What's your take on free vs paid RM resources?

[PhoenixSoul 1,295]

You're right about that, unfortunately, but I'm not talking about the companies crashing, I mean the entire industry.

It'll coincide with the collapse of the USD.

Expect that to happen very soon. Might even be by the end of the year...

[Kayzee 3,858]

Bah, you and your doomsaying. You know in a way I kinda wish you were right. If the industry is going to crash, I wish it would hurry up and do so already. Same with the whole system. If everything falls apart this will be humanity's chance to stop propping up the stinking corpse of a system and actually start changing things. But I doubt anything big is going to happen. I have heard that promise before. Humans always are looking for some kind of big grand collapse, some fantastic disaster to save them from the chains they forged themselves. They look for one year after year, but year after year it fails to happen. Why? Because humans are cowards. I don't even blame them really, but it's still true.

 

They fear change, but they also fear things staying the same. They run away, they deny, they build little cages for themselves and then rage at being contained in their own prisons. But if they are freed they can't handle it and scurry back into their nice safe shadows. That's what humanity has become. And the thing is, it's not even that complicated to fix all of this. It really isn't. All humans need is to understand one basic truth. Something they know as children but adults have done their best to make them forget. That none of it actually matters! Not one bit! It's all a game, it's all a dream, it's all just playtime after all! That doesn't mean it can't be wonderful, doesn't mean it can't be beautiful, doesn't mean it can't be meaningful to you. It's not even a bad thing to be afraid now and then, or to build your own protection from the outside world. But don't make it your prison, make it your fortress!

 

Oh well, we will see what happens.

[PhoenixSoul 1,295]

22 hours ago, Kayzee said:

Bah, you and your doomsaying...

(prepares for the party she's throwing when it all happens) You were saying?

[Kayzee 3,858]

I'm not about to stop calling you out like this you know. If the end comes I will be right there partying and laughing as it all burns down, but until then no matches for you. I'm not going to let anyone start the fire until I am good and ready, thank you very much! It isn't time yet... We can't rush the grand finale, that's a classic mistake authors make. What satisfaction would there be in ending it before all the twists are even revealed and the true plot is laid bare? No. Not yet. Maybe I will change my mind by the end of the year but I doubt it.

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by Kayzee

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

I think paid is nice if you have really steady and well off income. but for someone whos' on fixed income with limited resources free is not always bad. and aside from that, the general go-go-go nature of society makes me feel like we're all driving the autobahn instead of climbing a beautiful mountain. Like no one enjoys the process of the skill building?

I feel it becomes a matter of anxiety induced panic as the developer realizes the skills they need for a game are numerous and take much time and consideration to actually do well. But that said, why doesn't everyone value a resource for more than just "free" or "paid"? chances are if you enjoy an asset it's because the skill is something that took a long while to achieve.

I try not to think of resources in terms of luxury or commodity or even a form of numbers. I mean, what's 1lb of clay mean really? Is it 1 figure, or multiple figures?

This for that is all the banking system started on. I like the idea of receiving what you put into something.

 

That's why I make things for free, or make them for a cost.

Now that said, not everyone appreciates a product the same way. What is worth afterall?

[casper667 130]

I used to have a commercial license required for my scripts back in VX Ace, but I found that it mostly just discouraged people from using them at all, and those that were planning on making commercial games with them hardly ever finished their games so they never had to pay anyways. Now that I have a much better source of income than back then (was in hs/college, now employed), I have moved over to a Patreon model where people can optionally support me and they get some extra things like access to beta plugins which I haven't quite finished yet. I mostly do this as a hobby so I don't mind if people don't pay, but it is nice to get something else other than just recognition when plugin dev takes a lot of time and is not always that fun especially when I try to keep up with forums / social media / demos and stuff which is considerably less fun for me than just making the plugin.

Edited August 8, 2020 by casper667

[Kayzee 3,858]

4 hours ago, Asharonapaul said:

I think paid is nice if you have really steady and well off income. but for someone whos' on fixed income with limited resources free is not always bad. and aside from that, the general go-go-go nature of society makes me feel like we're all driving the autobahn instead of climbing a beautiful mountain. Like no one enjoys the process of the skill building?

I feel it becomes a matter of anxiety induced panic as the developer realizes the skills they need for a game are numerous and take much time and consideration to actually do well. But that said, why doesn't everyone value a resource for more than just "free" or "paid"? chances are if you enjoy an asset it's because the skill is something that took a long while to achieve.

I try not to think of resources in terms of luxury or commodity or even a form of numbers. I mean, what's 1lb of clay mean really? Is it 1 figure, or multiple figures?

This for that is all the banking system started on. I like the idea of receiving what you put into something.

 

That's why I make things for free, or make them for a cost.

Now that said, not everyone appreciates a product the same way. What is worth afterall?

 

If I am understanding you right I think my thoughts on the subject have a lot in common with yours, but I take them in a sort of different direction. I think your final question most resonates with my thoughts: What is worth after all? To that question I would answer that there is no true inherent 'worth' to anything, because 'worth' is simply not an inherent property of objects. What something is 'worth' is entirely up to the individual. The time and consideration involved may or may not be a factor in that, and as you said the general hectic nature of society tends to pressure people into thinking along those lines, but it's still ultimately up to each person what something is worth and how.

 

But thinking of worth this way runs into a glaring problem. You see, the idea of 'receiving what you put into something' doesn't really work because you rarely if ever get the exact same kind of thing out of something as you put into it. So people rely on an idea of 'equivalent exchange', exchanging one thing for another of the same over all 'worth'. Of course since what things are worth are up to the individual everyone has their own idea about what 'equivalent' means. Of course for practicality's sake when it comes to money, 'worth' often is taken to mean something slightly different: It's simply what people will pay for something. Nothing more, nothing less. This allows things to be greatly simplified, but it's not quite the same thing.

 

The core of the whole issue here is I think that people sort of mix up how much something costs with how much it's worth, when they really are two different things.

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

ok

[PhoenixSoul 1,295]

Inflation. Killer of economies time and again.

What is the value of X, versus Z? Is it tangible? Is it theoretical? Does it really matter?

How easily can a stolen apple be replaced? A stolen pencil? A stolen car? Stolen digital assets? ...(on and on)


Anyway...ice cream break, anyone?

 

[DoubleX 202]

I've just read some articles having a rather interesting payment model: Those articles are free to read, but also come with QR Codes attached to fixed prices, meaning that you can voluntarily pay the fixed price for reading each article, but you won't gain anything directly right after the payment, and you can still read the complete version of the article even if you don't pay a penny.

It sounds like donations, but is different enough to worth mentioning, because donations are generally either voluntary periodic subscriptions or one time voluntary payment with the amount decided by the donators.

With the voluntary payment model of those articles, the supposedly one time prices are still decided by the author rather than the users, so the author can use it to reflect what the author thinks of the worth(rather than the cost) of each piece.

Applying this to RM resources, an easy, simple and small resource might have a fixed voluntary price of 1USD, while those flagship ones reaching professional levels might have a fixed voluntary price of 100+USD, even though the actual voluntary pricing will be up to each resource maker per resource.

 

Of course, it'd be natural for some resource makers to set the voluntary price in terms of cost rather than worth, but it's their job to be clear of the difference.

Ideally, a resource should cost only a little but worth a lot, meaning that only little effort and energy is needed to create an extremely useful masterpiece.

The opposite case is that, a resource costing tons of efforts and energy end up being an utterly useless trash that nobody cares about one bit, even when that resource's free.

 

Simply put, cost is the measure of the amount of actual input while worth is the measure of the amount of actual output.

Therefore, cost is largely objective in general because accurately measuring the amount of effort and energy without bias is mostly feasible, even though it can still be complicated and convoluted.

On the other hand, worth is largely subjective because different consumers have different needs and wants, and are under different circumstances(e.g.: the opportunity costs of the same resource is different for each user), so evaluating the worth of a resource for a user needs to be done on a case-by-case basis per user, as a "one size fits all" measure of worth simply doesn't align well with the reality and will thus rarely work well, unless the targeting audience's very, very well-defined and researched.

However, different pricing for different users will only lead to even greater disasters, at least because of the issues of fairness and operational difficulties, so a "one size fits all" price as the best approximations of the worth of the resources in the eyes of the targeting audience is a lesser/necessary evil as long as the donation model still isn't safe enough for the resource maker to apply on the resource yet.

 

This also brings another difference between mandatory pricing in most ordinary paid resources and the more innovative voluntary pricing.

In short, the former's likely the result of maximizing the net profits of the resource maker, meaning that it's probably more linked to the cost than the worth, even though the price will try to fit into the "formula" of price = cost + worth(it's a very questionable formula anyway).

In contrast, the latter's likely the result of reflecting the worth of the resource in the eyes of the resource maker, meaning that it's probably even more subjective than the mandatory price number, and it's up to the resource user to decide whether the resource really worth that price for that user on a case-by-case basis.

 

It seems to me that this voluntary payment model works for those articles using that model, so I wonder if any resource maker will at least consider thinking about this idea

Edited August 9, 2020 by DoubleX

[Kayzee 3,858]

@DoubleX Well in my opinion, like I said before, the price of something is really not reflective of the time and effort it takes to do something. Or at least not directly. Though your explanation does make me think I may have gone about explaining my view of it the wrong way.

 

So how about this:

 

Traditionally the price of any commodity is governed by the principle of supply and demand. Don't think I really have to explain it, but I will anyway. The basic idea is that if demand for something out paces the supply the price will go up, where as if there is more then enough of a supply to match the demand the price will go down. Problem is, this principle falls apart when it comes to 'digital commodities' because there is a theoretical unlimited supply.

 

So instead what has effectively happened is that instead of operating on 'supply and demand', digital economics really rely more on a principle closer to 'effort and reward'. Artists, authors, and other people we can fit under the category of 'creators' put in an effort in order to get a reward. But there Is at least one very important difference between the principles of 'supply and demand' and the ones of 'effort and reward', and they often I think kinda get ignored.

 

Ideally with supply and demand there should be a kind of balance between the needs of the suppliers and those demanding goods when it comes to price. With effort and reward I think tends too be very unballanced by default. It seems that depending on how it's done either the person putting in the effort or the person giving out the reward has much more power over the transaction. Either the distribution is artificially limited by copyright and the creator gets most of the control over how to set the price, or the distribution is not limited and the consumer gets most of the control over how much to reward the creator. There are limits of course, there is only so much a consumer is willing to pay or a creator willing to put in the effort for that pay, but I think the prices for digital things are often very arbitrary.

 

Also with supply and demand prices more or less automatically correct themselves to match the market, but with effort and reward there is not nearly as much of a push to do that. Of course there are quirks to both systems that make that much less clear cut, but generally it's true I think. For example, have you noticed that $60 has been the standard price for new triple A games for decades? Doesn't really matter the quality most of the time, $60 is the go to price for games.

 

So yeah. I would argue that it's better in the long run to give consumers more control in this case, but either way it's kinda hard to keep things 'fair'.