Sep 16 2012, 11:12 am
In response to Truseeker
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NNAAAAHH
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Not meaning to be insulting, buy you got paid for that?
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Actually, no. Nevertheless I worked hard on those and was encouraged to continue working and he'd pay, then he disappeared one day along with the pointless hours a day I spent on those. Although I supposed it helped hone my pixel art skills? (Maybe not?)
Even now, some of the pieces have great motion for four states. :) | |
I believe that a lot of the problems with BYOND in general are caused simply by the attitudes of most people in the community.
This applies not only to the pixel artists and those who wish to work with them, but also the other specialists like programmers, and it even applies to players of games and developers. Some developers have unrealistic expectations, or unnecessary frustration with the way Tom and Lummox handle updates and what not. Some people of various specialties are over-confident in their work, and may even expect too much for it. Then, making that worse, there are many people who will not offer fair compensation for the work, or whom will lie and not compensate even if they agreed to. Players of games often get various negative attitudes as well. They may jump on the this is a fan game, or rip train too easily, or they may break down the developers desire to work through rushing he/she/them too much, or by making them feel like their game is too similar to something else. Considering all of this, you can see why motivation and drive are hard to find and often assaulted; thus resulting in the worst attitude of all. The one that results in a thought along the lines of... BYOND isn't good enough, or doesn't have enough potential; so I'm going elsewhere. However, that is not the case. BYOND is not the issue. In my opinion, its the community, and the attitude. If someone can tune the right things out, and only pick out what they need, such as constructive criticism and such that goes a long way, and then better yet if someone learns to look at BYOND for what its good at instead of what its bad at then that helps tremendously. Eh, I'm on a rant here. My apologies for the length of this post, but the bottom line is that I feel that the most important change for BYOND, and for pixel artists, is in the attitude of the community and their selves. Focus less on money, and more on being reasonable, and successful. Work with what you have, do what must be done, learn from trials and mistakes, and do all you can to better the process for those around you and the next guy to come along; that's what I try to go by. An odd way around here, but it keeps me driven; so I'm sticking to it. Everyone needs compensation, and experience; you just have to be willing to be flexible about how you get it. | |
Many of the prior mentioned pixel artists basically felt the cost / reward for BYOND games wasn't worth it, to my understanding. They were let down, essentially.
The projects you saw them associated with (mainly their anime interests) took forever to get anywhere. Naruto Universe was re-spun several times over what, 5 years? A lot of the time for these projects, the art was there, interesting. The artist had done his/her bit, but the programming hadn't followed. There were a bunch of reasons for this, like the project management guy basically over-specifying some stuff and under-specifying other bits, but a lot of it was simply that the programmers weren't up to the job. The project scale was usually okay (even if it did have a stupid 200 page design document to go with it). But BYOND basically does not have many experienced programmers. It's natural, in a way, due to the ease of use of the platform. Your better artists here do a lot of their learning off BYOND, in other communities, with good resources and among their superiors. Programmers don't do that here. On BYOND, if a programmer feels he or she needs to up their game and improve, they do something kind of irrelevant, like: Enrol in a high school computing class, take up C++, write something they consider algorithmically complex. None of which particularly exposes them to software design skills, patterns, bigger project organisation, thinking at that higher level. It's a difficult thing, as it can't really be taught or explained very easily per-say, same as the difference between a pixel artist that's only ever worked on and looked at BYOND, versus one with a wider exposure. If you're not matched in a project in terms of capability, work ethic etc, then you get jaded. If it happens a lot, then you leave. | |
Very good points. You even made a few of the points I was trying to make with far fewer, and better words. Wording really is not my strong suit, heh.
Speaking as an artist, and programmer each respectively; I think a lot of the problem can be traced to mixed feelings or poor path choices as well. If someone has games they want to make, they often cannot sell other people on them; so it's hard to find people they want to work with And get to work on what they want to work on. Add in sometimes doubting the project someone wants them on, or their ability to make it a success and mixed feelings is summed up. As for paths, it can be troublesome for someone to find the right way to improve their art, and even more troublesome to find the right way to improve their programming. I would say a large portion of the community are new to, or not even that serious about game design, and another large portion is only moderately skilled and seeking to improve; often resulting in them leaving or failing to improve due to reasons Stephen001 mentioned. Unfortunately I don't see much that can be done to fix this, unless improvements are made toward pointing these people in the right directions, and artists and developers give things another chance and stick with things better. Perhaps if frameworks, tutorials and such continue to pour in, including ones regarding art, we'll get more good pixel artists and programmers around here. Flash may help too... I hope. | |
Seems complete oposite my experiance; several 'developement' groups tried several times to recuit me onto projects. A lot of them had several pixel artist ready, I know know that two were decent enough to do the job because none of the other four available in said group did anything. They already had to people claiming to be programming, one of which I knew before-hand and was who requested I see if I wanted to help out. The other, claimed to be in college for developement and was focusing heavily on programming, he was a major let-down. SO, it came down to me, if I wanted to get on the project, one pixel artist that was still willing at the time, and the other programmer. WELL, the pixel artist then lost motivation, even though the project had come along really nicely and already had a playable demo with combat for PvP. The other pixel artist that actually worked before I was considering joining the group had pretty much just vanished and was never online. SO, it ended up being my friend attempting to program stuff avoiding anything that required artwork he didn't have. Of course, he quit working on the project because he couldn't progress in it much at all. He kept mentioning going back to it but the group just didn't wanna work any more for whatever reasons.
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I suppose there will always be counter-experiences to these things.
The guys I had in mind were the ones involved in things like Naruto Universe, Dragonball Online II etc, back in 2009/2010. You had (if memory serves), about 3 or 4 guys there doing artwork along-side their more professional studies, and all pretty much bounced off BYOND at the same time, when the guilds were killed off. We had a chat following that and while the axing of stuff like BYOND Anime was a factor, the work-rate concerns had been going along since 2007 or so for Naruto Universe, and a year or so for Dragonball Online II. A lot of that art spent a while appearing in unauthorised spin-off games in the game listings we were managing up until the Funimation cease and desist. | |
Stephen001 wrote:
I suppose there will always be counter-experiences to these things. Well, in the last iteration of NU, we had a majority of the systems done and most of the artwork was complete. However, the secondary artwork (clothes, icon states etc) weren't done and we couldn't find an artist who could finish it. | |
Lol I'm really up for doing some pixel art now.
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GreatFisher wrote:
Lol I'm really up for doing some pixel art now. ^ Although I'd still like to get back to programming as well. :) | |
Fair. Although this was the last development effort after how many stops and staffing issues? You can probably see why your existing artists hopped off the process and went to do other more productive things instead.
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Because nobody pays (haha that is a designer joke about programmers).
In this community nobody will help unless you pay then $60 an hour and give them gold laced food to eat. Or like the OP did, they tell you they want something made and offer pay, you get about half the work done then your PC dies (my laptop died from heat damage when I was on vacation) and they tell you off completely instead of trying to help you get the file back so you can keep working. Then they deny it and lay it all on you. That is why there aren't any good pixel artists, especially for you Super. | |
LordAndrew wrote:
It doesn't help no one actually wants to pay for a pixel artist. People expect to find a decent artist who is willing to invest time and effort into creating art for them in return for nothing. That doesn't work at all. When it comes to fan games you're saying investing into a cause with no profit gain is acceptable? Okay sure its a way to promote original games but what kind of idiot would invest their own money into an artist and gain nothing but pixels from it? Waste of money not to mention some of the ridiculous prices people charge for simple art with 3-4 frames. There's a limited amount of artists out there willing to give up their free time to work on a project with no gain and it seems that the free artists I've worked with are some of the best I've seen, at least around BYOND anyway not that the bar is high or anything though. As for original based games, if you feel that you'll definitely be successful then I wouldn't consider it a waste of money since you could have a chance of gaining it back in the long run, very long run since even if you do have a successful game Tom will quite happily snatch away 25% of all earnings reducing profits to be split between team members (If there is even a team) with the new stand alone feature, so it's not really worth it at all. Either way, I wouldn't spend a single penny on this community and it's 'artists' | |
Welcome to being part of the problem. That kind of attitude and 'logic' is what hinders things sometimes. First off, you want to say paying for pixels is a waste of money, well guess what? If you actually care about making the game, fan-game or not, you'll want good art, and good art takes time. So, you're paying for the persons time, not the pixels.
Some people overprice, sure, but some are fair. That applies fan-game or not. They're only the best because they either fool you with edited GBA art and what not, or they are working with a very predetermined setting where they need no imagination and far less emphasis on realism. That point is debatable, though, so we don't need to go at that one. You're entitled to your opinion on the quality of the art. Now, as for your little 25% crack... Paypal is at least 5% of it, can't recall if it was more but it was explained. That's covered in the 25% and is unavoidable with or without BYOND. As for the rest, they provided you the software, they provided you the subscription system, and they did all of this without charging a fee or making you include ads; so complaining on that is just wrong. I also believe they're working to reduce that fee, or pursue other options, especially since Steam might start accepting BYOND games. Oh, yeah, and lets not forget that almost any other decent game engine/design software you could use would charge you just to use it/make games for it. So, yes, please tell us more about how 25% of the profits is unfair and gonna ruin your success. I realize I've got an attitude here, and I apologize for that, but nearly every post I've read by you today annoyed me. Usually I'd just ignore you so you wouldn't notice, but I felt this post needed a response. I'm not trying to assault fan-games and their developers, either; I'm just offering logical reasoning in favor of the pixel artists and the realism of BYONDs fees in general. | |
Toddab503 wrote:
Welcome to being part of the problem. That kind of attitude and 'logic' is what hinders things sometimes. First off, you want to say paying for pixels is a waste of money, well guess what? If you actually care about making the game, fan-game or not, you'll want good art, and good art takes time. So, you're paying for the persons time, not the pixels. There's plenty of artists around that work with projects just as a hobby rather than trying to make a profit out of it. Now, as for your little 25% crack... Paypal is at least 5% of it, can't recall if it was more but it was explained. That's covered in the 25% and is unavoidable with or without BYOND. As for the rest, they provided you the software, they provided you the subscription system, and they did all of this without charging a fee or making you include ads; so complaining on that is just wrong. Java, Python, C++ all offer game developing software with no cost, that's just three of many. Sure 5% goes to paypal costs and whatnot but that still takes 20% of all profits, not that its unfair or will ruin success but is bit of a scandal. I also believe they're working to reduce that fee, or pursue other options, especially since Steam might start accepting BYOND games. Oh, yeah, and lets not forget that almost any other decent game engine/design software you could use would charge you just to use it/make games for it. So, yes, please tell us more about how 25% of the profits is unfair and gonna ruin your success. Steam accepted what? NEStalgia because of mass marketing and advertising schemes.. SS13 goes to C++ and holds a massively larger player base than any game on byond but as far as I'm aware SS13 has no recognition other than the switch over to C++. I realize I've got an attitude here, and I apologize for that, but nearly every post I've read by you today annoyed me. Usually I'd just ignore you so you wouldn't notice, but I felt this post needed a response. I'm not trying to assault fan-games and their developers, either; I'm just offering logical reasoning in favor of the pixel artists and the realism of BYONDs fees in general. Other than developer help, I've posted in hate topics toward anime since the community is obviously so dumb that they don't realize over 65% of it is here because of anime. There's a lack of fan games on the internet for various reasons and BYOND once promoted it so if anything the developers are to blame for the anime fan game craze. Like I've said its down to the developers on fan games and not the games themselves. Be annoyed at me all you like, I'm just expressing my thoughts and opinions. | |