Pre-Dom War V - Caution
polycounter lvl 18
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.
Source: http://www.polycount.com/2010/12/05/pre-dom-war-v-caution/
Discuss.
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.
Source: http://www.polycount.com/2010/12/05/pre-dom-war-v-caution/
Discuss.
This discussion has been closed.
Replies
I'm all for them making some money if it means things run more smoothly, but that's going to be an ongoing concern until there is finally a comp that doesn't get fucked up somehow. I really thought cc this year was going to do it, but we all know how that worked out.
Yeah. Good thing that you did then.
It's good to at least know.
For some reason, this doesn't sit too well with me. I get that funds are needed to run this sort of thing (though, no one asked for it to be this Xtreme and fancy) but it seems kind of scummy to charge people money for images they could just find on their own with no extra "behind the scenes" or extra information.
It would be nice if these funds actually made the competitions we participate in run smoothly rather than opening a studio %5 of us will ever visit...just sayin'
Ah, I didn't realize that. Thanks for looking out, and that's pretty fucked that they were planning on selling the content without telling people.
Um, isn't that illegal?
I'm sure they would have put something in the agreement when you submit about it. It probably would have been that if you enter, your work is open to being sold. If you didn't want it to be sold, you just couldn't have entered. Glad people fought against it.
Well, to be fair, and really I do love Polycount, but who else even runs competitions like this?
That's the main reason I spend most of my time on GA rather than PC, the comps and minicomps.
So yeah, Domwar uses bandwidth in a way from all the other forums, but no other forum runs a competition of this magnitude.
Maybe it's time to start planning other serious art competitions without all this BS. I know a lot of artists who are itchin' for more challenges.
These contests were never to better the community. It was a way for someone to line their pockets and it has worked. I mean seriously. GA - MONTREAL? Yeah why not just pour that money back into the community in other ways?
Oh well... Like Emil said... Enter at your own risk. Glad we could warn you guys.
nuff said.
Really not the best time/place to pimp your mod team dude.
Thank you for bringing this to attention and for looking out for the community.
I agree with this completely.
Withdrawn all interest in supporting GameArtisans, will not be posting and will no longer be active there any more. I also wont be participating in any of the contests from this moment onward.
Tis extremely sad, I've enjoyed doing stuff for the comicon challenges for the past 2 years.
However, this doesnt stop me from say....... reading about the rules of the competition elsewhere.... making the art that I WOULD make for the competition, but then not entering the comp, and instead posting up all the high res images in as many places as possible outside of GA for people to download for free!
Still, its a dick move.
I would gladly enter a contest polycount hosts! the TF2 contest was a huge success and instead of taking any money for themselves polycount was able to give several members of this forums alot of money!
Cheers,
Arman
so, the reason for people like you to participate in GA contests is to generate exclusive content for Fred, and you want your cut of the profit?
do you actually mean that? seriously, wtf?
These contests are to generate content for artist folios, to demonstrate the level of quality other artists can produce, to learn from one another. Not to fuck each other over for a quick buck.
There's a thread on Game Artisans here:
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18042&page=2
It'd be advisable to keep an eye on it. Fred has said that he's going to tell his side of the story.
Until then I suggest people simmer down and desist from any stupid inter-forum flamewars.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=6786595&postcount=2
With a little guilt trip at the end?
So now with the help of the mods it is now optional?
If this is so, why thank you kind sirs! You guys are the ones that care about the artists!
we have the option to not allow the usage of our art, correct? It seems a little weird to not compensate the artists, but I wasn't getting paid for it anyways, so at the very least it would be a good way to get your work out there for people to see... right?
What facts are you after exactly?
My post was regarding the late addition of this new information regarding the sale of artwork submitted by the entrants. If you go to the submissions page (linked in my first post), log in to Game-Artisans and do a fake submission. You'll see it there for yourself.
I don't understand why people are so up in arms about me notifying the community about this. CGHUB and CGSociety both did the same (as I mentioned over in the GA Thread).
LINKS:
http://cghub.com/forum/showpost.php?p=55328&postcount=11
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=6786595&postcount=2
But yes, a select few of us questioned Fred regarding this, and because of this the option was then later added.
Wait what? No no..I didn't mean that at all. I just meant it seems like a bummer that they get a cut of a profit for something we do for free, and when its our work that gets them the web traffic. Ya know? If I had my way, everything be free!
yes, and more than just a physical prizes - many people got jobs, portfolio pieces, practice and training.
now, when after successfully running DW four times, Fred wants to make it somewhat profitable, this stuff pops up. I think it's just unfair and unthankful.
I apologize for being rude to Emil, really there's not enough information right now to judge this situation. Let's hear what Fred has to say.
Huge thing like DW can't be run on pure enthusiasm, there's always money involved.
On the other hand - yes we do it for free, literally, but there's almost always positive outcome to this for each artist, I mentioned above. It always been like that, I see no reason to ruin it now.
You're wrong, you can apply the same logic to every major website hosting artist's portfolios, take DA or CGhub for example. Without those galleries and forums many people would end up doing some shitty work they're not supposed to.
I know quite a few talented people who got themselves into community through DW and similar contests, you just can't deny the fact that DW is a huge help for many people out there.
We ran a Team Fortress 2 Contest not too long ago, maybe you saw it, maybe you didn't. We has so much traffic that it took Polycount down and made it run slow for weeks (we had no banner ads at the time either - so no revenue from that).
The contest started as scheduled, it ended as scheduled, the winners were announced as scheduled. The winner got their items put into the game, these items were later sold by Valve and what do you know... The original artists were actually paid as well. Substantially! An average of US$40,000 for the first few weeks of sales.
So your jab back at GA. Well... We did have our own contest and yes... We ran it far better and was significantly successful too. The only people that made money, were the winners of our contest.
For instance the DW mini comp from last year was a success because there was a cool Bobo basemesh to sculpt from, and something like that could be run off a Blogger page (well maybe not for bandwith reasons, but you get the gist). Anyways - i think its cool that, again, every can now make their own judgement.
because people expect this thing to grow along with community, otherwise they would lose the interest quickly. It's natural
again, so far it was good, four successful contests, each new one better than previous. Yes it's very hard to handle for a small team of enthusiasts, no doubt about that,
but it doesn't mean Fred should give up and quit, instead he looks for opportunities to make some money out of it, to make it run. Is it so hard to realise guys?
To be honest, I can hardly believe this whole thing with selling art packs for 2 euros will bring shitload of money to GA. Not to mention possible profit sharing.
It's not about the cost about it. It is more about the principle of the whole thing.
Say I run another FPS challenge over here and have everyone upload their guns and materials when done and I then sell those on turbosquid or some other site, without giving anything back to the original artists.
Sure they didn't have to join and I spent my free time working on the write ups, reviews, etc but in the end the work belongs to the artist and not me so why should I get paid?
Do you not see how that is pretty jacked up?
Sorry, that's not really correct comparison
For TF2 you used already established Valve marketplace, something that wasn't made by you, and something that cost ALOT more to build and support, agree?
While I respect the fact you guys pulled that off, considering traffic and managing the contest - it's not the same thing.
DW was built from scratch by handful of people, and wasn't profitable at all, for all I know. It takes little effort to ruin it.
what is this place then? for bashing Fred for all he did?
Now take your toys, and go home to bed little boy.
The contests run by GA could easily be slightly modified to be used to export art from contestents into future games. In fact there are probably a handful of titles that could use the rigs and characters generated from this competition as is with no bending of how the contest is run. I made a post prior to this fiasco in the polycount collaboration forum suggesting we could take all the art from these contests, put 'em together and make something tangible, it's not a stretch.
So the big issue here is do we want contests hosted by a site that requires chunks of potential profit in order to maintain these competitions? Do we want contests that bring art into games at all? since this could literally change how game art is created for games if the contests are found to be far more profitable than employing actual artists.
Maybe i'm thinking too much into all this, but maybe GA has too.
kp