[tcaudilllg]

I've got a few things to say about this:
#1: free media probably isn't a good idea. Now I want to qualify between low-quality media and high-quality media. Most of the games on this site aren't worth a quarter. A few are probably worth that, maybe a little more. When you start getting into quality though, you start to face wealth destruction, and that's what that Bartz guy, in my estimation, is really trying to accomplish here. When free resources are scarce and difficult to justify using for commercial projects, . But when there are volumes of such resources, there comes a point when people no longer pay artists to produce new art... they just use what's already been created. And what happens then? The whole industry shrivels. It's really extreme to create a condition wherein people get nothing for their work. The ESTJs of the world will insist that people keep working, or they will stop working and we will all starve because they are the core of the manual labor force (more like they will start shooting people). The capitalists will catch up to Bartz sooner or later, and if his star keeps rising it's not gonna be pretty when they get him. The reaction will be fearful and visceral... we might see laws prevailing in the senates and parliaments that we might not like. And, Bartz might not find that too tough to accept... it could be his secret agenda to make the situation so extreme that people become fearful of free culture... beware.
#2: this really isn't the way to increase the volume of low-cost art. Instruction on how to produce 2D art is the best method, which is a field that has only been touched upon until now. I would urge expansion of the base mediums for producing art, to let creativity flow.

In summary, I would discourage artists from entering this contest. You give up all (or most) of the rights to your work if you submit it, and that's probably the end of the financial value you obtain from it. There is a reason Square-Enix shut down FFL: the media is decent and it does have value. And on that note, I want to observe a parallel between "Andew", the guy who ran FFL, and Bartz, in that I don't get along with either of them. They are the George Broussards of the internet: loud, arrogant, and liable to throw their weight around. You've heard of the "Benevolent Dictator for Life"? Meet the "Secretly Malevolent who pretends to be Benevolent Dictator for Life", who is like the Benevolent Dictator until one day you find out that they control the destiny of your field of expertise by simple momentum of the volume of content that they already control (through control of the storage unit), and then they gamely erase all record of you the moment you speak up about it. Don't believe me? Dare to speak up on PoF's forums about how pathetic their matching system is. Offer alternatives. Watch as the trolls lobby to delete your words and ban you, and the administration complies. I know it. I've been there, done that. Been there done that at OGA a few days ago. Gave some pointers on how to make base art, along with some details about the cognitive reasons for disparities in artistic talent, to justify my arguments. That post is gone now, courtesy of Bartz... something about "spamming" or some such? Such a conveniently flexible word, "spamming".

My point: OGA is a dictatorship run by a self-serving asshole. My advice: don't get involved in it.

[tcaudilllg]

Maybe the bigger brought about by this contest is... why do we not work together more? Free media is not the solution -- the solution is cooperation and effort to reduce situational indifference. We want free stuff because we are poor, and we are poor because no one, or few people, will work with us, or they will only work with us in return for money we don't have. The problem the impending disaster posed by this effort illustrates is that we don't give enough of a damn about each other. Too much "I" and not enough "them too". If we priced our content such that it would encourage experimentation rather than targeted attempts to exploit trends, then we wouldn't have the concentrations of effort and power that led to the dismal experiences of the past five years. So the problem is us.

[Nodtveidt]

I've been involved with OGA for a long time now. Sure, if you act like a dick on their forums, they're gonna act like dicks right back. I've never had any of these problems.
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[tcaudilllg]

End result of OGA's growth: end of pixel art. And ultimately less 3D art. It'll grow and grow until it reaches a critical point where it won't make sense to pay people to produce content, because something that does what you want will already be available for free. There will come a day when people no longer hunt for artists on forums, but just search through OGA to find premade art, if they can't make it themselves.

You need perspective: this is a destructive path. There is only ruin at the end of it. Perceive Bart as you will, but recognize where this trend is heading. I don't know what drives Bart, but I do observe that he is indifferent to the end result.

BTW, your tutorials section totally sucks. And that's in comparison to the Gold Standard, Tsugumo. You don't see him contributing to that site, do you? That should tell you something.

[Nodtveidt]

I've never written any tutorials for OGA... wtf are you on about? And Tsugumo is suddenly the "gold standard"? Dude, you so don't get out much. Who cares if he doesn't contribute to the site? For every person who does, I'm sure at least a thousand don't. The point is irrelevant.

I don't even know Bart, so I have nothing to say on that. But I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill... again.
_________________
If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[tcaudilllg]

I wonder what participating in the contest would do for the reputation of a person who worked in the games industry (or wanted in it)? If you think about it, it's kinda similar to ROM hacking.

Of course ROM hacking brings about all kinds of unexploited benefits, so long as it doesn't actually persuade people not to spend money buying games. It's when people who have money to spend choose not to buy an industry's product that things go downhill.

[Bjorn]

Well, everybody is entitled to his opinion. I disagree that making some art freely available will do anything to destroy the commercial value of art, which seems to me what you are saying. People will always be looking for new things to consume after all.

Art is a major challenge for hobbyist game developers. I hope that OGA will encourage a better synergy between artists and programmers in the free software world, and I think competitions like these can help with that.

Personally I will be working with a few others to try making something cool with the graphics, based on http://manasource.org/. But, I also plan to enter the art phase of the contest, mainly to find what years of programming on engines and editors has done to my already not so great pixel art skills. :-)

[tcaudilllg]

This is not opinion... it's fact formulated through my knowledge of personality. When you get to the point of having hundreds of tilesets available, there will be enough variety that people won't care anymore. Hell, even the severely overused RPGMaker sets have proven authentic enough to sell. Only a minority of people care for unusual arts styles. Realism is what's in demand, the effectiveness of the suggestion.

You are not considering the impact of scale. The majority's appreciation for novelty reaches in only so many directions. Consider, one day the progression to higher resolutions will end... already most people can't tell the difference between 2000x2000 and 3000x3000... their eyes don't have that many pixels!

The limitations of human experience as the ultimate drivers of markets.

[tcaudilllg]

There is no need for free art. Cheap art, yes, but free? Not hardly. Enough for demos, maybe. But sooner or later, free culture and capitalist interests collide. Bart and Richard Stallman are radicals: they will push this clash to its ultimate conclusion, and relish their indulgence as "great men" fighting "wickedness" or "the system". I will not suggest that they will ultimately escape culpability... although I'll bet Bart would sell out before the end, because he doesn't have that kind of character. And Stallman... I don't think his heart is really in free gaming... if he even knows about it, and he may not. I'm sure Stallman remembers the days when artists made little for their work. My point is this: established interests see free gaming as irrational, and will move to stop it from gaining major ground. Open gaming maybe, but not free gaming.

[Bjorn]

Sorry but this is really your opinion, no matter if you try to write it down as facts. There isn't much point in writing it down if you're not prepared to see that others may have a different opinion. You're not here to discuss anything, after all.

[tcaudilllg]

It's not opinion that people will try to defend their interests. You have failed to demonstrate how free games will help people make money to live on.

As it is, the whole thing seems awfully Marxist.

[Bjorn]

But it's your opinion that nobody needs free art. Personally I would like to develop a free game, because I want to share the game with others and allow them to change it as they want and share it further. And I want to make sure nobody can lock down this game and take away this freedom from others who play it. For this I need free art.

It's also your opinion that free culture would collide with capitalist interests. Of course it will collide with certain capitalist interests, but other capitalist interests will take advantage of free culture. Examples are businesses based around Linux, Apache, MySQL and many other free software.

It's also your opinion that Bart is a radical. To many hobbyist game developers he's just a nice guy who tries to solve a problem many of us are facing, and hardly in any radical way. People have been making art available freely on many different websites, and part of the problem he's solving is to make it indexed in a centralized place so it's easier to find things.

Finally, I'm not sure why I need to demonstrate that free games will help people make money to live on. I don't see free games as fundamentally different from other pieces of software, and undeniably free software has allowed certain businesses to flourish and as a result a lot of people could make a living. Also, it has already been demonstrated that there are business models also for free games, for example Saga of Ryzom is free, including server, client and much of the data - it's just not free to play.

And then there's the whole deal with donations, which many projects and organizations are living from. It shows people are willing to pay money for their freedom, and if freedom is worth money then so is free media. Which of course doesn't mean there would be no people left who will pay for closed media, which is clearly demonstrated by the amount of people paying for software even though perfectly fine free alternatives exist, or the booming music industry even though there is an abundance of artists making their music freely available.

[tcaudilllg]

If you want to make art, you can make your own using tutorials for that purpose.

Jobs lost from those losing industries won't be replaced. There is only so much demand to go around. You think you're decentralizing power and liberating the industry, but the reality is that by "liberating" one industry you only increase and tighten the grip of the powerful on other industries which the people in the non-capitalist industry now depend on.

It would seem RC disagrees with you that "many" people live off donations, and the data supports his position. Generally you have to solicit funding from a source in another industry to back you up, which will be done only to serve competitive interest. For example, we have Google to thank for Firefox.

Forget it, this is a waste of time. You're so set in your views that you won't see reality. The data is there but you only see what you want to see.

[tcaudilllg]

If you want to go this road, that's fine. But I just want people to know that it's only really safe for the extreme to tread.

[Nodtveidt]

tcaudilllg, this has got to be one of the most ridiculous threads you've ever come up with. Now I think I know the real reason why most people have abandoned this forum.
_________________
If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace