Hello all,
I’m interested in a variety of medieval armor model sets for our game and I was thinking of setting up a contest for modelers and wanted your opinions.
What I was planning to do is a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize.
$500 to 1st place.
$300 to 2nd place.
$100 to 3rd place.
All models submitted must be complete and have all mesh, spec maps etc and become the property of Electric Crow Games.
Models would be judged based on being Unique, Realistic to the era and story of Greed Monger, skill of the modeler and texture quality. Who would the judges be? The Unity Community! We would accept submissions over the course of 2 weeks. Then post a front and side view screenshot of the submissions and allow the Unity Community and the Greed Monger Community to vote on their favorite sets over the course of 2 weeks. The winners selected will be sent their prize via paypal and the top 10 entries will be listed and their creators websites linked in a press released submitted to the media which will include several game updates.
So overall, it will be a nice way for us to get multiple armor sets while rewarding the best efforts, involve both our community and this one in the voting to keep things fair and help many of you establish some exposure for your talents.
Would this be something you all would be interested in?
As like all contests of this nature, be it for a major company or indie company, for modeling, writing, etc, yes, all submissions would become property of Electric Crow Games. They wouldn’t be exclusive rights, only for the winners, but yes, we would be able to use any of the models we chose to.
That’s the reason companies host contests like this. Standard rates for a complete armor set is $100 (based from my last 4 modelers quotes) and that’s for a set made up for 4,500 polys, broken into 5 pieces. So, paying $500 or $300 for an armor set isn’t exactly economical unless we had the means of using any of the submissions we liked.
By submitting to the contest, the artist is giving you royalty free rights to their submitted model. This means your company gets rights to a potentially large collection of models for only $800? Plus you avoid having to do any additional work on the contest by having the community do the judging?
Yes, many contests you submit to automatically gain some rights to what is submitted. They have to have limited publishing rights in order to put the items on the web page for view, use examples from previous contests in commercials, and otherwise tout their contest. They’re not collecting everything with the intent of using it to make further profit in a game they’re creating.
If you are going to hold a contest, hold a contest. Unfortunately, to me this just sounds like a gimmick to get free stuff for your game.
Argh, that always pops up on any contest.
Since people know about that rule beforehand they are free to enter or dismiss the contest entirely, which seems fine to my ethical concerns
If you make it more official I’m sure this will attract the right people, ElectricCrow
I have to agree with Socrates on this one. The fact that all submitted content suddenly becomes your company’s IP just sounds fishy, and sounds like you could get a hell of a lot of models for $800. If the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place only became your IP, I’d say then go for it, but all the others, no, I think the artist should keep the rights to the work and you shouldn’t be able to use it whatsoever.
Well as Acumen says, its all up to the modeler if he/she wants to join or not so as long as the rules are clear i see nothing wrong with it. Feels rather standard these days.
According to ElectricCrow, the going price for a set of armour is $100, so paying $900* for three sets is of no profit to them. I agree with Charlie and Acumen on this one. There isn’t a problem as long as the rules are clearly stated, which they are. ElectricCrow even told us and explained why they become property of his company and the rights that they would own. Also, if you’re modeling something specifically for this contest, why should their having the rights to use it be a problem?
*why does everybody keep saying $800? 500+300+100 = 900
But your game isn’t popular, and it doesn’t really even exist yet outside of the concept stage, so making those sorts of claims won’t hold water.
And as someone who has helped to run quite a few Unity contests, we only ask that we are able to use the submitted entries as promotional material. We’d never ask that the entries become the property of Unity Technologies… that would just be silly
Monetary compensation (prizes) to have the rights to use the winner’s entries in your future game makes a lot more sense.
You know what is fun here? The fact that after the release of the game (if is going to be released ever) his company will tell the gamers that they don’t own the game, consequently they cannot resell the game after playing it. In a case of a MMO is even fun, regarding the ownership of ingame items or characters. But is OK to trick people into working for nothing.
I am also very interested in seeing how many nubs will answer to his call.
Why would you want the submissions to be your property? What use would you have for them? Sounds like you just want to save some money, rather than have a real contest.
I don’t think it is anyone here place to question the contest runners terms. Don’t like it? Don’t enter and bugger off. Honestly crow, yor better off looking on the poly count forum.
Tate,your missing the point. It is a WIN WIN scenario. Meaning both the contest holder and the entrants WIN.
Let me break this down.
The holder, crow, gets a fuck ton of armour sets to use as he please when he pleases, and yes, this WILL be more than 900$ worth.
The entrants have a chance at getting paid up to 500$ for a job that may be worth 300$ so if the entrant feels confident to win it is a WIN for them.
The only people who if expect to be complaining are those wanting to enter but have no chance if winning.
At max three people can win, regardless of how many people enter there is a maximum of three winners and $900 up for grabs so say 20 people enter they all do good armor but only three of these are able to win, see then he gets 20 armors and say they are worth $300 each he gets $6000 of armor and 28 potentially good artists miss out on selling there armor… I think this is a good deal, but still I can see how others would think its not.
The artists can still sell their armour. He said that he would be able to use the armour, but would not hold exclusive rights to it. He would only hold exclusive rights to the armour of the winners.
