Advocating Free Content

[J. M. Pescado]

I wasn't aware TSR had good content. I thought they had nothing but crap. And I despise paysites. But I must agree, paysites do have their place in the community, as long as that place is on fire. Nice to see you have your own site.

[Christi]

They do a lot of double talk over there and it is too the point that a lot of people are ready to walk,this month is my last month,because quite honestly I don't need them,I think what they did with the free sets was bullshit,they knew exactly what they were doing,there wasn't any mistake nor error on their part it was a a gimmick to solicit new victims to there site,and noone can tell me different.These poeple aren't going to give all for nothing those sets are there friggin money makers and they aren't just going to give them for free without something in return.Alot of people enjoyed getting the sets for free and then Steve and Tom just snatched away as quick as they gave it to them.I am sorry for this rant but it has been building for a long time now.Btw great forum now I have some place to go where I can express my indignation when I want.

[Christi]

Thank you Motoki,and I will be here a lot more often this forum is great.Tsr is over,which will make my husband extremely happy!

[Sleepycat]

back in January, just before I started playing TS2, a friend of mine (who has been hooked on the sims for years) mentioned pay-sites...I laughed, I thought she was kidding!  I was like "you mean people actually pay for custom content for a game?"

I still can hardly believe it, hell the last community I was in, dealt with bigger files and all the fan sites are free!  granted most of the people in that community are kids but still... (Petz community, virtual cats and dogs for your computers, great programs and you can get thousands of free hacked breedfiles, including a bunch I did)

It just dosen't make sense to me to pay for custom content for a game...hell I'm poor (more like po) and it'd be nice to get paid for doing something thats so much fun to do but I still wouldn't open a damn pay-site!

[madpauly]

Sleepy: There are several Morrowind mods that are near 100 MB and there's at least one that I know of that is around 1gb, and no that's not a typo. They are all free. Some of the mods have literally been worked on by teams of people for months or in some cases years and I know of at least 3 people who have modded for the Morrowind community that also work as professionals in the gaming industry. Again, all the stuff is free. No one has ever asked for a penny, not even donations.

Not entirely true. One of the bigger 'new' MW hosting sites recently threw out the begging bowl, after dying in controversial circumstances and having everyone and their next door neighbour crying 'No! Where do we put our mods now?'

The whole episode made me rant something chronic, as I'd been asking for help just to run the site (hell, I'm out contracting 45 hours a week, spend another 15 hours doing other business activities - plus two new projects on the boil. Morrowind used to take up a good 20 hours of my time testing and reviewing mods alone) as I was about to burn out. For three months, I asked, and it took this other site (and a couple of others) to fall over (for about the third time) before anyone with the skills I asked (not uncommon skills, I might add) to offer help. Of the three who finally did, two have all but vanished.

But back to the point in hand. Some of the mods (such as The Underground by Qarl) are tremendous in their scope and sheer technical brilliance. They make many Sims mods look amateurish and simple by comparison (and I offer no apologies here, even though some of the 'hacks' - I prefer the term 'mods' personally - are great). People such as Aerelorn and Shanjaq have done things everyone said couldn't be done (changing the fundamentals of the combat system, creating writable books and journals, creating a 'multiplayer' variant). Not one of those mod authors gained a single penny from their work. Many would have spent a lot of money on software such as 3DS Max to create such work in the first place.

Like I've said before, and can't emphasise enough - EA/Maxis have set a dangerous precedent by allowing this practice to go on. It should have been stamped out before it ever began. Now the floodgates are open for any old Tom, Dick or Harry to rattle off a pay site in the mould of TSR (hmmm... case in point... isn't that a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc?) and make money of unsuspecting mugs^H^H^H^Hnew users...

Regards,
Pauly
Ranting again :rant:

[madpauly]

But still, the community was around for several years with not so much as a single request for any money, even voluntary, unless you count the charity CD which I think they never did finish anyhow.

 

Well, Bethsoft themselves put they kibosh on that... so it never happened and no money changed hands, charity or no charity.

It's almost 4am. I should be in bed...

[angelica]

Let's try to put this in perspective.  Website owners have a limited number of options;
(a)  Run the site with own money no matter how much extra money it costs if bandwidth is continuely overused.
(b)  Run the site until it costs even more than expected then shut it down.
(c)  Keep it half free, half donation to pay for the free half.
(d)  Make it all pay.
(e)  Have it all pay except for a few free sets like it's charity.
(f)  Put site on a lame free site and harass your viewers with pop-ups.
(g)  Find someone to host you for free.
(h)  Have everything free and pay yourself BUT put up donation link and hope someone will click it.

The best option I've seen is C.. XM, Peggy, and other of my favorite artists follow this.  Quality is basically the same for free and donation.

The rest all have a major flaw and usually kills the site eventually.

For all the talk though about copyright by pay sites as I understand it Maxis can take away their intellectual copyright at any time.  There are many companies that declare war on anyone who tries to mod their game(s).  I'm thinking some sims fan creators have forgotten how lucky they have it currently.

[Inge Jones]

You missed an option, Angelica.  Decide on a hosting service and bandwidth you can afford, keep an eye on the bandwidth, and if it looks like going over the limit, take some of the files down for a little while or place them elsewhere.  In the past I have used my Yahoo group for files that I suspected might produce a sudden surge, as Yahoo does the rationing for you.

I admit it's tough to keep bandwidth down if you're sharing whole Sims, lots or new meshes though.   If I was making them I might opt to be selfish with my space and upload those to MTS2 or TSR or The Exchange

[RGiles]

Another good option would be to use a filesharing program to spread your files, especially if you can be certain at least a few friends will keep your files shared. Then you can use a forum, yahoo group or plain email for support.

It's really an excellent option, I think, but I haven't seen anyone doing it.

[Inge Jones]

On Neighbourhood99 they have a forum dedicated to filesharing, so creators register their willingness to have their files distributed that way, and users use that forum to ask when they want someone to send them a file.  It's called POBS (Preservation of Bandwidth Society)

[kathy]

Inge it is nice to see all the sites that do participate in the file sharing network. It would be nice to see more sites impliment this as well but kudos to the ones that do.

[jordi]

Paysites have thier (sic) place in the community right now - they have done for years.

I fully agree. That place is the newbie corner, for stupid people who don't know what a zipfile is.

For every pay site I can usually find ten free sites which offer much better content.[/i]

[RGiles]

Inge,
I've never heard of that. Sounds cool! It seems to me that peer-to-peer would be a very cost-effective way to distribute content. you could just have a site with your images/descriptions and links to your content on a p2p network.

[Eric]

This thread began with "specific site" bashing.  We have added a new rule concerning site bashing.  We like this topic (we advocate free content) and debating the pros' and cons' of different methods of site maintenance and content distribution is encouraged by us since new ideas can be born out of such discussion.  From here on, we ask members not to bash a specific sites policies regarding the above mentioned concepts.  

See Site Rules

Thanks

[kathy]

Let me add on what you are saying baby by saying none of the "present" company has been doing this so please don't feel as though this is directed towards you. We just don't want to fall into the trap of bashing one site or another and having anyone feeling alienated because they belong to said site.