#video monetization tools

[sophsweet]

Assembling a toolbox for online course creation

The process of creating online courses to sell from a learning management system, for me, has been about finding tools, learning how to use them and adding them to my digital toolbox. At the beginning I didn’t know what I was going to use or need. I had a go on Canva by myself and created a banner with an animated egg. Canva is great if you want to create an image or other media in a specific…

[treasure-mimic]

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

[keefechambers]

I wanna be blunt about this ongoing James somerton suicide threat issue but I don't want to connect it to my IRL Twitter to comment on the dogshit takes I'm seeing there or the good and well meaning but maybe too kind takes I'm seeing here.

Obviously, I hope that this is a false alarm cry for help fake threat. Yes, it would reinforce that Somerton is a self-centered egomaniac who can't handle consequences but that's preferable to dead.

But I work in local news and let me tell you something. I've covered half a dozen family annihilating murder suicides and heard hundreds of men making suicide threats over police scanners and a huge swath of these don't happen because they're depressed or because people are mean to them on the Internet. They're punishment. A person with an enormous amount of entitlement towards people around them gets backed into a corner and they punish the people closest to them by killing themselves or threatening to kill themselves.

No one wants to talk about this feature of suicide because...you want to help people who are struggling and guide them away from this path and being blunt about the fact that sometimes people die of suicide as a consequence of their own shittiness towards the world does not really help actively suicidal people. But suicide rates are higher in men not just because they have higher rates of untreated mental illness (a societal issue we must address for the sake of all) but because some people, often men, use suicide (but more often the threat of suicide) as a tool of abuse and control.

I'm not saying somerton is like, an icky abuser bad guy, he's just a run of the mill grifter scumbag, but his actions in the past show a clear pattern of escalating behavior that aligns with this.

Somerton gets called out -> somerton alleges physical threats of violence against himself and his fans rally around him supportively -> Harry calls somerton out in a bigger way -> Somerton says he's hospitalized but there are inconsistencies with the story but no one wants to talk about that because you wanna be nice-ish about a guy who just tried to kill himself and now he's trying to be framed as tragic but it doesn't really stick -> somerton apologizes again but his apology is rightly called out for lies and manipulative framing as well as his continuing attempts to profit off the community he betrayed -> James posts a suicide note publicly putting the onus of his own suicide on the loss of his friend Nick who he repeatedly threw under the bus and now everyone is rallying to say nice-ish shit and wring their hands in concern over poor james -> indefinitely repeat this vicious cycle forever until he actually does die or finally gives up and gets real, intensive therapy and a day job.

Thats not to say anyone's concern is misplaced, it's 100% better for him to be a living scumbag than a dead one. He deserves the chance to grow and learn and have a life outside of youtube.

But you don't have to portray this as the action of a sad depressed man who got bullied off the Internet. It's manipulation, whether he intended to go through with it or not and whether someone intervened or not. Not denying that internet bullying is a thing, I'm sure there were some people who were shitty directly to James but he made the choice to not unplug from this and to try and keep being a public figure rather than taking care of himself. He could have deleted Twitter, blocked anyone who was an asshole, gone to therapy and tried to move on with his life but if he'd deleted his channel he'd have lost monetization... Can't have that, right? So he posts some apology videos so his channel stays active and then complains about how ruinous this is while never trying to take real accountability.

But the reality is that people would have forgotten about him so quickly and maybe his job prospects would've been impacted but...that's on him, and that's for him to figure out but it's not actually life ruining. He chose to continue to engage knowing he'd get backlash and hate and he'd feel worse and worse and things would never get better without the time and space for people to forget.

He made the choice to make a public spectacle of his own alleged suicide. That is the action of someone who wants to put the weight of their suicide on someone else's shoulders and is morally wrong. He can be held to account for that, alive or dead.

[karereiko]

Hello, everyone from Yuumori fandom.

Guess what, because of Concert that will be held in July all parts of Moriarty the Patriot Musical (op1-op5) are available to rent and watch online. With my Morimu fanarts or other talks about it I often get asked where you can watch it, often my answer is that you have to buy DVD or Bluray to watch this wonderful adaptation of Moriarty the Patriot manga. I know it's a big cost and hard to get for some so Streaming like this is a great opportunity to watch Morimu.

Official twitter posted few days ago about this possibility and here is the post with all information about it:

1600 yen is great amount to check if you will like it and wach it because I think it's worth any money, director who made morimu clearly loves manga, he treats source material with care and even makes it batter at some times, there is also a lot less cuts than in anime, like a lot. May be little spoiler or not, but Baskerville arc is there and Durham date too, as well as many Sherlock and John stuff that was cut in anime, some things from Moran arc etc. this is already big selling factor, right?

Actors are amazing and they love and care for characters they play. I wasn't into any actor adaptations before Morimu, I was ok with musicals but not caring too much about them and Morimu sold me since first part and it only got better and better each part even if you think that's not possible. Songs are there to make emotions and moments deeper or to have real fun with plot they show, they are not there just for song to be there. So yes high recommendation for you all to check Morimu if you didn't saw it yet. The most amazing thing is that you don't need VPN to buy those streams.

I was going to write about this few days ago and was busy, good I didn't because I talked with friends in Yuumori fandom who knows morimu and we were troubled to recommend this stream to people who doesn't understand Japanese. Morimu is faithful adaptation so almost like 70% lines comes from manga and you should understand what's going on if you read manga. Still, with subs it's a lot easier.

Kana did amazing job in creating English translation for Morimu Op1-Op4 at this point, all who bought DVD/Bluray versions of Morimu are using those subs and if you decide to buy own copy after seeing stream then those subs works great with DVD/Bluray versions.

So we talked over the stream matter and from what we checked with this plugin to Chrome it's possible to play subs with Morimu stream after you rent it (It works only with Chrome but if you know other program like this you can try it on different browsers, we only checked Chrome and this plugin) :

The only matter is that Kana saved subtitles in .ass file format, but you can easily format them to .srt file format that this plugin plays with this site:

You just open subtitle file and save it as srt, and open it with plugin to your Morimu stream. If you will have any more problems with subs them write me a message and I will try to help as soon as work let's me.

I think this is the easiest option that creators gave us now to watch Morimu, it was never so easy to buy or rent it until now, you had to use crazy VPN programs and other stuff to just check on it. So this is best option since for sure it won't last forever. Such promotional streamings are only around when new part is coming up, currently Concert I mentioned.

So for other things I wanna to say. If you get your copy of Morimu then please don't share it, don't post it to any social sites. Company that makes Morimu is quite strict with that matter and they do search who uploads those musicals and strikes them down/ deletes files even on places like google drive. Even without it, it's a matter of love for Moriarty the patriot. As much as fandom wants more people to watch those musicals, any piracy might destroy our chances to get Op6, possibilities for future streams and other stuff. Currently with Op5 we reached end of Final Problem arc and there is hope that maybe one day New York arc will be done in op6. Any piracy, sharing and messy stuff might destroy such chance, so please if you hold dear MTP then respect those rules. Watching streams with your friends in closed groups after you buy it isn't bad but please hold from any public sharing (they would be taken down anyway, but it would still put us fans in very bad light).

I know end of this post was not nice but it had to be told. I hope this possibility will help you see Morimu and fall in love with it like I did. I would recommend at least seeing OP1 and OP2, it should hook you and OP3 is where everything hits even more than op1-2, more hits from songs, more hits from sherliam stuff.

Hope to see you in Morimu cult :D... ehem... fandom. May you have "wind" (for some Great Detective) in your heart like William....

[morlock-holmes]

What objections would you actually accept to AI?

Roughly in order of urgency, at least in my opinion:

Problem 1: Curation

The large tech monopolies have essentially abandoned curation and are raking in the dough by monetizing the process of showing you crap you don't want.

The YouTube content farm; the Steam asset flip; SEO spam; drop-shipped crap on Etsy and Amazon.

AI makes these pernicious, user hostile practices even easier.

Problem 2: Economic disruption

This has a bunch of aspects, but key to me is that *all* automation threatens people who have built a living on doing work. If previously difficult, high skill work suddenly becomes low skill, this is economically threatening to the high skill workers. Key to me is that this is true of *all* work, independent of whether the work is drudgery or deeply fulfilling. Go automate an Amazon fulfillment center and the employees will not be thanking you.

There's also just the general threat of existing relationships not accounting for AI, in terms of, like, residuals or whatever.

Problem 3: Opacity

Basically all these AI products are extremely opaque. The companies building them are not at all transparent about the source of their data, how it is used, or how their tools work. Because they view the tools as things they own whose outputs reflect on their company, they mess with the outputs in order to attempt to ensure that the outputs don't reflect badly on their company.

These processes are opaque and not communicated clearly or accurately to end users; in fact, because AI text tools hallucinate, they will happily give you *fake* error messages if you ask why they returned an error.

There's been allegations that Mid journey and Open AI don't comply with European data protection laws, as well.

There is something that does bother me, too, about the use of big data as a profit center. I don't think it's a copyright or theft issue, but it is a fact that these companies are using public data to make a lot of money while being extremely closed off about how exactly they do that. I'm not a huge fan of the closed source model for this stuff when it is so heavily dependent on public data.

Problem 4: Environmental maybe? Related to problem 3, it's just not too clear what kind of impact all this AI stuff is having in terms of power costs. Honestly it all kind of does something, so I'm not hugely concerned, but I do kind of privately think that in the not too distant future a lot of these companies will stop spending money on enormous server farms just so that internet randos can try to get Chat-GPT to write porn.

Problem 5: They kind of don't work

Text programs frequently make stuff up. Actually, a friend pointed out to me that, in pulp scifi, robots will often say something like, "There is an 80% chance the guards will spot you!"

If you point one of those AI assistants at something, and ask them what it is, a lot of times they just confidently say the wrong thing. This same friend pointed out that, under the hood, the image recognition software is working with probabilities. But I saw lots of videos of the Rabbit AI assistant thing confidently being completely wrong about what it was looking at.

Chat-GPT hallucinates. Image generators are unable to consistently produce the same character and it's actually pretty difficult and unintuitive to produce a specific image, rather than a generic one.

This may be fixed in the near future or it might not, I have no idea.

Problem 6: Kinetic sameness.

One of the subtle changes of the last century is that more and more of what we do in life is look at a screen, while either sitting or standing, and making a series of small hand gestures. The process of writing, of producing an image, of getting from place to place are converging on a single physical act. As Marshall Macluhan pointed out, driving a car is very similar to watching TV, and making a movie is now very similar, as a set of physical movements, to watching one.

There is something vaguely unsatisfying about this.

Related, perhaps only in the sense of being extremely vague, is a sense that we may soon be mediating all, or at least many, of our conversations through AI tools. Have it punch up that email when you're too tired to write clearly. There is something I find disturbing about the idea of communication being constantly edited and punched up by a series of unrelated middlemen, *especially* in the current climate, where said middlemen are large impersonal monopolies who are dedicated to opaque, user hostile practices.

Given all of the above, it is baffling and sometimes infuriating to me that the two most popular arguments against AI boil down to "Transformative works are theft and we need to restrict fair use even more!" and "It's bad to use technology to make art, technology is only for boring things!"

[tailschannel]

Sonic to get "several new mobile titles" in the future, according to SEGA management meeting document

The Sonic the Hedgehog series is expected to receive "several new titles" for mobile platforms, SEGA's parent company confirmed in a management meeting early Wednesday.

Apple and Google were both named as "key players" in the mobile sector for SEGA, as the publisher detailed an encompassing transmedia scheme for the blue blur, which will include licencing and collaborations with other third-party properties.

"Several new" mobile games under development

With an established presence thanks to the likes of free apps like Sonic Dash and Sonic Forces Speed Battle, the franchise looks set to dive in the world of mobile gaming, as part of SEGA's future plans.

The publisher did not rule out exclusivity clauses with subscription-based mobile gaming services. In recent days, the publisher signed a contract with Apple to produce Sonic Dream Team, and Netflix announced a mobile port of Sonic Mania Plus for their game subscription service.

No word of a specific timeframe for the aforementioned mobile games, currently in development.

Future Sonic mobile games to adopt Rovio's Beacon toolkit

As part of the mobile expansion, the upcoming slate is expected to adopt "Beacon", an internal development and marketing toolkit powered by machine learning, frequently utilized by Rovio, the Finnish studio behind Angry Birds that SEGA acquired over the summer.

The studio described Beacon as a platform to "build games and get games to market, models to profitably grow and monetize the game and live operations tools to maximize our players’ fun."

The toolkit has been criticized in a number of fan-run Angry Birds forums for incentivizing revenue at the expense of gameplay quality.

SEGA did not disclose if the Beacon platform will extend beyond the present suite of HARDlight mobile games.

More details on SEGA's resurrection of classic hits

SEGA also unveiled these new images and descriptions for the five new games announced at The Game Awards, described as a "power surge" to re-electrify their classic hits, like Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio.

Crazy Taxi: Innovative & Fresh Style Driving Action! Cheerful feeling of freedom and fusion of nature and city. Peel out the new stage of Crazy City!

Jet Set Radio: "Counter-Culture" - Tokyo Street Open World! Experience the "rebellion" movement that feels free in a suffocating society. Make friends, increase your fans, and create a movement!

Shinobi: Slay the enemies in the silence of the moment. Run through the world of Shinobi, full of monsters and ninja actions. Grab Oberozuki, the legendary sword and slay evil once more. Your clan and the world are counting on you.

Golden Axe: Warriors arise to subdue the demons! Defeat your enemies with a variety of attacks with swords and magic! The legendary story about the battle axe, Golden Axe is about to begin!

Streets of Rage Revolution: Beloved side-scrolling beat 'em up action series! Take control of one of the ex-officers and make the city a place where people no longer have to walk the "Streets of Rage."

The announcement coincided with SEGA's plans to strengthen their flagship video game brands like Persona and Like a Dragon, and to expand with legacy properties.

(Edit 2:00 pm ET - post updated with new details)

[littlemisstired]

something that has always fucked me up is the frankly terrifying exponential skill acceleration in the creative field. so many of the young artists I know now, even myself, are at a skill level that 25-30 years ago could have gotten them real jobs in animation or game design, even lauded as being top of their line of work, but are hardly even a blip on the radar in today’s industry where the skill ceiling is now miles above achievable for so many.

I look back at the kinds of art that was being made by the professional artists back in the 80s and 90s for comics and animation and some of it is downright amateurish compared to today’s work. It was roughshod, silly, scratchy, experimental. It wasn’t preoccupied with fitting into the bland Triple A standards or warping to fit what huge corporations expected, because those expectations simply didn’t exist yet in a world where video games and animated film and fantasy illustration were still in their infancy. The art in concept art felt so much more alive, more human. Nowadays I see people trying to get their feet in the door slaving for years trying to learn rendering techniques or portfolio tricks to even get their work in front of a recruiter, making stuff they don’t even care about just for the chance to be taken seriously. Strange how now more than even bigger studios are being ridiculed for their bland and uninteresting design/writing choices, where smaller studios with more creative control and more ready access to independent voices and visions are cranking out wildly popular, original titles left and right.

this sort of ended up longer than I expected, and rambling, but it’s something I’ve felt for so long as an artist who spent 15 years desperately trying to “get good enough” for a professional studio. The problem is that in the corporate capitalist hell we live in here in the US, “getting good enough” is almost never achievable, because those goalposts are always moving. You want to be a background artist? Well you need to learn how to do 3D modeling, texture mapping, physics simulation, how to use lighting in game engines. You want to be a character designer? You need to know rigging and clothing simulation and how to apply animation in X software. Also you need to do every style known to the world plus more, except in the end the studio will probably just ask you to photobash three dozen designs that all look the same anyway.

I understand there’s more to this than I’ve mentioned, that the world has changed in the 3 decades since the mid 90s, that there are millions of artists and only a few hundred thousand jobs in any creative field at any given time, that it’s reasonable to expect people to learn new things to better work as technology advances… but it seems so particularly crushing to artists, who oftentimes pour so much of their own heart and soul into what they do, and who are still expected to monetize, adapt, and distribute their skill like it’s some corporate tool and not a gift from evolution for us to record and express ourselves. Art and design are the building blocks for humans to understand and capture beauty and pain, joy and sorrow, and it’s disheartening to see that vulnerable creativity stripped away in favor of producing sterilized, corporate friendly “products”.

[aprivateplace7]

PSA: Why I Am Boycotting Kpop (& how)

So. I love kpop. Its been a big part of my life for a few years now. But I'm boycotting. Why?

Well to put it simply, its because of the 🍉Palestine genocide🍉 *A lot* of these k-entertainment companies are directly & indirectly supporting Zionism/Israel, including monetarily.

Like most, I think, I only found out about this whole thing in Oct '23, so its now that I'm choosing to boycott in hopes of helping.

This is NOT an "attack" on anyone. Not a certain group, not even a certain label.

I am boycotting *everyone* personally. Officially, the popular boycott is the big 3 & HYBE. However I know that another company, Kakao Ent is also a huge Zionist offender (also I just saw that they invest in a blockchain too...? So yeah, ew). So to make it easier for myself, I am boycotting all of kpop.

I also have no issue w/ the artists themselves. I do not do this out of any hate/fan wars. I am not assuming/accusing them of being Zionists. I know, they are celebs but they work for the company. They have to obey their bosses, so while I would like more of the artists to openly speak in support of Palestine, I am not holding it against them.

Its just that, any $ the artist makes, goes straight to the company. & I don't like what these companies are doing w/ my $.

(Btw, it rly is about the companies. So for ex HYBE America has the artist Ariana Grande. I am boycotting her too, its just that I've never been a huge fan. I rly, rly like kpop. So that is why I am focusing on it. Its meaningless to say u are boycotting something that you never bought/consumed in the 1st place)

And just to note; I don't want to hear anything about "keeping politics out of kpop". These companies are *not* disconnected from the issue. & saying that "I'm not Palestinian so its not my problem" is extremely cruel.

Links & more info below-

Twt thread [X]

For Stays [X]

Twt link 2 [X]

Twt thread about Starbucks (TLDR; Not the same as McDonalds aka not directly contributing to Zionism, but they are still anti-union & treat their workers shitty, so still boycott) [X]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you also want to stop/reduce streaming, here is how I'm doing it

I'm not saying that u have to completely stop interacting w/ ur fav artists. I'm not. I'm just trying to minimize my interactions w/ official content, like streaming, videos ect.

So the 1st thing; Get comfortable w/ sketchy looking websites & piracy!!!

Like I know, now that everything is readily available on (monetized) platforms, its hard to make the switch! Its hard to even know where to start. But there still are a lot of tools out there to do it.

Here are the basic things-

"yewtu . be"

*** (edit: the website shows .com, but the actual address is .in) "ilkpop . in"

(remove spaces, I'm not putting links bc that is how u get illict sites taken down, i think...)

Google drive

The app "Musicolet" (for mobile listening)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is this website "yewtu . be" that you can use to watch yt vids w/out adding to the views/ad revenue. I've only used it on desktop, so idk how well it works on mobile. Sorry. Btw, sometimes it can not work, but it has options to switch the source to one that works. I have not tried making an acc, so idk how secure that is, but just using it to watch things seems ok.

As for streaming/downloading mp3, there is another website "ilkpop . in" it has most official releases. U can stream right from the site, or download mp3.

When downloading (I did this all on desktop btw) I would recommend the extension "TabBlock", it prevents opening any new tabs. So u do have to toggle it on/off.

So I downloaded the songs as mp3 files from that website, uploaded them to my Google drive & then downloaded them to my phone from there. These files surprisingly don't take a lot of room, I have currently 471 songs that are only 1.63 GB

The app I'm using to listen on mobile is Musicolet. 1st time using it for about a month & I like it. Its free, it plays local downloaded files, so no need for internet & most importantly it will continue to play the songs while the screen is off. For free. W/ no ads. U can also still make playlists. It has more settings & customization stuff.

This is based on my personal experience, so I use desktop (windows) & android devices. This is all I know. Don't be too scared about the looks of the sites. I haven't gotten any viruses, but u might wanna make sure u have installed an antivirus. The one I use is Avast, the free version is ok. It does have a subscription & ads but its not too annoying.

[minecraftnewsnetwork]

If anyone wants to join MCNN for the looming 5th Life season, hit us up at @minecraftnewsnetwork

In light of recent cryptic Grian-posting, it looks like this series will happen sooner than expected!

We can always use more help with:

Administration and project management

Taking notes

Writing scripts

Recording in-game reports

Downloading clips

Creating art/ visual assets

Editing video

Even if you can only do some of those, or one of those, all help is good help! Our main requests are that you be up front about what you can do, and let us know as soon as possible if your availability changes.

Our account here at @minecraftnewsnetwork is a shared account between Lead Reporters @pixiemage, @the-joju-experience, @fearforthestorm, and @salemoleander. Feel free to send an Ask directly to the main MCNN account for Discord details, or Message any of us on our personal accounts if you have questions.

Please note: We cannot guarantee that we will accept everyone who requests to join - we could get 2 requests or 200, and at some point that's too many cooks in the kitchen. Requests will largely be first-come, first-served, with some exceptions/prioritization made for those with video recording and editing experience.

FAQs

What the heck is MCNN?

A fan-created, scripted video series that seeks to summarize and report on the events that occurred across every POV in the Life Series that week. We started with Limited Life, and now I guess it's time for our second rodeo. This is our YouTube channel.

Do I have to have experience in [Video Editing]/[Script Writing]/etc to sign up for it?

Not at all! Everyone is welcome to sign up for whatever roles they want to do. We do like to aim for a certain level of quality in what we make, so if you aren't very far along in your creative journey with that medium please make sure you're prepared to receive peer feedback and edit suggestions!

I'm a minor! Can I help?

We do allow people under 18 to help, yes! Limiting who gets to help on a fan project about a ~PG video series seems nonsensical; especially when many of the adults in MCNN got their Minecraft start well before they turned 18, and it sparked a longstanding creative interest. However: School, family, and your overall wellbeing come first. If at any time the project seems to be conflicting with those priorities, you will be asked to step back for the remainder of the season.

What applications/tools do you use?

We use Google Sheets to write timecoded video notes, Google Docs to draft and work together on scripts, a mixture of ReplayMod and OBS to record in-game reports, and DaVinci Resolve to edit video. All of these tools are free to use, and we are able to walk through settings and basics with you if you're unfamiliar with any of these.

Do you make money from this? What do I get from helping?

\We are not monetized, and have no intention of monetizing or turning on ads. This is a fan-created show, made for the love of creation and celebrating a series we like. We are all unpaid interns, here at MCNN. :D That said - this is a 2+ month project involving project management, editing, writing, and other real-world technical & professional skills. If you participate and want help adding this to your resume, or need a letter of recommendation for a job or school organization/event, we are happy to assist with that!

[mariacallous]

Palestinian graphic designer Bilal Tamimi’s YouTube videos from the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank have received 6 million views during the past 13 years. His uploads document joyous festivals and peaceful protests—but also violent skirmishes between Nabi Saleh’s 600 residents and occupying Israeli soldiers. “I need to show to the world what’s happening in my village and the suffering of my people from occupation,” he says.

The platform has helped Tamimi broadcast to his more than 20,000 subscribers, but he’s locked out of YouTube’s revenue sharing program that pays a share of ad sales to more than 2 million video creators in 137 countries or territories. When Tamimi tries to sign up, YouTube’s app says, “The YouTube Partner Program is not available in your current location Palestine.”

The internet has given some Palestinians a global audience, but many benefits of online life that billions around the world can take for granted simply don’t work for people in Gaza and the West Bank. In addition to YouTube’s partner program, money transfer services such as PayPal and ecommerce marketplaces, including Amazon, largely bar Palestinian merchants from entry. Google tools for generating revenue from web ads or in-app purchases are technically open to Palestinians but can, in practice, be inaccessible due to challenges verifying their identity or collecting payment.

As Israeli forces have bombarded Gaza in pursuit of Hamas, tech workers’ and rights activists’ frustrations with the region’s digital inequality has grown. Palestinians are barred from YouTube’s Partner Program and struggle with intermittent connectivity. Israeli YouTube channels in the program could be bringing in some revenue from conflict-related content. Popular Israeli singers have drawn views with songs honoring victims of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, while travel advice channel Traveling Israel has received millions of views on historical explainers.

Human rights organizations say the disparity in access to online sources of income weakens the Palestinian economy. "Many Palestinians who work online struggle to be paid," says Marwa Fatafta, a policy and advocacy manager at the rights organization Access Now. YouTube’s policy “fits a larger pattern of tech companies’ discriminatory approach to Palestinians.”

Google spokespeople, who asked not to be named for safety concerns, say in a statement that the company is committed to creating economic opportunities for Palestinians through services and training. The YouTube Partner Program won’t be available in the Palestinian territories until Google launches a local version of YouTube, which involves customizing features and options to the language and culture. "We continue to invest in the infrastructure that's needed to offer more tools to monetize with Google to ensure it’s a seamless process and follows local legal requirements,” one of the spokespeople says.

To get a sense of how Palestinians are excluded from or face barriers to tapping the world’s largest ecosystem for making money online—Google’s—WIRED reviewed popular Palestinian YouTube channels, news websites, and apps associated with the region. Interviews with content creators, activists, and current and former Google staff familiar with the region and company policies helped fill out the picture. The investigation revealed how a series of Palestinian projects and companies hit financial dead ends when attempting to monetize online in ways easy for people in countries such as the US and Israel. Others resorted to complicated geographic workarounds that siphon off revenue.

The Google sources not authorized to speak to media allege those challenges reflect years of internal politics and neglect of Palestinian users at the company. The sources say a localized version of the company’s search engine, Google.ps, launched in 2009 only after a desire to provide more relevant results narrowly beat out concerns about public backlash for an action some people could view as endorsing disputed territories. But there hasn’t been management resolve in recent years to risk changing the status quo to introduce a Palestinian YouTube that would give local creators access to monetization.

US congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin says Israel’s current attack on Gaza underscores how wrong that pattern of online exclusion is. “When massive companies make money hand over fist from creators but deny them their fair share just because of where they live, that is just plain wrong,” he says. It is crucial, he argues, that “Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have equal opportunities for economic participation.” In May, Pocan led several Democratic US lawmakers in urging PayPal to allow Palestinian accounts. PayPal, which declined to comment, hasn’t changed its policies.

Duty First

Tamimi, 57, started posting on YouTube in 2010 and views it as a duty in service of his villagers, not a way to get rich. He first tried to join the service’s revenue sharing program a few years ago as a way to defray his costs. “I would for sure try to improve my work, to have a good camera,” he says. “And maybe I can help other people who are doing what I am doing through workshops and cameras.”

Today Tamimi uses an iPhone 12 Pro Max he bought himself and camcorders and equipment donated by B'Tselem, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit organization that aims to document human rights issues in Palestinian territories.

Tamimi’s focus on winning attention over profit is no different than other YouTube creators, says Bing Chen, who once led global creator initiatives at YouTube. “Revenue is of course an incentive, but fame is more so,” says Chen, who now develops and invests in creators through his company AU Holdings.

You don’t need a fancy camera or editing to draw an audience. When Israeli professors analyzed about 340 TikTok videos from 2021 related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict they found pro-Israeli videos had higher production values but received lower engagement. They argued that viewers preferred Palestinian content because public sentiment tends to favor those seen as victims.

At a time of widespread suffering now on both sides of the border and an intense period of global attention on the region, Palestinian channels like Tamimi’s could be drawing record engagement and revenue—money that could, one day, make rebuilding easier.

Instead, Tamimi has withdrawn from YouTube. He started posting only infrequently after his village stopped organizing weekly protests around 2018 and with no income available feels no loyalty to the Google service. When an incident flares up, he is now more likely to livestream on Meta’s Facebook, where he draws thousands of viewers. “YouTube is like an archive,” he says, not a place to share new content.

Geographic Gaps

YouTube’s revenue program for creators, known as YPP, launched in 2007 and pioneered the concept of a major social media platform turning amateur stardom into a well-paying job. It now has competition from Meta, X, and TikTok—which also don’t offer their programs to people in Palestinian territories—but remains the leader in influence and geographic reach.

Despite YouTube’s dominant position, WIRED’s review found that YPP doesn’t let in creators from over a quarter of the world's 100 most populous countries, most of them in Africa. It welcomes people from many countries with smaller populations than the Palestinian territories, where, combined, an estimated 5 million people reside. Creators from Iraq and Yemen, also Arabic-speaking places troubled by conflict, are listed as supported.

Chen, who helped develop YPP while working at YouTube, believes that the platform’s leaders may want to avoid funding creators whose content puts them at risk from local authorities, and also worry that language barriers or limited staffing could make it difficult to provide suitable customer service.

But it’s not impossible for platforms to work with creators in Palestine. California-based fundraising service Patreon gets money to Palestinian users through the payments provider Payoneer, and smaller money-moving tools such as Saudi Arabia’s PayTabs say they support transactions with Palestinian accounts.

Other parts of Google’s vast empire claim to serve Palestinians businesses, but people reached by WIRED say the reality is very different.

Google documentation says the Google Play app store allows developers from 163 markets, including one listed as “Palestine,” to sell apps and in-app purchases and that Google’s AdSense advertising system supports 232 countries or territories, including “Palestinian Territory.”

Odeh Quraan, who runs a Ramallah-based software development agency called iPhase with overseas customers, says the sign-up process for AdSense requires entering a PIN mailed by Google. But Israel controls the flow of mail to the West Bank, and many items never arrive, he says. He circumvented that by using Stripe’s Atlas service to establish a company in the US state of Delaware without ever setting foot there. But it comes with downsides. “Taxes are a headache, and transferring money from the US bank account to the local banks has turned out costly,” Quraan says.

Three out of 12 popular Palestinian news websites display ads using Google technology, compared with 11 out of 12 well-known Israeli news sources, WIRED found. One of the Google spokespeople says the company in late October began notifying websites in the region about a virtual alternative to the mailed PINs, though the option is not stated in public support documentation.

Elsewhere in Ramallah, software development company Mongid stopped offering in-app purchases from an ecommerce app on Google Play and abandoned a YouTube channel with tutorials on using online learning tools because it was too difficult to receive revenue via Google, says CEO Mongid Abu-Baker.

This month, he and two other app developers interviewed by WIRED have been stymied by a new Google Play requirement that all developers get verified by global professional services firm Dun & Bradstreet. Neither the Palestinian territories nor their country code for phone numbers are listed as options on sign-up webpages, and Palestinian developers must seek customer service from Dun & Bradstreet through offices in Israel rather than an Arab country.

Abu-Baker calls the lack of recognition an affront on his identity. “Palestinian companies hold an importance no less significant than any other worldwide,” he says. He downgraded his account to avoid verification and now worries about losing access to some Google Play features.

Efrat Segev, chief of data and product for Dun & Bradstreet in Israel, says hundreds of Palestinian businesses have finished verification over the past two years and that complaints are few but that it is trying to remedy the concerns. Google declined to comment.

The difficulties faced by Abu-Baker and others in Palestine clash with messaging from Google’s leaders in California about its work in the Middle East. Last year, Google chief financial officer Ruth Porat announced that the company would spend $10 million over three years to help Palestinian graduates, developers, and entrepreneurs “advance their digital skills and find employment.” Just weeks before the recent war broke out, Google said it aims to serve 3,500 Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem through the investment.

Asked on stage at a conference this month about Google’s role in contested areas like Gaza, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said his company can be a critical technology partner. “We don't see it in the geopolitical context,” he said. “We see it in an enabling context.”

Some Israeli creators, like those in Palestine, feel Google isn’t living up to that. Oren Cahanovitc, owner of the Traveling Israel channel, says videos discussing politics are being flagged by YouTube as not suitable for ads. Corey Gil-Shuster, the Tel Aviv-based creator behind the Ask Project, which interviews Israelis and Palestinians about their views on the conflict, says he’s seen the same pattern.

YouTube’s screening tools can deem videos showing violence or capitalizing on war as inappropriate for advertisers, although partner program participants also get some revenue from paid subscribers to YouTube who don’t see ads. That business, and revenue stream for creators, is growing.

Palestinians lack the opportunity to receive checks from YouTube at all. The Israeli creator Gil-Shuster says the disparity was news to him and that the fix seems clear. “Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, obviously,” he says, “should have equal right to benefit from monetization as anyone else.”

[captain-cathers]

What’s happening to Reddit, and why should I care?

TL;DR: An unreasonable API price increase is going to kill third-party Reddit apps, destroying important moderator and accessibility tools. Many popular apps have announced they're shutting down on June 30. The admins/site leadership aren't backing down. Most of Reddit is going private on June 12-14 in protest.

Unreasonably dense explanation under the cut:

What is Reddit?

Reddit is a social news aggregation site that is made up of millions of individual boards/forums, called “subreddits.” 

Each of these subreddits has a topic (baking, Borderlands, hentai, pictures of cats wearing hats, etc.) and users can submit related posts to these subreddits (images, text, videos, links, etc.). 

Every subreddit is moderated by a team of unpaid volunteers, and can have anywhere from 10 to 10,000,000+ members. 

The current CEO of Reddit is Steve Huffman, or spez. He was one of the original co-founders in 2005, left in 2009, and returned to Reddit in 2015 following the Ellen Pao fiasco. (TL;DR: she was the scapegoat for several unpopular changes made to Reddit and site policy.)

What’s going on?

Reddit announced that they are going to start charging money for their API, when API access had previously been free, à la Twitter. Also like Twitter, they’re charging an exorbitant amount for it, which will essentially drive all of the third-party apps and tools using it out of business. 

Reddit did not have an official app for a long time, but it did have a free API, which allowed developers to access Reddit data and posts and make their own Reddit apps. Several of these third-party apps became extremely popular. (AlienBlue was the most popular iPhone Reddit client, before it was bought by Reddit in 2014 and then shut down and replaced with the official Reddit app in 2016.) To this day, millions of Reddit users use these third-party apps, accessibility tools, and moderation suites that rely on the Reddit API.

What’s an API?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is essentially a toolkit that allows different apps and websites to interact with each other. A third-party Reddit App, for example, uses Reddit’s API to allow its users to view subreddits, post comments, upvote posts, etc. For a non-technical explanation, see this comment.

The bullshit that’s happening (in no particular order)

The new API prices were announced on May 31 and are going to take effect on July 1. That gives developers 30 days to figure out what they’re going to do with their apps – nowhere near enough time to rework an entire monetization scheme and get it approved. In addition, the new API prices are completely outrageous. Everyone clowned on Twitter for setting an absurdly-high price for their API, and then Reddit went and did the exact same thing. (Keep in mind these third-party app dev teams are extremely small – Apollo, which has millions of users, is developed by one person.)

Blind people cannot use Reddit without third-party apps. (Reddit is claiming they’re going to make an exception for accessibility tools, but there has been no communication on how they define accessibility-focused apps or how they would get approved.)

Moderators cannot effectively moderate their subreddits without third-party apps. All subreddits are managed by an unpaid, volunteer mod team, who keep posts on-topic and fight spam and abuse. Many of the tools and bots they use to keep subreddits running smoothly are at risk with the new API changes, and historical promises from Reddit that new moderation tools are coming have always been fruitless. Many subs are moderated by just one or two people, and this change will be the final nail in the coffin.

The new API blocks NSFW content – while this is a bummer for NSFW content creators/viewers who use third-party apps, more significantly it makes it difficult for moderators to effectively police NSFW content and spam. (This could also point towards a future Tumblr-esque porn ban, but Reddit recently expanded desktop support for NSFW uploads so this is unlikely.)

The CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman (spez) accused the developer of Apollo of blackmailing/extorting Reddit. Good thing the Apollo dev recorded the phone call and revealed that spez was lying. (Fun fact: spez was caught editing users’ comments without their knowledge back in 2016.)

Reddit claims these changes aren’t intended to kill competing apps, but they’re also testing turning off the mobile website and directing users to their app instead. It seems like Reddit’s moving towards the official app being the only way to access Reddit on mobile.

Reddit’s trying to go public and is laying off about 5% of their workforce.

Reddit admins are inviting users to newly-created German-language subreddits full of badly-translated content stolen from English subs for… some reason? (Maybe to make their site look like it has more of a global presence ahead of a potential IPO? Or to replace old and established non-English-language subs with new ones and new mods?)

Spez is hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow, June 9 (but no time is listed in the post…)

Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync (among others) have all announced that they will be shutting down their apps on June 30th.

(Fun side note, Apollo was actually namedropped and shown multiple times by Apple at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference this past week.)

To protest the impending API pricing changes, hundreds of subreddits are taking their subs private from June 12-14 (some indefinitely). Reddit has said they’re “open to postponing the API timeline to launch mod tooling, if [mods] agree to keep their subreddits open.” The mods aren't backing down, and as of 6/8 the protest is going forward as planned.

Why should I care?

Reddit is a mixed bag of a website, only as good as its individual subreddits. On one hand, the site is a breeding ground for hate, amplifying movements like Gamergate and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. On the other hand, Reddit is home to countless communities, works of art, hobbies, support groups, and political movements that provide both knowledge and support that can’t be found elsewhere. There’s a reason why searching anything + “reddit” is an effective search query – Reddit’s one of the few indexed and searchable places left on the Internet that hasn’t been completely enshittified yet – a place where you can get a question answered by real people.

The Internet is increasingly driving toward individual walled gardens, where genuine connection and information is harder and harder to find. (Remember when all the wikis got eaten by Fandom? Or how every website destroyed the chronological feed and added stories to become the same? Or just everything about Twitter?)

Anyway, there’s no call to action here, just general despair. At the very least, we’ll be eating well on Reddit drama for the next couple weeks.

[askagamedev]

I'm wondering how I can best support a developer and franchise I love while also saving money on video games. I know I should buy within first 3 months, but where is best place to buy? Obviously directly from dev if offered, but those usually don't have discounts. I believe purchasing from Steam is the same as purchasing from a retail store - they both take a big cut. What about GreenManGaming? They offer me discounts on brand new games but are developers getting a reasonable cut there?

If you want to optimize the amount of your purchase that goes to the developers, the best choice is probably the Epic Game Store. They take the smallest cut out of all of the platforms out there. Most platforms take a standard 30% cut of all revenue for themselves. Epic is much more developer-friendly and takes 12% of their revenue.

Beyond this, one of the best ways to support the developers of a game is to buy DLC. DLC monetization tends to be better for us and is generally higher quality than the stuff the game ships with because those of us on the dev team have earned more experience with the tools and are better prepared to build new stuff.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[aspencrown]

OneD&D, the OGL 1.1 Leak, and the Grim Future of Dungeons & Dragons

Hey folks, long time no talk. While I know that this account is more or less a place for me to put up pretty pictures or to comment on political issues nowadays, I figured I may as well rant talk about a topic I'm pretty passionate about: D&D and tabletop roleplaying in general. Or to be more precise, the changes looming in the distance.

On the chance that this is the first time you (the reader) have heard about this OGL 1.1 stuff, I'll try to sum up what's been happening in the world of D&D and its Open Game License. In short? It's bad. Very bad.

What's Going On?

Over the past month or so, after a rather unnerving article published by Dicebreaker about D&D execs feeling the hobby was "under-monetized", there's been a lot of tension building about the future of D&D. It eventually came to a head with rumors floating around Twitter and YouTube about OneD&D was going to do something to the existing OGL and that the new license would be hyper-predatory. This prompted WotC to publish a reply, which was rife with the usual corporate soft-speak that made it clear that they weren't being entirely truthful. But it did what it was meant to and calmed some of the concerned fans.

Then on January 5th, the leaked 1.1 OGL was revealed via an article on Gizmodo and was found to be a 9,000 word document with contracts attached (which, for reference, is 10 times that of the current OGL -- which has far more friendly 900 words). Whoever leaked it to Gizmodo apparently did so under breach of NDA (Though there are theories about it being intentionally leaked) and it appears that WotC was initially intending to launch a shock-and-awe scorched earth campaign against all third-party content creators, big and small, by moving to revoke the long-standing OGL 1.0a.

Why is the OGL 1.1 Bad?

The easier question to answer is what's good about it, which are new protections against publishing creations that contain hatespeech, racism, transphobia, and so on -- on top of protecting the property from NFTs and such.

Though to put it very briefly (and bluntly) on what's awful about OGL 1.1, it seeks to make D&D inhospitable (or outright toxic) to any and all third-party content creators; drive out competition in virtual tabletops like Foundry and Alchemy RPG *; doing away with non-official virtual tools (Kobold Fight Club comes to mind); potentially harm streamers and YouTube content creators; claim ownership over creations from both non-commercial and commercial homebrew; demanding exorbitant royalties based not off of profit, but revenue; and expect creators to report their finances and earnings to them like they're the IRS.

If this OGL is made official, not only will it kill the vibrant homebrew community D&D has, but it will also go after other TTRPGs that utilize the OGL 1.0a out of good faith over these past 23 years. This means Pathfinder 1 & 2, Fate, Mutants and Masterminds, and many more are now in WotC/Hasbro's crosshairs.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister, and other video games like it, is also at risk as it uses elements from D&D's OGL.

Big name streamers like Critical Role and Dimension 20 might also be affected by this, but as they have currently not made any official stance on the matter it is unknown if they will stand with fans or broker some sort of agreement with WotC/Hasbro. (Note: This is not meant as a jab, caution over one's IP and livelihood is always important.)

There's a lot more that's scary about it that others listed below have covered, but know that the verbiage in the new OGL as it stands is belligerent and harmful to everyone. *Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds will likely be safe, as they already have contracts with WotC.

What Can You Do About it?

Honestly, be loud. Don't threaten or curse, of course, but make your displeasure known. Go fill out OneD&D's survey (decline to review the Cleric changes) and voice your concern. Cancel your D&D Beyond subscription, if you have one. Go on Twitter and join in on #opendnd. Sign this petition perhaps.

Remain vigilant to whatever may change, because it's only a matter of time until Wizards does their staged apology to deflect.

Aside from it being a typical tactic when adjusting the Overton Window, it even says in the document that they "will receive community pushback and bad PR" and that "[They're] more than open to being convinced that [They] made a wrong decision."

Keep the pressure on, because whatever changes they will so "graciously" give us will surely still be terrible.

Relevant Reading / Viewing

Dungeons & Dragons executives think 'the brand is really under monetized'

OGLs, SRDs, & One D&D (WotC's milquetoast reply to December's circulating rumors)

Dungeons & Dragons’ New License Tightens Its Grip on Competition (This is where the OGL 1.1 was leaked)

Let’s Take A Minute To Talk About D&D’s Open Gaming License (OGL) (An explanation from an IP lawyer with experience in gaming licenses.)

The Rules Lawyer's commentary and explanation (Video)

Roll of Law's commentary (Video)

Scintilla Studio's OGL 1.1 and the Extinction of D&D (Video)

Closing Thoughts

I'm a relative newcomer to the world of D&D and TTRPGs. I've always wanted to try it, but the idea of playing at a table with random people terrified me. It wasn't until the semi-recent (okay, maybe not so recent anymore) advent of virtual tabletops was I given hope. So when a kind pigeon gave me a spot in her game, I was hooked from then on.

I dove into the world of TTRPGs and haven't looked back since. Though over the past year or so, I've been getting a little disenchanted with WotC as their last couple of publishings have been very lackluster and disappointing. The last one I enjoyed was Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but even then I wished they did more with it. And don't get me started over the recent Mordenkainen's and Spelljammer...

Third-party content, everything from little up-and-comers on the /r/Unearthed Arcana subreddit, to @the-griffons-saddlebag, to big Kickstarters like Heliana's and Steinhardt's were the things that have kept the hobby vibrant for me. I'll always support them over a corporation, especially greedy and vicious ones like WotC-Hasbro. So even if they dial back what has been leaked to something more "tolerable". Hell, even if they leave the OGL 1.0a alone after all, they made their choice with trying to pull the rug out from under us with this.

While my love for D&D will not die, I can certainly promise that WotC will not see another cent from me from here on out.

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH Devlog 0 – The Story So Far

I’ve wanted to make video games for approximately two-thirds of my life at this point. I hear a lot of indie developers who make devlogs and videos and posts talking about their Dream Game that they’ve always wanted to make.

I don’t have one of those.

I just really want to make games. Plural.

I do however happen to have a budget of zero dollars. Which is, I will admit, something of an issue when it comes to game development and design. Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of powerful free tools out there. Unity, Unreal, Blender, I’m not exactly short on options. Okay, so I was put off of Unity from their CEO calling people who don’t monetize their games ‘idiots,’ but the point stands.

I was also fortunate enough to be gifted Game Maker Studio 2 right before they updated their Terms of Service to a subscription system or whatever nonsense YoYo did. What matters is that I own the engine and don’t have to pay subscription because they were nice enough to not try and retroactively alter legal user agreements, unlike some game companies I could name did recently.

But enough digs at the evils of capitalism, let’s talk about Project RBH.

Project RBH is a placeholder name I’m giving this game while we’re in development until I can come up with a better one. It stands for Reverse Bullet Hell, which is a decent summary of the main goal. Project RBH is a top-down twin-stick roguelike. The Reverse Bullet Hell comes from the main mechanical twist I’m putting on similar roguelikes, like Enter the Gungeon. The upgrades and pick-ups found during your run aren’t better weapons or equipment, but upgrades to the behavior of your primary attack. Most of them will do basic things like increasing the speed of the projectile or making it bigger, but there are other things that can be done to really make your attacks crazy.

The goal is to have a game where it is possible, over the course of a run, to build a gun that shoots a gun that shoots chainsaw bullets.

So Where To Start?

Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve watched multiple devlogs on YouTube, read Devlog posts, etc. And I see many of them running into what seems to be the same or similar problems: a lack of focus.

I also happen to have a degree in game design. And fortunately we had industry veterans in the course, so one of the things they taught us was the importance of a Game Design Document, or GDD.

Warren Spector, one of the leads on the classic Deus Ex, talks a lot about having a GDD during the development of that project. It’s an incredibly useful tool for pre-production, as well as for ensuring that people from across the project all have the same understanding of the creative vision. Obviously, I am a solo developer because I am broke and insane, so that last one won’t be much of an issue. But that first one is extremely important to combating many issues that crop up during game design and development, like feature creep and decision paralysis.

Which is why I haven’t made one.

Okay, no, that’s not the reason, and I will, but it was too good a transition to pass up.

The real reason I haven’t made a GDD yet is because there is another way that one can start a project. I would not recommend you do this, the GDD is a really good idea and I’ll go into more detail about it in a future Devlog, probably the next one. The reason I have chosen to do things this way is because I wasn’t confidant about the planned gameplay, so I wanted to quickly prototype it and experiment with it to see if it was actually, you know, fun. It’s nothing fancy, I have no background and the character sprites are squares, but it gives me something I can mess with.

This prototype is where I’m at right now. There isn’t even Procedural Generation, just a giant room with some walls and a whole lot of enemies.

You know what, I didn’t even realize the player and enemies are both green.

So that’s where Project RBH stands right now, a single prototype that I’ve been toying with so I can decide where and how I want to focus this game. From my experiments so far, I’ve noticed a few different directions I can take the project.

A game with a wide variety of weapons which the player can loot during runs. The player’s collected weapon improvements carry over between weapons. This has the pro of providing things for the player to unlock from runs without affecting game balance, but comes with the con that certain upgrades will make weapons feel too similar.

The original plan, in which the player has a single weapon which is reset after each run. The pro of this is that the random weapon upgrades can do some crazy stuff to this weapon, but comes at the con of being very same-y at the start of each run.

Additionally, my experiments have lead me to the realization that having a lot of powerups that drastically alter your weapon leads to a chaotic mess as you rain doom and destruction upon your pathetic enemies. This leads to the third direction I’m considering.

Much like the first one, there are a variety of weapons, however these weapons are far more powerful and do not upgrade. The player mows down hordes and hordes of foes and has a power fantasy. This has the con of being basically an entirely different game.

Here is me with no upgrades versus me with many upgrades.

As we are so early in preproduction, I don’t feel like showing off video is strictly necessary yet, but yes, it’s more obvious what’s happening in motion.

Which is where we will end this Devlog. I’ll run some more tests, maybe ask some people I know to try my experiments to get some more opinions, decide on a direction for the project, and make a GDD.

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

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[yulikitten]

Twitch is really fucking up lately and I have some solutions.

1. Get rid of in-stream ads. If you desperately need ads, put them in an unobtrusive spot so that way, Twitch and the streamer still get paid for the ad being there.

2. Have a curated "For You" page when the viewer logs on that is based on their interests and categories. For example, I love watching trans Vtubers, FFXIV, Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive. So, my FYP should be full of both large and small trans Vtubers in those gaming categories, along with a few bigger streamers. This is the one feature I love about TikTok before I left.

3. Allow content creators to upload at least 10 minute long videos where ads can play at the beginning and end of the video.

4. Increase the sub revenue split from 50/50 to 75/25 in favor of content creators. In addition, allow brand new accounts to also monetize their streams. Allow content creators to get every penny that they have made that month, regardless of the $50 threshold, which I mean... That threshold was such a stupid idea to begin with... C'mon now. What a crock of bullshit that was.

5. Increase the strength of moderation tools. I don't even want people I ban from my chat to watch me. Period. I want them to fuck off and leave me alone. If I ban you from my chat, you don't get to watch my stream, either.

Twitch has a lot of wasted potential and these basic solutions could help immensely.

[nyssabong]

‘Is blogging still relevant in the age of TikTok and Instagram?’

What is a blog? I believe that most of the youngsters now do not know what it is. The word blog is a combined version of the words “web” and ‘log” (Weiner 2023). A blog is like an online diary or online journal, following a blog is like getting to know someone or watching their life just like watching a television series. There are many types of blogs, like food blogs, travel blogs, lifestyles blogs, health and fitness blogs, sports blogs, fashion and beauty blogs, and others.

Back to our topic, is blogging still relevant in the age of TikTok and Instagram? I would say yes, blogging is still relevant in the age of TikTok and Instagram. Granted that most people now are using TikTok and Instagram, but according to the research (van Dijck 2013) every single day, millions of individuals interact through social media. In December 2011, 1.2 billion users worldwide, 82 percent of the world’s Internet population over age 15 logged on to a social media site, up from 6 percent in 2007 (van Dijck 2013).

Nowadays, many people still use blogs, not only self-publishers, journalists, writers, marketers, and businesspeople also using blogs. Blogs are a powerful tool for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Businesses can post blogs with some keywords to help them grow the flow.

The length of the content we write is one of the most important SEO variables in 2020 for ranking highly. According to Rioja (2020), if we write a blog article that we want to rank, we need to make sure we are going into as much detail as possible. If we did not write at least 1500–2000 words per post, we would not rank. The ability to post long-form content is a benefit of blogging in this situation. The Instagram caption length restriction is 2200 characters, which is roughly 338 to 440 words. Instagram posts short-form information as compared to blogging, thus we are limited in how detailed we can make our captions. Because of the word limit of social media, users do not have enough space to introduce themselves in detail, whereas in blogs, users can present themselves more comprehensively. Therefore, blogs remain an indispensable platform.

The fact that blogging is still important in the era of TikToks and Instagram is also due to the wide range of content. Text, photos, videos, graphics interchange formats, and other types of media can all be included in blogs. We are limited to choosing between posting pictures or videos on Instagram and TikTok, though. Furthermore, we are only allowed to upload ten images in each Instagram post, and videos can only be one minute in duration. We may upload the video as a reel if it lasts longer than one minute, however, only one video can be posted for each reel post. Blogging also can be a digital diary. As we mentioned before, because of the word limit, we cannot express our emotions. In the age of TikToks and Instagram, many people use blogs to record their lives, just like a diary. Furthermore, there are many ways to earn money from our blogs. Some of the most popular ways to monetise include offering content by subscription, display advertisement, affiliate marketing, sponsorship, online courses, and eBooks (Shwake 2023). These monetised ways are quite easy compared to earning money on Instagram and TikToks. Instagrammers and TikTokers earn money in a few ways such as setting up an online shop, partnerships with other businesses, or live streaming. For me, we can earn money from blogs in a cosy and freedom style, as many people also earn money from their blogs, plogs, and vlogs. Instead of using Instagram or TikTok, most of them still choose to blog because it offers multiple monetisation avenues.

Lastly, despite TikTok and Instagram, blogging is still relevant today. Blogging is still vital even if many new social media platforms have grown up and may even be trying to mimic blogs. Additionally, a lot of people say that blogs are the ideal medium for expressing our emotions and making money. Also, I believe the blog is a great place for kids to improve themselves, as there is a lot of unhealthy content on TikTok and Instagram. I would not say there is not any toxic stuff on blogs, but as of right now, I have not seen any.

List of References

Jill Walker Rettberg 2013, Blogging, 2nd Edition., John Wiley & Sons, viewed 1 October 2023 <https://swinburnesarawak.instructure.com/courses/839/files/73195/download?verifier=7BsJ2Kl9b5O6ujtXzoGnueJ327TJYLfniNv80uSO&wrap=1>. Rioja, A 2020, What is SEO? Learn the Basics of Search Engine Optimization [2020], alejandrorioja.com, viewed 29 September 2023, <https://alejandrorioja.com/what-is-seo/>. Shwake, E 2023, How To Monetize a Blog in 2023 in 7 Effective Steps, Wix Blog, viewed 30 September 2023, <https://www.wix.com/blog/how-to-monetize-blog#:~:text=There%20are%20many%20ways%20to>. van Dijck, J 2013, Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity, Oxford University Press, New York, viewed 29 September 2023, <https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=457be821-4029-3b2e-87da-72784dc1f978>. Weiner, A 2023, What is a blog? Definition, types, benefits and why you need one, Wix Blog, viewed 1 October 2023, <https://www.wix.com/blog/what-is-a-blog>.