(Proposal is the last paragraph if you want to skip to that).
I'll preface that I'm fairly positive and optimistic about the playfund model, so this post will not be another rant about how we need to seize the means of liposuction and redistribute it among the jerking class. That said, I would like artists, game creators, Facepunch and players to flourish, so I have devised some proposals and open questions based on strengths and pitfalls I've seen of strengths and pitfalls of the Rust and valve games payment models.
The Skin Artist's perspective
Artists, contrary to popular belief, need to eat, sleep and sh*t like anyone else. Many might agree that quality art requires time and risk. We can dream that real artists ought to only be driven by passion, and many do until they get swamped by bills and eviction notices.
Naturally artists want to be paid more, and to that end proposals have been made to increase the cut they receive. This might seem "fair" to outsiders that see that artists "only" receive 25% per sale. Besides this ignoring operational and opportunity costs from Facepunch and that valve distributes payment in the same way, an increase only really benefits the artists whose skins ARE accepted; if your skin never gets accepted, your commissions are 0%. The belief that this fate only befalls lesser-talented artists, will easily be dispelled by a simple glance at the CS:GO/counterstrike 2 and Rust workship. Even for those who are currently lucky enough to have their skins accepted, may find themselves earning 0% as well when rates paid per skin invites other skin creators, who all will stimulate each other to make as riskless of a skin as possible.
The Game Developer's perspective
The plight of the game developer is similar (though their food expenses might be a whole lot higher). However, they often have an extra layer of risk, as they have the option to buy assets as well. Free assets do exist, but for those who hate "slop" should tally which games make use of those free assets and which ones don't.
The case for and against slop
One could argue that slop is a silly pejorative. If people hated it, they wouldn't be playing it. Though through a purely economical lens this might be true, it's a myopic lens. The short-term gains from some unity asset flip might seem great to the developer, and most people don't mind "wasting" a couple of hours or even weeks on something low effort. However, people do eventually grow sick and tired of slop. The player(s) will hop away. The single developer doesn't care, but what if the entire platform is flooded with games of the same calibre? Then the platform becomes slop and players will hop away like they did with the game. Clearly there is a case to be made for quality assurance, but I'll leave it as an open question how that ought to be done.
The take away & solution
Lower financial risk allows for more risky and more quality art and games. When there's more monetization options, there's more work for artists, so there is less saturation of the market and sometimes even the ability to reuse previously rejected assets. TF 2, CS and Rust have achieved this by introducing newer types of skinnables, and doing stuff like adding effects/pets is certainly an option here as well. However, sbox doesn't have the luxury (yet, or won't ever) of adding skins to things like doors, chairs, storages, etc. like rust does, or a bunch of weapons like CS or TF 2, so the problem just gets pushed to the near future.
Instead, I propose that sbox corners a niche that hasn't been cornered by other engines/platforms. Have an easily accessible asset "store", where assets can be bought with equity. That is, once a library is enabled for a project, you agree to pay a % of your playfund earnings to the creator of the asset or asset pack. The % should either be fixed to be low, or is to be fixed by the creator themselves. Game creators now don't need to choose between rent and having good quality assets in their games, and great asset creators, by the law of large numbers, can eventually expect some good returns when a game does end up making it big. A nice bonus is that artists can dump some of their not accepted models and textures in there. Of course it is important that once agreed to enabling a library for a project, it can't just be turned off once the game does make it big. Thanks to the way the playfund and sbox are structured, sbox sits in a unique position to realize and attempt this model, and I wouldn't let baseless assertions that game devs will all be too greedy to risk 1/2% in what in their minds will end up, making billions deter from at least trying this.
Do you guys have any suggestions for tweaks to this idea or ideas in the same vein?
I'll preface that I'm fairly positive and optimistic about the playfund model, so this post will not be another rant about how we need to seize the means of liposuction and redistribute it among the jerking class. That said, I would like artists, game creators, Facepunch and players to flourish, so I have devised some proposals and open questions based on strengths and pitfalls I've seen of strengths and pitfalls of the Rust and valve games payment models.
The Skin Artist's perspective
Artists, contrary to popular belief, need to eat, sleep and sh*t like anyone else. Many might agree that quality art requires time and risk. We can dream that real artists ought to only be driven by passion, and many do until they get swamped by bills and eviction notices.
Naturally artists want to be paid more, and to that end proposals have been made to increase the cut they receive. This might seem "fair" to outsiders that see that artists "only" receive 25% per sale. Besides this ignoring operational and opportunity costs from Facepunch and that valve distributes payment in the same way, an increase only really benefits the artists whose skins ARE accepted; if your skin never gets accepted, your commissions are 0%. The belief that this fate only befalls lesser-talented artists, will easily be dispelled by a simple glance at the CS:GO/counterstrike 2 and Rust workship. Even for those who are currently lucky enough to have their skins accepted, may find themselves earning 0% as well when rates paid per skin invites other skin creators, who all will stimulate each other to make as riskless of a skin as possible.
The Game Developer's perspective
The plight of the game developer is similar (though their food expenses might be a whole lot higher). However, they often have an extra layer of risk, as they have the option to buy assets as well. Free assets do exist, but for those who hate "slop" should tally which games make use of those free assets and which ones don't.
The case for and against slop
One could argue that slop is a silly pejorative. If people hated it, they wouldn't be playing it. Though through a purely economical lens this might be true, it's a myopic lens. The short-term gains from some unity asset flip might seem great to the developer, and most people don't mind "wasting" a couple of hours or even weeks on something low effort. However, people do eventually grow sick and tired of slop. The player(s) will hop away. The single developer doesn't care, but what if the entire platform is flooded with games of the same calibre? Then the platform becomes slop and players will hop away like they did with the game. Clearly there is a case to be made for quality assurance, but I'll leave it as an open question how that ought to be done.
The take away & solution
Lower financial risk allows for more risky and more quality art and games. When there's more monetization options, there's more work for artists, so there is less saturation of the market and sometimes even the ability to reuse previously rejected assets. TF 2, CS and Rust have achieved this by introducing newer types of skinnables, and doing stuff like adding effects/pets is certainly an option here as well. However, sbox doesn't have the luxury (yet, or won't ever) of adding skins to things like doors, chairs, storages, etc. like rust does, or a bunch of weapons like CS or TF 2, so the problem just gets pushed to the near future.
Instead, I propose that sbox corners a niche that hasn't been cornered by other engines/platforms. Have an easily accessible asset "store", where assets can be bought with equity. That is, once a library is enabled for a project, you agree to pay a % of your playfund earnings to the creator of the asset or asset pack. The % should either be fixed to be low, or is to be fixed by the creator themselves. Game creators now don't need to choose between rent and having good quality assets in their games, and great asset creators, by the law of large numbers, can eventually expect some good returns when a game does end up making it big. A nice bonus is that artists can dump some of their not accepted models and textures in there. Of course it is important that once agreed to enabling a library for a project, it can't just be turned off once the game does make it big. Thanks to the way the playfund and sbox are structured, sbox sits in a unique position to realize and attempt this model, and I wouldn't let baseless assertions that game devs will all be too greedy to risk 1/2% in what in their minds will end up, making billions deter from at least trying this.
Do you guys have any suggestions for tweaks to this idea or ideas in the same vein?
