the long run (no access to the Nested Cache)
So considering this, what exactly is the appeal of working on items bundled with tickets ? It seems like a loss on all fronts for the artists ...
On the suggestion mentioned above : it is interesting, but it seems a bit convoluted and would associate the chosen sets with the tournament, which is not necessarily something that every artist would like. There is an appeal to items being "purely indie", so to speak. Such items are, after all, what made the workshop what it is.
I honestly feel like the whole compendium thing is getting out of hand. It's like buying a box of cereal just for toy that's in it - it might be a marketing tactic that works, but it always sounds kind of ... cheap, somehow ?
Personally, the fact that tournaments bundle splits are so convoluted with money coming in and out without any firm rules is enough to convince me to not take part in them.
That suggestion is certainly quite interesting Anuxi, but there is also the point mentioned by pior above. Having your item being "indie" is obicously very appealing
Pretty much this. At the very least it promises some sort of feedback even now when tournament sets are being scrutinised more than ever.
@pior - I believe the perception that tournament items get in more easily comes from a period about 1.5 to 2 years ago when tournament items were pretty much the only items getting into the game. Valve did not seem to require high standards for tournament items at the time. Thankfully this seems to no longer be the case.
There are only 2 reasons why someone would buy a ticket.
- I'm legitimately interested in the tournament.
- It comes with an awesome set/courier.
I'd actually like to see some stats on ticket sales (not major events). How well are smaller tourney's actually going?
Do you have any suggestions on how you would sell dota2TV tickets/ crowdfund a tournament without the current item bundles?
- Bundle tournaments by country
- Tournament Greenlight? hahaa
- Random spectator item drops!!!
my response would have been: "then go fuck yourself and look for another artist!"
I think the whole ticket-bundle situation is off the hook. i wonder why ppl buy tickets. do they want the items or are they interested in the tournament.
I hear tournament organizers and several community indivuals are/were complaining about the matter that tourneys barely pay-off, that there is an oversaturation in tourney, even pro players were complaining about that - eternalenvy for instance.
for me it basically comes down to a few resulting conclusions.
1. every greedy little rat comes to the dota2 tournament scene and tries to make a quick and easy buck with "hosting" an online tourney. to achieve that they propably think to themselfs "lets fuckin screw some artists over" this happens to make the tournament ticket more appealing to the masses, thus possibly increases income. what happens is called oversaturation in many areas.
2. oversaturation in tourneys basically is bullshit since players or teams (incl. management) choose which tourneys they wanna play. also customers/viewers choose which tourneys they are interested in, they can basically vote with their wallet.
3. voting with their wallets doesnt really work when: ppl dont fuckin care about the tourney itself but want the items that are bundled with the ticket for later trade and even making a possible profit with said quality item (quality in terms of mythical, legendary, genuine)
4. if ppl are buying some tickets because of the items bundled with it then alot of tourneys should not happen at all cause its not in the tournament thats in the interest of the community but rather the items.
5. limiting the items bundled with tournaments as non-tradeable would be interesting to see. limiting the numbers of items bundled with a ticket would be even more interesting to see.
my proposition is: bundle no items with tickets directly but put as a feature into the store. let ppl buy a ticket without anything bundled just for the tourney support and let them buy a "linked" item solo on its own but with a cut that supports a "linked" tournament.
if you buy this item "XX % of the revenue supports the tournament xyz" this way would see what ppl are genuinly interested in and the basis for negotiation on artistside is way more solid.
this way unwanted and uninteresting tourneys would get a cut from an item but not as much money as from a ticket and the tourney scene would quickly get weeded out since its not that profitable anymore
if ppl dont want that many tournaments why is the market flooded with tickets?
thats life and thats business for fuck sake. if you're selling stuff nobody wants you might wanna change the stuff you are selling or get the fuck out of the shopkeeper business and do something else.
but as always i can only recommend to the artists: dont partner up with assholes that just want to screw you over. no one forces you to go low on your work and throw it away for minimum wages. fuck it, we are artists - we make our own rules!
i hate this global "art is for free" attitude. almost no one wants to pay for art or creative work these days. if art is for free its worthless. art comes by a price because it has value. and if the ppl dont understand this them let them fuckin drown in there grey and boring concrete hell! we, as artists, make this world a nice place for a fucking lot of ppl. so damn it, demand some respect!
Here is my input, which mostly goes by without notice, but hey, it entertains me atleast!
- It isn't as much guaranteed but rather, the probability of you making something and getting into the game is higher through a tournament than solo.This has been proven statistically and is really apparent at this point.
- 25-50%. I have yet to accept a tournament collab myself (Puck ward wasn't my decision) but I always stand by my rule: 75% or bust. I'd rather have my items rot in the workshop instead of giving a slice to those who play the victim quite often.
- I think, if anyone cared, my stance is very well known for anyone who knows me, which isn't many!
Suggestions? Valve sees the numbers and they have access to this forums and everyone. They would "supposedly" know the best way to do this. But it seems the current few crew iterations have messed it up big time. Hell, I can go as far to say might have killed the momentum. They will never catch up to LoL status at this rate.
I always warned about Organizations gaining power and both us and Valve helped them to acheive that.
My blunt suggestion would be: Let organizations bundle stuff but take a cut from anywhere else but Artists
OR
Separate the items and tickets completely!
Honestly, since you, Anuximoon, made this thread, I feel that is do to you personally getting impacted by this and/or somehow a Valve person asked you to gauge our stance.
Nothing against you from me though, just playing Oracle!
On one hand, I totally agree with the fact that the artist's split shouldn't be affected, and the cut for organisations should come from somewhere else (like service providers) ; but on the other hand, if such a system was put in place, it would make artists even *more* interested in doing tournament bundles (even just for the benefit of fast acceptance time) which would in turn make fully independent sets/items even harden to get in. And that's not good either ...
In a way, now that we all have a clear reading of how things are working thanks to the new revenue tracking tool, I feel like there is a chance for the situation to settle by itself, with less artists having the desire to even join on ticket bundles in the first place.
But well I want to add my personal experience with tournament bundles.
Back when I started playing dota 2, there was only 1 Ticket with a Courier - it was this cool sheep idk which tournament that was - and at that time it was very very special to get a "free" item that way, because the thing you really cared about was the tournament and not the item. Now-a-days its all about the items, since then I stopped buying tickets at all! I only watch the games on twitch or ingame if the tournament is free 2 watch.
It just became too expensive to buy every item you like, atleast for me and in relation to chests they are over priced if you just want to get the item.
There is a crazy tourny item inflation going on, enough pplzzz are purchasing tickets tho, but it is still a huuge overload of tourny bundles.
I personally would work on a tourny bundle, since it is a safe way to get stuff in and that is what I really care about.
And in the end the stuff we produce is Art! I wonder if someday there will be a museum just filled with loading screens and pictures of sets.(All printed out ofc.)
Another idea I just got, would be to hand draw loadingscreens w/ a brush and canvas, like you would have to do it in the "old" days - I think this would give it a whole new dimension and feeling.
for instance, you unlock a set item for each game you watch. that wouldn't be too hard to get the full set and you could perhaps still get these unlocks by watching replays.
atm you just get the full set instantly with purchase, at which point you chuck the tournament ticket and just use the items (or at least some do)
They did that with evolving sets for a while, people grew tired of that shit. People want what they pay for.
I'd rather see evolving items (as in, evolving throughout a game based on levels or gold) being made by artists themselves. As a matter of fact, nothing tells us that it is not possible ; after all, I remember asking about items with different colored themes about a year ago, and no one knew if this was "officially" possible or not. But at the end of the day, Valve simply implemented it because they probably liked the idea. Sometimes it's as simple as that !
As for different color themes, I've heard Valve isn't accepting styles that are just color changes anymore.
As for items that level up, I'm not sure they're interested in those either. Tvidotto submitted a lot of extras like a mjollnir or radiance that appears on the bear with his Lone Druid set for TI4 and I don't think any of the extras were included in it.
As they should. I've always hated color styles because of stupid shit like this.
WE let them get in bed with us - it was our game to lose. if WE don't take responsibility for the way they treat us and our craft we WILL continue to play second fiddle both financially and professionally (items will require more and more org support to get in game).
at the end of the day it is the art that USUALLY sells the tickets. we should hold most of the cards in this deal - but we let them take half our hand just because we're desperate to get in the game.
God I hate you so much.
Very true!
I got asked question about it for an interview, and it got me thinking, since I haven't done proper bundled tickets for a while. Though I am doing one right now as a favor to a friend of mine.
Since there is just lots of talk from Organisers and not much thoughts from the artist community, I thought it would be a good subject to talk about and learn more about whats ticking.
To me it feels like it's no longer enough to do your best work and cross your fingers. You have to hope you get basically sponsored by an Org which really starts feeling like high school cliques. To those of us not "in the club" it's incredibly isolating and discouraging.
At some point I start feeling like valve places more value in these organizations than in us which just doesn't match my image of the way they're supposed to behave.
/Rant
Pretty much how I feel!
really well said
The nice thing about leagues is they at least understand the fundamentals of how the workshop works.
However ... just like tournament organizers, team representative will attempt to push for a bigger split than what they really deserve, asking for something like 50% of the revenue "because that's what everybody is doing". This is mostly coming from team representatives though (= the middle men) ; I doubt that players really care about snatching free money.
Anuxi mentioned a 70%/30% split with 70% going to the artist, and I think that's a very good basis for negotation, even though I would argue that the artists actually deserve more considering that they do 100% of the work, no less. Of course some people will mention "free publicity" or "exposure" but that really is irrelevant, especially when said "publicity" is just a mere Tweet or Facebook post. Now if a player was contractually obligated to wear the set when streaming or competing in tournaments things would be different, but I feel like such binding contracts would be a bit extreme. Nothing wrong about mentioning it though, and if the set looks great the player will likely wear it anyways
At the end of the day I think that creating a set for a player that one is a fan of is a very cool thing - but that shouldn't open the gates to the artist being exploited.
Also, doing a pro player or pro team set doesn't necessarily mean easy or fast acceptance. Some sets for EG got in in a few weeks, while others remain in workshop limbo to this day. i suppose that a good time to create such sets would be to do so right before a big tournament, but again, that's just yet another "behind the scenes" tactic and I am personally not a huge fan of those.
And like Andrew suggested : just like with any other collaboration, the key to things going smoothly is to make sure that everyone involved understand the amount of work required.
Here's the thing, I disagree with Anuxi's split entirely, not for your reasons either. The main question one has to ask is what is someone worth? With the Autograph chests last year and myself getting self mades of each and every one, I can track that data and I will say it's quite interesting.
Now, to keep things anonymous I'm going to make up some numbers to explain my point.
If person X only sold 100 treasures, and person Y sold 800, why should both be treated fairly at an 70/30 split? Having an accepted 'flat rate' seems silly when no two third parties are equal. Now, I'm not saying anyone was pushing this as a flat rate, but it's the recommended rate according to that thread.
Furthermore to your point, in my experience, I've only done third party work for three reasons. Networking with potential future clients, to see a return in the investment given to a third party, and my last person reason, I just enjoy being part of something larger. Sure the artist is doing 100% of the work, but if you give a third party 30% and you see a 40% increase in sales, you made an additional 10% that you might have never made without his endorsement. In those cases it's worth it. Now these are just numbers I'm making up and I highly doubt any player, outside of maybe Dendi, can increase sales to a degree that large.
Personally, making the artist the center of attention is a barbaric way of looking at it, without experimentation to learn, to make mistakes and correct them, we could possibly be hurting ourselves in the long run.
I agree that the main draw, is, indeed, the feeling of being part of something bigger. As long as no one ends up being exploited in the process
Some players let you just come up with your own idea and just keep them on the loop to see if they like it or not. So for example me and EEsama; he asked me for a epic PA set; I'm like okay thats hard but I'll try. I send him a bunch of thumbnails and sketches, he picked the best ones and we go from there.
Other example is SingSing where he asked for the Beaver knight courier; he gave me a concept and said MAKE THIS: so I did.
The important thing is its just like Freelancing for a game company; keep a line of communication open. Send updates and let them know if you will be busy or putting the set on hold for a bit; I've had a few players just outright unhappy with the end result of their sets and have had to ask me how to deal with pulling out of the deal. Which is just awkward for everyone.