Extra Life Is Not Over - More Previews Still Coming If Thresholds Met

AaronOfBarbaria · Oct 9, 2015

discosoc said:
Should the artist be paid? Absolutely. By Wizards of the Coast.

...and if WotC paying the artist what the artist is due would necessitate a rise in the cost of the books passed on to the customers, would you be willing to pay say an extra 30% over current pricing?

Art is expensive, especially good art from an artist that actually knows their worth. It very well could be that your choices are A) WotC pays the artist for rights to use the art in a limited fashion and leaves the artist free to sell copies to the customers at mere fractions of the commission price, or B) WotC pays the artist for all the rights to the art so they aren't complete goons if they decide to freely give it away and your cost as a customer includes enough extra to cover the higher price whether you want the independent art files or not.

I know lots of people like to image that WotC has unlimited money, but no such thing exists.

AaronOfBarbaria · Oct 9, 2015

discosoc said:
This idea that we're asking for a premium product for free or something skirts the fact that it's not "premium" at all

The map as presented in the book is the normal product. The map in higher resolution, digital, and ready for use on whatever doo-hicky you feel like, or even available for printing as an "archaic" poster - that's the definition of "premium."

discosoc · Oct 9, 2015

AaronOfBarbaria said:
...and if WotC paying the artist what the artist is due would necessitate a rise in the cost of the books passed on to the customers, would you be willing to pay say an extra 30% over current pricing?

Art is expensive, especially good art from an artist that actually knows their worth. It very well could be that your choices are A) WotC pays the artist for rights to use the art in a limited fashion and leaves the artist free to sell copies to the customers at mere fractions of the commission price, or B) WotC pays the artist for all the rights to the art so they aren't complete goons if they decide to freely give it away and your cost as a customer includes enough extra to cover the higher price whether you want the independent art files or not.

I know lots of people like to image that WotC has unlimited money, but no such thing exists.

If a map increases the cost of the book by 30% then WotC is getting ripped off and should go with someone else. End of story.

discosoc · Oct 9, 2015

AaronOfBarbaria said:
The map as presented in the book is the normal product. The map in higher resolution, digital, and ready for use on whatever doo-hicky you feel like, or even available for printing as an "archaic" poster - that's the definition of "premium."

How is that premium? It's the same file. It's not like the artist is having to make two different versions by hand, one for the book and one for high res devices. At best, it's "artificially premium." Maps aren't exactly new to the industry, so I don't know how it's suddenly such a difficult thing to make happen if what you're saying is correct.

But if they do go the route of artificially making a hi res version "premium" then I'll just keep going the route of pirating it. Or move to a setting that's provides a proper map. It's not like there's a lack of competition in the industry, no matter how inflated the artists' egos might get.

AaronOfBarbaria · Oct 9, 2015

discosoc said:
If a map increases the cost of the book by 30% then WotC is getting ripped off and should go with someone else. End of story.

...this is what I get for assuming that when I said "artist" you would read that as I intended it, referring to the artist of each and every piece of art map or otherwise, rather than in a limited fashion that I know see would have been contextually more clear if I had made it plural despite the, to me, obvious context.

As for the question "how is that premium?" the answer is simple: getting the raw file to do with as you please - the privilege WotC likely paid hundreds of dollars per image for - is the default art acquisition method. Getting a copy of that art in the book you purchased from the folks that actually paid for the art is decidedly less beneficial, thus if one of these two is "premium" it must be the former.

And your comments about inflated egos are insulting. You are looking at the result of a lot of hours spent finely honing skills just to get to the point where spending a few days or a week hard at work lets you fill a single commission to satisfactory degree, and you are claiming that it is inflated ego to actually want to be paid commensurate wages for your work?

timbannock · Oct 9, 2015

pukunui said:
Yes, and the art and maps WotC used to provide for free were mostly tiny, low-res images that weren't much use to anybody.

Weird, I'm looking at the files I've saved over the years right now that are huge, and using the wayback machine, can see that they offered almost all maps in one of three resolutions, the uppermost being the huge ones I saved.

Not sure if that's true of the art galleries, but definitely the maps.

pukunui · Oct 9, 2015

[MENTION=17913]neuronphaser[/MENTION]: Take a look at the galleries for Red Hand of Doom: art and maps. All pretty small files.

timbannock · Oct 10, 2015

pukunui said:
[MENTION=17913]neuronphaser[/MENTION]: Take a look at the galleries for Red Hand of Doom: art and maps. All pretty small files.

Those maps are the perfect resolution for me to print out and use both in prep (to scribble my notes on) and at the table (for players to see). Perhaps the battle maps wouldn't work out too well for blowing up to poster size to act as the board for minis, but I've never had the experience of playing in a group where that was a thing. We always just used our Paizo Flip Mat and just tried to follow the battlemaps in the books (or in these downloads when we ripped them for a homebrew adventure, which was fairly often, depending on the DM) as closely as possible.

I guess I don't know how you define "weren't much use to anybody." I'm somebody, the other players and DMs I played with are somebodies, and they were of much use to all of us.

EDIT: and the map archives still show low, medium, and high res, so would you like an award for finding an example of an inconsistency and trying to present it as proof that my experience is wrong without reference to literally dozens (hundreds?) of other examples that back up what I said?

pukunui · Oct 10, 2015

neuronphaser said:
I guess I don't know how you define "weren't much use to anybody." I'm somebody, the other players and DMs I played with are somebodies, and they were of much use to all of us.

*shrug* It was a bit of hyperbole on my part, I guess.

EDIT: and the map archives still show low, medium, and high res, so would you like an award for finding an example of an inconsistency and trying to present it as proof that my experience is wrong without reference to literally dozens (hundreds?) of other examples that back up what I said?

Um, I wasn't trying to prove you wrong. Just show you what I was talking about. Could you provide an example of the map archives you're talking about? I'm not familiar with them. As you can see, the RHoD map gallery doesn't offer different resolutions. I wasn't aware that there were some that did.

timbannock · Oct 10, 2015

pukunui said:
*shrug* It was a bit of hyperbole on my part, I guess.

Um, I wasn't trying to prove you wrong. Just show you what I was talking about. Could you provide an example of the map archives you're talking about? I'm not familiar with them. As you can see, the RHoD map gallery doesn't offer different resolutions. I wasn't aware that there were some that did.

Map-a-Week appears to have been the name of the archive.

Sorry if I'm a little contentious on the issue. I just don't want to go down the road of being told that my experience cannot be true because someone else didn't experience what I experienced. It's...not really good argumentation ;-P

Not indicative of you, just making a generalization from previous threads I've been in.

Extra Life Is Not Over - More Previews Still Coming If Thresholds Met

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