Discussion of Politeness

[Lunarea]

THIS TOPIC WAS SPLIT FROM ANOTHER TOPIC. More posts from the old topic might get transferred, but for context you can follow back to this topic: -Touchfuzzy

The steampunk tiles contain a lot of completely custom work and it's this custom work we're selling a license to. We have rules and conditions on who we sell the tiles to. We have refused more than one sale because the user was looking for tiles for their Android game and they had no right to use RTP commercially.

Beyond that, we are not selling through another company. We are personally responsible for the sales and should there be legal issues, the two of us would be the only two people involved. Sales through the official store are done through Degica and it's also their reputation and income that's put on the line.

Since the Steampunk tiles are such a sore spot, though, I'll see what I can do about removing the thread. I don't want it to look like we're abusing the system.

 

[Shablo5]

Since the Steampunk tiles are such a sore spot, though, I'll see what I can do about removing the thread. I don't want it to look like we're abusing the system.

This is such a whining statement. Please don't do this. You know full well the community enjoys your tiles, you don't need to say such a whiny thing.

That being said, my question was a sincere and honest question, therefore needed no such response like that. You answered my question, no need to get all drama on it.

Thanks for the answer. I Can now see why there is a differentiation between selling yourself and selling through Degica.

 

[Lunarea]

I think some of the replies in this thread are really uncalled for. I don't appreciate being called names, especially when the intent behind my actions was to make things simpler and easier on the community. Being called disgusting and whiny/dramatic in public like this is really unnecessary and very hurtful. I am willing to listen to any kind of criticism and discuss virtually anything in private.

Up until this forum was opened, we had no direct contact with Enterbrain. We were never likely to get confirmation for questions we had and things we thought were okay to do. We're in a different place and we have different rules now. We are able to verify whether something we're doing is right or wrong. And a lot of the stuff we're finding out means we need to change the way we've done things.

I've taken down the thread only until Cel and I figure out what to do about it. It wasn't some petty decision meant to punish the community, but a way to make sure we're not breaking the very rules we set.

 

[Des]

I think some of the replies in this thread are really uncalled for. I don't appreciate being called names, especially when the intent behind my actions was to make things simpler and easier on the community. Being called disgusting and whiny/dramatic in public like this is really unnecessary and very hurtful. I am willing to listen to any kind of criticism and discuss virtually anything in private.

don't misunderstand me—i didn't say you YOU are disgusting, but that the idea that somebody (anybody! not you or celianna or anybody specifically—your graphics were just an example that was brought up) would be making profit off of the work of other people disgusts me. it's great that you've made edits (and good ones! that's rare) and release them to the community. that's fantastic. release them freely to anybody whose already purchased the rmvx RTP! basically, what i find "disgusting" is that you made resources based on the work of other people, and then decided that it was a good idea to make a profit off of them. it sets a poor precedent when we should be encouraging artists to create new material.

now, it's different when it's actually commissioned by degica/enterbrain/whoever from the start. if they say "hey we made some graphics, can you re-arrange them into some other new stuff so we can sell them" that's kind of a different story. they own those graphics to begin with. but go back and try to make money off of edited tiles that were made previously is pretty sketchy!

also note that i'm not against making profit—far from it; i'm one of the people around here who very much want to see rpgmaker become a profitable business. people deserve to make money! it's how the world works. but the people who deserve to be paid are the ones who are able to create quality original content, not a re-hash of existing material. if somebody already owns the license to the rmvx RTP, then they shouldn't have to pay extra to uses tiles that are edits of those graphics.

basically, it comes down to the same thing that i've been saying for years and years. i've been actively trying to push the community in the direction of creating more original content, but it's an uphill battle when everybody seems content with edits and recolors. we need to encourage new original material in order to keep the community from stagnating, and selling edited tiles encourages the exact opposite of that.

this topic is a good one, and it's a great idea to encourage community members to contribute to the site's resource store—and this whole conversation has been detrimental to what this topic started as. apologies because that wasn't my intent! hopefully now we are all on the same page.

in other words: shut up and make some graphics!

 

[Touchfuzzy]

basically, it comes down to the same thing that i've been saying for years and years. i've been actively trying to push the community in the direction of creating more original content, but it's an uphill battle when everybody seems content with edits and recolors. we need to encourage new original material in order to keep the community from stagnating, and selling edited tiles encourages the exact opposite of that.

We need to encourage people not to be dicks. Seriously, in my opinion, people not being dicks is more important than anything else in this community.

Treat people with respect, whether they agree with you or not.

 

[crimcrim]

We need to encourage people not to be dicks. Seriously, in my opinion, people not being dicks is more important than anything else in this community.

Treat people with respect, whether they agree with you or not.

I fail to see how saying you find edits to RTP disgusting and how something is a 'whining statement' is being a dick. No one was being a dick, and there was no 'name-calling'. That was a legit post.

yes and i find that disgusting

This is such a whining statement. Please don't do this. You know full well the community enjoys your tiles, you don't need to say such a whiny thing.

That being said, my question was a sincere and honest question, therefore needed no such response like that. You answered my question, no need to get all drama on it.

Thanks for the answer. I Can now see why there is a differentiation between selling yourself and selling through Degica.

Where was the personal attacks.

 

[Des]

We need to encourage people not to be dicks. Seriously, in my opinion, people not being dicks is more important than anything else in this community.

Treat people with respect, whether they agree with you or not.

i hope i'm not reading into this too much, man—but i thought my last post was pretty respectful. i thought i was being pretty clear that i was apologizing and i clarified my stance on the issue, and i emphasized that i'm trying to help the community as a whole.

you're not making it very easy to be nice about this, dude. like seriously. i'm not trying to cause fights—i like to get a discussion going, sure. when those discussions get heated, that's awesome! debates can lead to awesome conversation! but calling me a dick in a passive aggressive way like this isn't going to be helping anything. yeah, i am a dick a lot of the time. but i'm not trying to in this thread.

we all want the same thing here, even if we think that there are different ways to achieve it.

EDIT:

maybe can we split this discussion into a different thread? it makes this thread look bad and imo the important information in the first few posts can be pretty standalone.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

maybe can we split this discussion into a different thread? it makes this thread look bad and imo the important information in the first few posts can be pretty standalone.

A good idea.

I was mostly referring to the fact that while we are all allowed our agendas, we should still be polite about pushing them. To be fair, my way of responding wasn't polite either, and I should probably check that next time a bit better.

It wasn't really a call of you being a dick, more that you sometimes unintentionally appear to be a dick to a lot of people. And its hard to convince people of your point if they think you are a dick.

(Sure are a lot of dicks in this post)

 

[Lunarea]

I just want to address this in particular:

it's great that you've made edits (and good ones! that's rare) and release them to the community. that's fantastic. release them freely to anybody whose already purchased the rmvx RTP! basically, what i find "disgusting" is that you made resources based on the work of other people, and then decided that it was a good idea to make a profit off of them

You're making it sound like all we did was edits, when in fact, the majority of that set is completely custom-painted by Celianna and myself. The things we didn't do from scratch are some textures or objects that didn't need to be remade (some pipes, things like books, flowers and cups). Neither of us really likes auto-tiles, so the biggest "edit" section you can find is some of the outer walls and floors. Even there, we made sure to include completely custom stuff. And Cel even made and animated running water.

We also released the set publicly, for free use in non-commercial projects. We didn't even consider taking payments on them until people started offering to pay for the part of the work we'd done. We always made it clear that we weren't selling RTP or just simple edits. We made sure that the people we sold to were using RMVX/Ace. And, frankly, the only reason we took payment at all was because it seemed even less fair that someone should profit from the original stuff we spent weeks working on.

--

I also very much disagree with you about not encouraging edited material. I, myself, started with edits of existing tiles. I eventually moved from complex editing to creating things from scratch. I'm at a point now where I make tiles pretty fast and with minimal references. I don't think this process is unique to just me. I've met quite a bit of self-taught artists who also started out trying to copy/recreate some drawing or painting they saw.

So, I would rather encourage people to just make things and share them. Get feedback. Keep trying. Get better. Move into your own style. Make even more awesome things and share those.

 

[Celianna]

‘We’ hereby now refers to Luna and I, because let’s not kid ourselves, it’s who we’re talking about. I am ignoring our completely custom work (which is what consists the majority of our resources) in this post. You can also ignore this post, and just focus on Luna's, but I can't let her take all the heat.

'Edits' is such a fuzzy definition. Very fuzzy. There's a difference between a re-colour, and creating something that doesn’t even resemble the original source material anymore. There's just so many variants on the word, but since it's not completely 100% from scratch, it's called 'an edit'. That doesn't mean no work is put into it, or deserves to be called 'disgusting' because people make money off of it by letting other people use it in commercial games. We didn't even sell anything for a long time, not until we got so many requests from people who wanted to pay for it (we get daily PMs about this!), that we decided, sure, let's set up a price, because we put our time and skills into making these resources. Sometimes these are made from scratch, sometimes we don't feel the need to make it from scratch if it already exists, and use an existing object to complete our objective.

We ask for compensation for all the work we put into it when someone wants to use our resources and go commercial (we can't just very well let you use it for free if you're going commercial). We offer our work for anyone else to use for free, we like seeing it being used. If you want to earn money off of our work, then you can go ahead and pay for a license to use them. It’s only fair.

Then you might say ‘but hey, those are edits! You’re making money off of RPG Maker’s RTP!’ but that’s not the case. If we used any edits in our work? We won’t sell it to you unless you legally own the maker from the RTP we used from. We are not re-selling the RTP. If you’re buying our ‘edits’, then you are paying for our time and effort we put into creating a new object from the original source material.

Do you not pay a spriter to create a sprite on the original base? A frankensprite perhaps?

Do you not pay an artist to draw you a different hairstyle on an existing RTP portrait?

Do you call this disgusting too?

Should a builder not get paid for his work because he didn’t create the bricks, nor was it his design?

Should a web designer not get paid either, because he didn’t create the background he was using?

That’s ridiculous.

It gets even more ridiculous that you call it disgusting, when we use edits in such a way, you cannot recognize the original source material anymore. We can transform a candle into a detailed chandelier—but it’s still called an edit. Create a fireplace out of an arrow—an edit too. We can create a huge tree from a potted plant—that’s also still an edit. We can create a complex machine out of organ pipes. We can create any kind of object you can imagine with just a piece of wooden texture (tables, chairs, pillars, walls, desks, shelves, bookcases, doors, ceilings, chandeliers, windmills, watermills, you name it). These, are what we call ‘edits’ because it is not 100% our own work. That doesn’t mean it stopped being our work.

The RTP is our collection of lego blocks, and we build with them. We build awesome things with them, and I’ll be damned if you call it disgusting that we ask people to pay to use it in a commercial game, because this is not doing anyone any favours. This is not making us want to create more for the community, this is calling us disgusting and trying to shame us because we get some compensation on our work that contains edits.

So Despain, if you want more resources for the community? Then I’ll quote something back to you:

in other words: shut up

 

[Des]

ahahah the title of this thread is adorable. i thought we were going to be able to have a nice focused debate on original graphics versus edits but apparently it's about being polite now?

anyway

man you guys seem to be taking this very personally. your graphics are fine and i don't mean to belittle the time put into them. you should know that i value that kind of **** more than anybody around there. everything i say is from the perspective of someone who puts time and effort into creating original graphics—i know that **** takes work and i believe that there's nothing wrong with wanting to be paid for that time. i've been speaking from this same perspective and saying the same things for years. none of this is new.

i say "let's encourage people to make more original graphics by doing that ourselves" and somehow the world gets offended.

really, if people want to pay for tile edits then that's fine. that's business, and i support business. if you can make money, then you should! but i'm not talking about the past, i'm talking about the future. i'm talking about the graphics that you'll be receiving as submissions.

you need to look at what i'm saying in the proper context.

That doesn't mean no work is put into it, or deserves to be called 'disgusting' because people make money off of it by letting other people use it in commercial games.

i didn't call you or your work disgusting. i called the idea of re-selling edited rtp tiles disgusting. i feel like whenever i try to make a point about something, everybody gets all up in arms and takes it as some kind of personal attack. i was using your graphics as an example, and it was in response to a direct question. i didn't just randomly start trash-talking anybody.

I also very much disagree with you about not encouraging edited material. I, myself, started with edits of existing tiles. I eventually moved from complex editing to creating things from scratch. I'm at a point now where I make tiles pretty fast and with minimal references. I don't think this process is unique to just me. I've met quite a bit of self-taught artists who also started out trying to copy/recreate some drawing or painting they saw.

So, I would rather encourage people to just make things and share them. Get feedback. Keep trying. Get better. Move into your own style. Make even more awesome things and share those.

i've said this same thing myself before

yes, that's great. edits are fine if people are willing to learn from them and advance to something new. but a lot of people aren't willing to do that. its when people are JUST making edits.

my point isn't "oh god edits are terrible". i'm worried about setting a precedent. i believe that i've already said this. it's not about you or your graphics, but about the people that will follow your example, and try to submit edited RTP tiles for sale.

yeah, your graphics are edited a LOT. your argument for selling them is very strong (and it's very strong when degica is backing you up because they have every right to be selling the edited rtp, so that's good!).

but when other people begin submitting edited works, where do you draw the line? a precedent has been set that it's acceptable to sell graphics that use the RTP. that's what i'm talking about here—the content of your tiles in particular are irrelevant.

huge tree from a potted plant

this is a pretty sick vid

So Despain, if you want more resources for the community? Then I’ll quote something back to you:

in other words shut up

why would you just take that out of context like that. come on, man—you know that the "and make some graphics!" was the emphasis of that sentence, and it wasn't aimed at you either; it was aimed at everybody in general. thats what happens when i try to explain myself and even apologize—people take it even further out of context and use my words against me. words don't mean anything unless you look at the whole.

i'm trying to express an idea here (i'm trying to encourage more people to create original works), but everybody seems to want to spend more time fighting over stupid personal ****.

take the time to read what i'm actually saying. please. i'm not trying to insult anybody here. this isn't some personal attack against anybody or anybody's graphics.

really i spend more time apologizing and clarifying than actually talking about the juicy stuff. that kind of sucks.

 

[ShinGamix]

Honestly I have never had any problems with any of Lunarea of Celianna's works. They should get paid for their time even if the are or are not so called edits or Super-Frankenspriting or whatever they want to call it.

If you or I could edit them as well as they can you and me wouldn't need theirs, so you are benefiting from their talents. I honestly don't even see why anyone would have a problem with this. Pay them for their skills if they need it, they have to eat too.

I politely tip my hate and bow to the both of you and say keep up the great work. You two are beautiful ladies with an awesome talent.

Thank you and Good day.

 

[Gomi Boy]

Should a web designer not get paid either, because he didn’t create the background he was using?

Depending on the circumstances, actually, this could be a major breach of copyright.

Should a builder not get paid for his work because he didn’t create the bricks, nor was it his design?

And this is just a poor strawman altogether. By this logic, simply tracing over a picture is also a practice people deserve to get paid for. When you sell a sprite or a drawing, you are being paid for the end result -- not for the time you put into it. It's not a salaried position.

I don't really have an opinion on this subject (although it seems silly to bring tone arguments into a primarily legal discussion), but it's not going to go anywhere if certain people only communicate by misrepresenting the stances of others.

 

[Lunarea]

but when other people begin submitting edited works, where do you draw the line? a precedent has been set that it's acceptable to sell graphics that use the RTP. that's what i'm talking about here—the content of your tiles in particular are irrelevant.

But it's not. No edited tiles are for sale in the store. It's all completely original work and it will all remain completely original work.

I don't want people to confuse the private sales we made with the official store content.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

@Despain, I titled the thread that, because the problem with your posts is that you don't realize when you are being offensive.

Its hard to have a genuine discussion when you are angering people unintentionally. And not just the people posting, there are other people who are "misinterpreting" your posts that aren't posting. What is more likely: Almost everyone is misinterpreting what you are saying, or that you are misrepresenting what you want to say?

Do you really think that: I didn't call you disgusting, I said what you are DOING is disgusting

somehow makes it not insulting?

 

[Des]

But it's not. No edited tiles are for sale in the store. It's all completely original work and it will all remain completely original work.

I don't want people to confuse the private sales we made with the official store content.

WELL IN THAT CASE

thats the end of that

 

[RyanA]

I thought this was a thread where we could discuss the correct use of proper manners while on the forums and teach those darn young'ins a thing or two!

*shakes walking stick angrily*

 

[Jaide]

You mean this ISN'T a thread about table manners?! Curses!

 

[T.Bit]

@ Lunarea & Celianna: I hope this poor experience won't make you consider not releasing your tiles to the site (because they are really super awesome). Haters are going to hate. So long as you aren't breaking any rules then rock on!

@ Romney: At what point does a piece of art become an edit? Is a painting not original just because the artist used a reference to paint it or used a similar style to another artist? As a typesetter/graphic artist this is rather offensive. Would you say that any of the ads/business cards/pamphlets/programs/etc. that I create at work are not my own creations just because I edited existing stock images/clipart to use in the design instead of completely making something in photoshop from scratch? Is not all art in reference to something else? And no, I'm not condoning plagiarism before anyone jumps on that boat.

 

[Gomi Boy]

People really need to stop trying to defend points by relying on superficial reasoning. None of these things you're comparing are comparable in any meaningful way.

e: vvv When phrased rhetorically and stuffed with fallacies, it's something else entirely.