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Dominance War VI

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R3D
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http://gameartisans.org/dominancewar/6/index.php

They're back with a new contest! Seems it's going to be kick-started this time? I know there was a lot of drama with polycount specifically last time DW was around (2011?!). I don't really remember what all that was about though.


Edit: Drama breakdown as explained by Gav http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2440474/#Comment_2440474

Replies

  • C86G
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    C86G greentooth
    Holy.... remember this from before getting into serious 3D and I ways always blown away by the work you can see there.
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    Uhhhh why do they need a Kickstarter? To make money to give prizes? How about they just don't give out prizes and still do Dominance War? It will still get all the people who really want to compete to join. I feel few people actually did it were gunning for prizes.
  • RogerP
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    RogerP polycounter
    Curious to see what the kickstarter is going to be about. I don't really feel like paying to participate in a challenge like this though.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Yeah, I still don't like how Dominance War is ran, including this Kickstarter idea. There's a good reason why Polycount dropped out.
  • praetus
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    praetus interpolator
    Autocon said:
     How about they just don't give out prizes and still do Dominance War?
    Didn't they technically do that one year? :D
  • Finalhart
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    Finalhart polycounter lvl 6
    Guess this event requires a huge amount of effort. Website costs, marketing, etc. If they want to make the challenge they will need the money to support it, am I wrong?

    On the other hand, i can't wait to participate and watch other people's entries! Should be very rewarding.
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    Finalhart said:
    Guess this event requires a huge amount of effort. Website costs, marketing, etc. If they want to make the challenge they will need the money to support it, am I wrong?

    On the other hand, i can't wait to participate and watch other people's entries! Should be very rewarding.
    I suspect it takes quite a lot to host a contest on the scale of the dominance competitions. I'm not surprised that the organizers are looking at kickstarter as a solution. I'd like to see the war up and running again. The poster at the top looks like an ad for the 2016 comicon challenge though. Cant find anything about a Dominance war. Maybe I missed it.
  • C86G
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    C86G greentooth
    ZacD said:
    Yeah, I still don't like how Dominance War is ran, including this Kickstarter idea. There's a good reason why Polycount dropped out.
    Oh, I missed that. What happened? Might someone tell me please?
  • BucketOfNuggets
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    BucketOfNuggets polycounter lvl 6
    TherC86G said:
    ZacD said:
    Yeah, I still don't like how Dominance War is ran, including this Kickstarter idea. There's a good reason why Polycount dropped out.
    Oh, I missed that. What happened? Might someone tell me please?
    In one of the Character Art Podcasts they go in to detail about it.  Apparently the prizes were not given out and instead one of the organises used the prizes to open up his own art school studio thing. I think I might have missed a few key points.
  • Muzzoid
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    Muzzoid polycounter lvl 10
    This just seems to be the next step in the legacy of weird ass management decisions.

    Also bizarre judge choices. Looking at the concept art guys, they aren't exactly industry experts.
  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    I dont really mind the idea of a kickstarter, there are costs and peoples time is valuable. I would look at it just like contributing to a fantasy football pool.
  • low odor
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    low odor polycounter lvl 17
    I remember the glory days, when all you needed was a thread on Polycount, and a lust to destroy your enemies.

    Seems like sponsors would be a better way to go, Kickstarter  seems like an awful lot to ask of people for a contest.

    I'm not sure of all the details, but it seemed like the effort to monetize this failed the first time-  didn't they have a fiasco where they retained the rights to your entry, so they could sell  posters of your work....

    Also, did the Unearthly Challenge winners ever  get their prizes...?

    I would be leery

     
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    I remember the glory days, when all you needed was a thread on Polycount, and a lust to destroy your enemies.

    Exactly. The irony being that the high development costs involved to get complex portal websites up and running are basically wasted since people will likely check the results on Facebook and Artstation anyways.
  • Tits
  • Gav
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    Gav quad damage
    C86G:

    This is the professional reason: http://polycount.com/discussion/81995/polycount-is-out-of-the-dominance-war-contest-doing-our-own-contest/p1

    The unprofessional one, that I can't find the exact threads on but am positive they exist here - just need more time to sift through old forum posts - is that the leadership of DW at the time proposed, and attempted to, sell artists work without their full permission or any profit sharing.  I believe this happened before DWV, PC generally found it to be morally wrong - which it totally is - and they backed out to do their own thing (anyone else remember the dollar sign banner and donate now avatars that, some how - don't look at me, showed up?)   This comes after many "winners" reported never getting prizes, and around the time Fred - the guy behind DW - attempted to open a brick and mortar hangout area for artists in Montreal.  This obviously failed, and the rumor is that those "prizes" were used in this studio space.  

    Personally, I loved loved loved DW but now am pretty strongly against it as, in my opinion, Fred has turned a very fun and casual event into a serious competition on a massive scale with absolutely no soul.  Beyond that, he's built this all off of the backs of artist's doing this for free (for fun) and has, with evidence, tried to either profit or fund a passion project with little to no permission from those artists and certainly not giving them a cut.

    The way this has always been reasoned out is that "it takes money to run these things" and it DEFINITELY does.  But. Polycount does this and has never asked you for a dime. So has Artstation.  So does CGPlus.  If they can do it, so can he, and if he can't do it without asking for money, then he shouldn't do it at all.  The dude's in it for money, and it's masked with the intention he's doing it for "the community" but that's bullshit and here's why:

    -The idea of exposure is a lie.  Back in the day, the exposure was to other peers in the industry and art directors would watch it for possible prospects.  Look at rawkstar, slipgate, kite, etc.   Now, the stage is so massive, most people don't even know who their competing against and any exposure gets lost to the literal thousands of applicants.   Plus, DW was before social media was commonly used - it was a platform for a collection of artists to mingle, communicate, and basically learn from each other.  now, there's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, OKCupid, etc. and you can basically reach a more relevant audience that way.

    - The idea of the being creative and fair judgment is a lie.  The way DW is judged is essentially through the eyes of a brand.  Before, you had variety, but as soon as it took off you see specific pieces getting voted up that fit within the vision of what DW is.  Both on 2d/3d side, if you're in it to win, you essentially need to follow a style guide.

    -The idea of prizes is a lie.  Bigger ticket items have mysteriously disappeared, ask anyone who has been on these forums before the TF2 comps.  Plus, with that level of competition, if you're coming out on top to win licenses and hardware, you're probably in a position where you can just buy it yourself.

    - The only way to put it: there's some sketchy shit going down.  With having KS tied to this so early on, and the shady moves in the past (wanting to sell people's work in prints, the studio, asking for money when virtually no one else does...) I'm willing to bet the exact same thing is happening in a few days.  It's either going to be funding for staff, prizes, and/or a new studio that can be a base of operations.  All I can say is - Artstation has an office and has never asked me for anything.

    Anyway, if you want to join for fun - go ahead.  Though, it's worth noting all of this history because it seriously does begin to fringe on illegal work - or at least immoral practices that question the respect of artists.  Again, DW isn't what it used to be, and the name alone is just something thrown around by salty vets like me.  It's meaningless. There are plenty of alternatives with just as big of reach, if not more, bigger prizes, and management staff not trying to take advantage of you.  Don't be fooled by some dumb pipe dream or sob story, there's plenty of better alternatives.

    (also, thanks for the shout out bucketofnuggets - you made me write my first lengthy post in years ;) )
  • Tits
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    Tits mod
    Thanks for voicing everything I was thinking in silence Gav
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    It's a shame. The common enemy (or sorts) did really encourage the community to work together and help eachother out during the first couple of years.

    I feel like the forum has lost a bit of personality as it's grown and evolved and people have come and gone. I wonder whether a similar event without all the pomp and grandeur - say 2 forums, no prizes, 1 hard deadline, could help bring the crew closer together again.

    Or maybe these are the nostalgic ramblings of an bitter and severely hung over old fart.
  • m4dcow
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    m4dcow interpolator

    Hah, I just finished my artstation journey entry and I stuck a greentooth in it as sort of a nod to Unearthly Challenge since I never really participated in one of them.

    While I agree the exposure might be moot because of the sheer number of entrants into these sorts of things, it still is cool to be able to see a bunch of people actively working something during roughly the same period of time.

    With Dominance War and Unearthly Challenge all they really have is nostalgia, plenty of places are more than able to put on these sorts of contests. We just finished Beast here and as Mentioned Art Station has started doing challenges too, Mapcore also has a contest going for Unreal Tournament right now.

    Personally I don't really like the skin/asset pack contests we've been having here as of late mainly because you are basically locked in to a particular style off the bat, whereas with the broader challenges like Brawl, Escape etc... you end up with a huge range of different styles and approaches.

    We're due for an environment challenge here soon though, Throne Room was about a year ago maybe something comes up soon after the weapon finish contest, hopefully one that involves many disciplines.

  • RogerP
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    RogerP polycounter
    Great post @Gav that should help out clear some of the mystery behind what has gone behind the curtains on these past iterations of DW and other comps from GA.

    I've always had fun with the past Comicon Challenges, but it's hard to overlook practices like these from the organizer/s.
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    this just reminds me of this bullshit:


    There are so many other sites with great challenges. Don't let yourself be suckered into being a pawn in Fred's fucked up games and delusions of grandeur.


  • Swizzle
  • EarthQuake
    Well, look on the bright side, after currency exchange it will only cost you $581 USD.
  • RogerP
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    RogerP polycounter
    Well, look on the bright side, after currency exchange it will only cost you $581 USD.
    Total bargain! Taking into account you will be able to play with two dogs and spend the day with Fred and all of his hosted challenges.


    That video made me cringe  :s


  • JasonLavoie
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    JasonLavoie polycounter lvl 18
    sigh...

    Gav sums is up so perfectly, thanks for taking the time to write it good sir!
  • Segreto
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    Segreto polycount sponsor
    The whole thing just makes no sense at all. I mean sure, if you want financial help running competitions, go all kickstarter on it. There's really no other way of generating income off of them, and running them costs $. Competitions are marketing sideshows to a main product that you are offering. But then to say you want the money to build a brick and mortar shop for running the comps? Just seems like an endless money pit. The overhead alone would be a nightmare. If you don't have an actual product or service to sell, what's the point other than dumping money down the drain?
  • m4dcow
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    m4dcow interpolator

    Segreto said:
    The whole thing just makes no sense at all. I mean sure, if you want financial help running competitions, go all kickstarter on it. There's really no other way of generating income off of them, and running them costs $. Competitions are marketing sideshows to a main product that you are offering. But then to say you want the money to build a brick and mortar shop for running the comps? Just seems like an endless money pit. The overhead alone would be a nightmare. If you don't have an actual product or service to sell, what's the point other than dumping money down the drain?

    Ideally these sort of comps should sustain themselves from ad revenue on the site, so more people browsing checking out a challenge the more revenue coming in. While this probably isn't always the case even here, I agree with you that running a kickstarter to fund a community art studio/incubator/whatever that has no relevance to actually running a challenge is bullshit. I mean @r13 won't be running kickstarters to fund renting office space/equipment for himself to do polycount stuff. Hell I remember reading that quite often site revenue didn't cover running costs not to mention the all the time donated by the PC crew day to day, it's a labour of love and that's why this community is regarded highly.


  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    If you wanna come to Montreal, you can hang out with me for only $748.

  • RogerP
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    RogerP polycounter
    @JacqueChoi

    You better have two dogs or no deal
  • Tits
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    Tits mod
    $745  I have 2 cats and i'll upgrade to a real coffee place
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    The incredibly talented and always humble,.....
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    lol so the KS is indeed for a studio as Gav predicted XD

    The way that video was setup to announce it was for a Montreal office I thought it was a joke. He announced in the vid the KS is for a studio office and then has people reacting negatively in the video and lists all these unrealistic uses for the studio? What an awkward video that was.
  • RaptorCWS
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    RaptorCWS polycounter lvl 11
    Did they ever actually answer as to why a physical location is needed?. I'm sure running a big contest can get expensive, but why would you need a physical location to do that? and what kind of location would you get for just $34,859. I mean that's pretty cheap for property and everything else that you will need to pay for along with it.
  • Swizzle
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    Swizzle polycounter lvl 15
    For an even $700 you can come meet me in sunny Burbank where I have zero pets and two Starbucks within walking distance! I'll even let you get a word in edgewise during our conversation over drinks that you pay for.
  • Daew
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    Daew polycounter lvl 9
    @RaptorCWS
     yep, on the kickstarter page this is their reason

    "A physical space allows a team to communicate with each other in real-time, enabling technical solutions and online support to be delivered instantaneously, resulting in more efficient and 100% solid challenges for artists everywhere!" 

    Super compelling reason :p

    Also in the video its an  interesting use of the "video glitch effect" when Fredrik starts talking. From my past experience watching movies, when people use that effect it is usually used to show that something is wrong...

    Really makes one appreciate polycount and artstation more

  • sziada
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    sziada polycounter lvl 11
    kinda curious what was the drama last time they hosted this?
  • Jonas Ronnegard
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    Jonas Ronnegard polycount sponsor
    I'm a lonely freelancer, so if you hang out with me you get a free beer and 20$
  • throttlekitty
    RaptorCWS said:
    Did they ever actually answer as to why a physical location is needed?. I'm sure running a big contest can get expensive, but why would you need a physical location to do that? and what kind of location would you get for just $34,859. I mean that's pretty cheap for property and everything else that you will need to pay for along with it.
    Having seen a few of these go down, it's a COOL and ARTY place for the owner+friends and whoever is cool enough to bring booze until the bills aren't getting paid.
  • R3D
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    R3D interpolator
    sziada said:
    kinda curious what was the drama last time they hosted this?
    gavin posted it in the first page
  • Jakub
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    Jakub interpolator
    I was extremely hyped to take a part in ComicCon Challenge, but I think I'd prefer to spend some time with these dogs.

    Thanks for clearing everything up Gavin!
  • C86G
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    C86G greentooth
    Thank you @Gav for your post. I had no idea what was going on. Everything sounds sad to me, since- till now, DW was a massive and awesome event to me (only looking at people´s work, never participated) and I loved it. But the things you say make it plausible not to like this event as much as I did before (though the work will still be great).
  • EarthQuake
    So ummm, none of the artists whose work was shown were credited in this kickstarter video, were any of the artists even asked for permission?

    Fred did manage to credit himself though, so there is that.
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    I'm also wondering about the legality of using Marvel and Nintendo Characters to generate kickstarter revenue.

    :sweat:


  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Wow, he thought he could get $45k-$250k? Even if every active member on every game artist forum donated $5 I don't think it would hit $45k.
  • Jonas Ronnegard
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    Jonas Ronnegard polycount sponsor
    yeah that goal would be hard to hit,

    regarding permission from artists to display their work, didn't they agree to anything like that by entering the competitions?
  • Gav
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    Gav quad damage
    Technically, I believe everyone agrees to let their work be used for marketing purposes.  That's one of the many shady areas surrounding all of this because, yeah, this is marketing...it's what's in writing...but I think "most" people assuming marketing means, you know, posting about it on another forum, making a banner for a booth at GDC, sending it out in emails to gain attention, etc.  I would assume most artists think that marketing would just be for the next competition as well - as in the past winners of DW to promote the next one.   I would also assume that most people didn't agree to any of that thinking  their work would be used in Kickstarter campaigns giving no credit and who knows what else.   Not sure how the legalese works, though, I'm guessing if you agree to let a dude with shifty morals use your work for "marketing purposes" that could classify as a lot of different things.

    I also know a few guys who's work is in that video that they definitely didn't give permission for.  My understanding is that they were never asked and only a select group were shown this campaign beforehand.


  • Jonas Ronnegard
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    Jonas Ronnegard polycount sponsor
    Didn't actually watch the kickstarter video until now, holy shit, that inspiration speech was so awkward and misplaced, from that video alone you can tell what kind of drama there might have been before this without reading any of the stories.
  • Lazerus Reborn
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    Lazerus Reborn polycounter lvl 8
    Oh god. This is literally right in the 3D childhood for me. I followed JFletcher with a religious passion for his V'HULCREM-KR entry into Dom war 4, 7 years ago now. Makes me sad at how shit stained a once bright beacon for new artists can get. Alas Viva la Polycount!
  • RaptorCWS
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    RaptorCWS polycounter lvl 11
    Daew said:
    @RaptorCWS
     yep, on the kickstarter page this is their reason

    "A physical space allows a team to communicate with each other in real-time, enabling technical solutions and online support to be delivered instantaneously, resulting in more efficient and 100% solid challenges for artists everywhere!" 

    Super compelling reason :p

    Also in the video its an  interesting use of the "video glitch effect" when Fredrik starts talking. From my past experience watching movies, when people use that effect it is usually used to show that something is wrong...

    Really makes one appreciate polycount and artstation

    Well i mean I saw the reasons they gave but how would that give a "more efficient and 100% solid challenges for artists everywhere!"
    I mean really its asking for a place to think for other people to use. which seems like a silly thing to waste money on.
  • carlobarley
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    carlobarley polycounter lvl 9
    errrr my friends who won the last unearthly challenge never got their prizes, i believe it were laptops and autodesk licenses. very shady.. plus its hard to make people accountable for kickstarter... funny video though, mildy entertaining actually...
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    The Personalized Visit pledge is gone. I guess they realized it was completely out of place.
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