Armoury; Commander Micro-transactions.

To me it isnt.
I can spend hours or even days getting the perfect picture of a landscape. Its value is defined by the result of that effort and not just by the fact it took me a long time to create. If it doesnt appeal to anyone, ideally someone whos willing to actually pay, its worthless.

The process used to generate a piece of art doesnt define its value to me, its result does.

A well skilled painter can produce something in five minutes thats better than I could ever do at all. The fact I invested vast ammounts of time in it still doesnt make my picture more valueable in any way. I just sunk more effort into it but the result will be plain ugly.

Neither do I know, nor do I care to be honest. Just ask them. I suspect its a standard phrase.
I only know the questioning from photography, where its usually asked how this is done, where it was taken and of course another meaningless question - what gear you need for it. Rarely Im asked how long it took. And it really doesnt matter.

edit: Wow, massive OT.

I actually said why they say it right after, because a lot of people automatically view something as worth more if it took longer, because it normally means they worked harder. Really, as Knight said, value is a huge combination of things, beauty however is just subjective, time and effort however are not which is why often you can say a picture is stupid or ugly yet someone will still like it- someone will. Time and effort however anyone can appreciate; anyone can understand that even though they may not think somethings the most nice looking, the person still put a lot of effort into it which is where the expression "It's the thought that counts." comes from.

Edit: You're right, why are we even discussing what makes Art worth something? That's subject to infinite amount of opinions and we'd never get anywhere, as some care a whole lot about how nice something looks, some care about how much time it took; some care about who did it in the first place. I would like to avoid getting this closed because of insane off topic! Haha... Now then, Commanders- are going to be on a market, how would people feel if players made commanders and uploaded them? What backlash would this make towards all the custom commander KS buyers, @KNight how would you feel about this?

Whoops, double posted.

Of course not, and it's totally legit to expect to be compensated for one's hard work. But let's not call it art

What? What does the classification of the work being done have to do with the business model used to monetize it? Art is Art regardless of anything else, just because an Artists uses a poor business model to monetize his/her Art doesn't stop the Art itself from being Art.

Mike

Completely agree, modelling is art- thank you. Just because you make money for said art doesn't mean anything, famous painters made money for their art. Oh and if it's because it's a part of a game then... rrrgh... We will end up going insanely far off topic.

We are almost getting into fundamental economic philosophy here. I'm no expert, but there seem to be two fundamental viewpoints being espoused here.

Some people feel that the value of a digital good is determined by the amount of labour and capital required to create it.

Others feel that the value is simply determined by whatever people are willing to pay for it.

I'm not going to weigh in on such a debate, because sharper minds than mine have already put a substantial amount of effort into discussing it. Either way, it is important to be aware of this issue in order to have a sensible discussion on this matter. It is also important that (in what estimation that I have of this matter) that developers may tend towards one side of this spectrum while players may tend towards the other.

Micro transactions are the devil. All they lead to is mobile-gaming-esque crap where you either pay to win, or the developer ends up devoting way too much time for cosmetics

Please, no microtransactions.

So those are the only options ever? Nothing in life is that Black and White, or in your case, Black and Black...

Mike

Sorry already confirmed, but I don't really think micro-transactions will destroy the world, the devs won't make it pay-to-win and I can't even believe people would think that could even work in an RTS (let alone any game ). The game won't be Pay-to-win and there will be continuous updates to the game.

I'm not asking for anything being made for free, but it isn't free.. People paid or will pay for the game, and it used to happend that companies kept supporting their game and community with new stuff.

TA itself had additional units for free, and while that may have been silly from a standpoint of multiplayer balancing, I'd rather have it this way.

I'd gladly keep paying for the game in form of buying expansion packs of balanced units, like Starcraft 2 does it for its multiplayer for example.

Microtransactions should be kept very sparse and always in the spirit of support for the developer.

Because 2 dollars for a new commander stands in no relation at all to anything. that's like 5% of the cost of the game for a new skin and model.

No one ever sad EVERYTHING would be done via Micro-Transactions and the Devs have commented that they do want to put out stuff post release.

But how does that NOT support the developer?

Mike

It's a fine line between supporting a developer and a developer going for a cash grab

I wouldn't say uber ent is in this lot, but I'm always wary of this

I'm pretty sure it'd be for support as... The company has been VERY close to bankrupcy numerous times... (In fact they've gotten to points where they needed to fund their own games... it was that bad.)

But you just said "All they lead to is mobile-gaming-esque crap where you either pay to win, or the developer ends up devoting way too much time for cosmetics" and supporting themselves doesn't fall under either of those options.

Also how exactly would you define what a "Cash Grab" Micro transaction is?

Mike

Boy am I late to this thread. ANYHOW.

I call bullshit.

The purpose of both is to make money and increase longevity. A micro-transaction is a form of DLC.

Why does the game being $X less to initially purchase mean that all micro-transactions are therefore completely okay?

How does that work, on any kind of economic scale. Surely the fair translation would be that the first few items in DotA 2 are free, and then the rest are paid as per the £60 game that's including paid microtransactions from the start?

People seem to demonise microtransactions just because of their name. The same went for DLC, and I have to say from this thread it's interesting to see people beginning to accept DLC, because microtransactions are the new things to criticise. Despite the fact they're the same thing, just in different sizes.

You want to call it art... please, be my guest. And I do respect your opinion. But do not expect me necessarily to agree with you.

My last 20 years of work have been intimately related to Art even if I'm definitely not an artist myself. And if I have to tell you, what you do with the modeling, or what Uber does with their software and designs, has nothing to do with art.

Let's close this part, and let's get back on topic. Won't we?

I said there's always the danger that it goes bad. Especially when money seems to come by easy by doing so.
The way from support -> cash grab is sometimes paved with good intentions

Art is in the eye of the beholder. And posting flame-bait, then saying "the discussion is off-topic, let's move on" is generally considered in bad taste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_art_design

Whups.