D&D 5E D&D Beyond Cancels Competition

D&D Beyond has been running an art contest which asked creators to enter D&D-themed portrait frame. DDB got to use any or all of the entries, while the winner and some runners up received some digital content as a prize.

There was a backlash -- and DDB has cancelled the contest.

Thank you to all of our community for sharing your comments and concerns regarding our anniversary Frame Design Contest.

While we wanted to celebrate fan art as a part of our upcoming anniversary, it's clear that our community disagrees with the way we approached it. We've heard your feedback, and will be pulling the contest.

We will also strive to do better as we continue to look for ways to showcase the passion and creativity of our fellow D&D players and fans in the future. Our team will be taking this as a learning moment, and as encouragement to further educate ourselves in this pursuit.

Your feedback is absolutely instrumental to us, and we are always happy to listen and grow in response to our community's needs and concerns. Thank you all again for giving us the opportunity to review this event, and take the appropriate action.

The company went on to say:

Members of our community raised concerns about the contest’s impact on artists and designers, and the implications of running a contest to create art where only some entrants would receive a prize, and that the prize was exclusively digital material on D&D Beyond. Issues were similarly raised with regards to the contest terms and conditions. Though the entrants would all retain ownership of their design to use in any way they saw fit, including selling, printing, or reproducing, it also granted D&D Beyond rights to use submitted designs in the future. We have listened to these concerns, and in response closed the competition. We’ll be looking at ways we can better uplift our community, while also doing fun community events, in the future.

Competitions where the company in question acquires rights to all entries are generally frowned upon (unless you're WotC).

 

[Gnarlo]

As a Gen-Xer myself, I never got a participation trophy. If I didn't place in the top three I didn't get any award. I don't really know if participation trophies are still a thing.

As a 56 year old X-er myself, I can say that participation trophies are another thing that “Millennials” get blamed for that is total BS; in our Little League baseball and football teams everyone got a trophy at the end of the season and at our science fairs everyone got a white ribbon on their project if they didn’t place. And this was in a podunk rural Georgia county in the mid 70s…

edit: Dire Bare beat me to it.

 

[MGibster]

As a 56 year old X-er myself, I can say that participation trophies are another thing that “Millennials” get blamed for that is total BS; in our Little League baseball and football teams everyone got a trophy at the end of the season and at our science fairs everyone got a white ribbon on their project if they didn’t place. And this was in a podunk rural Georgia county in the mid 70s…

I wouldn't blame millennials for them at any rate because they weren't the ones giving them out it was their parents. And at least according to Wikipedia, participation trophies are far older than even the mid-70s. However, I don't think they were particularly common until the late 90s or early 2000s. I lived in a variety of school districts growing up because my family moved quite frequently and never got participation trophies.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don't use DNDB because I don't play 5e, and they won't support 4e. However, I am part of the broader D&D online community which will always be represented first and foremost by the officially sanctioned faces of the current edition, of which DNDB is a critical one. I have been deeply invested in this community for decades, and I will do what I can to make it a community that does not support dodgy corporate nonsense like spec work.

I just want to make sure I understand-
You don't use their product.
You don't play 5e.*
And this wasn't spec work (to be clear, and to avoid miscommunication like earlier in the thread, you mean "on spec" and not "to spec" since someone like me will usually use it to mean "to specification").
But you are happy that you pressured D&D Beyond into canceling the competition, because you felt that it exploited artists.


A quick detour into two concepts:
"Spec work" in most fields usually refers to work to specification. Client says, "Build me a bridge." "Design me a logo." "Write me a manual for my Atomic Wedgiemaker." "Draw me a cover for my book."
However, "spec work" also refers to speculative work, which is work that is done without a client in mind or any particular offer. This is most common in certain creative endeavors and (occasionally) the construction industry. "I'm writing this script and I hope that someone picks it up." "I'm developing this land and I hope people buy the houses." "I'm writing this article and hope that a magazine/blog picks it up."

Both work on spec and to spec are common, in America, for independent contractors. To a certain extent, work to spec is the default mode of work of almost every contractor (the plumber is hired to do a job to spec- to clear the clog in a particular pipe, say). Work on spec is only common in a very small subset of fields. Most generously construed, work on spec would be the famous artist who produces the works that they want and sells them to the highest bidder; this has been the default approach for the art market for some time. Which usually ends up (like many creative endeavors) with a very few people making a lot of money, and a lot of people making little-to-no money.

Which gets to the next issue- many professional artists have to end up choosing to take less lucrative jobs with employers to make ends meet. A person goes into debt to go to RISD, for example- and maybe they end up as Seth MacFarlane, or maybe they work in-house doing graphics for a regional sandwich shop. The creative endeavors (acting, music, art, writing, and so on) are hard- hard to break into, hard to make money off of. If you've lived in LA, for example, you know that almost everyone is either involved with or one step removed from "the Industry" and that anyone in the service industry is a "slash," (waiter/actor, cashier/musician, gas station attendant/writer) ... and I think they all have podcasts now?

Anyway, back to the main topic. As I already stated, this wasn't "on spec" work. If you looked at the source documents you would see that this was just trying to be the usual marketing ploy. This wasn't crowding out artists in any way, shape, or form. More importantly, there are salient legal and factual differences between work that is on spec and contest.

IMO, this type of activism ends up being hollow, because there are serious inequities involved when it comes to the labor force. When it involves the creatives that power a lot of different industries. Serious effort needs to be put into that- and I'm not arguing that the perfect is the enemy of the good. I'm saying, unequivocally, that this (the ending of this contest) wasn't good because there are serious issues that got caught up in terms of liability and competitions that are orthogonal to the issue of fair wages.

The reason that you won (in other words, that D&D Beyond almost immediately cancelled this) is not because you were right; it's because you were wrong. It's because this was a marketing gimmick designed to drum up publicity around a new feature, and it had nothing to do with the art itself. And as soon as the publicity began going sideways (and, most likely, the T&C got kicked up and couldn't be changed from the Australian company's auto-generated default) it was cancelled.


*To be clear- I am not reciting that to make you look bad. I am honestly impressed. Given that people are anonymous on the internet, it is far too common for people to just lie. "Oh yes, I totally use D&D Beyond all the time!" I don't use D&D Beyond either, but that's only because I am unable to use computers.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I wouldn't blame millennials for them at any rate because they weren't the ones giving them out it was their parents. And at least according to Wikipedia, participation trophies are far older than even the mid-70s. However, I don't think they were particularly common until the late 90s or early 2000s. I lived in a variety of school districts growing up because my family moved quite frequently and never got participation trophies.

I have a simple solution:

Old and tired hotness:
Older generation doesn't understand new generation, what with the music, fashion, work ethic, slang, and desire to be on our lawn.

New hotness:
Other people suck, because they aren't me.

 

[MGibster]

Old and tired hotness:
Older generation doesn't understand new generation, what with the music, fashion, work ethic, slang, and desire to be on our lawn.

Don’t even get me started on music. I firmly believe that just because I don’t like something doesn’t make it bad, but I don’t see the appeal of many songs that are extremely popular. I mean, you know, the few times I even know what’s popular. Are the kids still into Jessica Simpson?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Are the kids still into Jessica Simpson?

Bart Simpson's sister? I don't think the kids today are into the joys of sax.

 

[Bill Zebub]

You won this time, but the world became a little bit less fun and more restrictive.

That could be Harvey Weinstein's .sig file.

 

[Umbran]

That could be Harvey Weinstein's .sig file.

Mod Note:
The implication here is that... not allowing sexual assault is making the world a little less fun?

No. That's not funny, and not appropriate. Don't make sexual assault jokes on these boards.

 

[Bill Zebub]

That could be Harvey Weinstein's .sig file.

Apologies to everyone: I was horribly misunderstood here. I was trying to say (I guess too subtly) something very, very different. I saw a professional artist come in here and say, "Hey, these sorts of contests really make me feel disrespected and hard for me to have a professional career" and the response was "you are making the world less fun". I was trying to come up with an illustrative way of saying, "Dude, that's not ok."

Maybe next time I'll just say it that way.

 

[Fox Lee]

Yep, that's what I thought. You won this time, but the world became a little bit less fun and more restrictive.

This is the same complaint used by every person who gets salty when you ask them to stop using slurs or making gay jokes, so it may not be the winning zinger you think it is. Some restrictions are good.

At no point did I say that the majority of complainants weren’t artists. But it’s becoming more and more clear that a lot weren’t anything to do with d&d beyond.

Comparing amateurs - who don’t get paid… to scabs who do get paid. Is quite poor taste. Amateurs aren’t scabs. They’re nothing like scabs.

You’re talking about controlling the methods of production and the terms that are allowed to be offered. If this was a union and there was a strike there would need to be agreement by those affected. You wouldn’t just be able to impose the restrictions on everyone because you don’t like it.

I have no problem with artists making a living, I have no problem with them campaigning for people not to enter or working to improve terms for artists. I just thinks it’s unreasonable when people shut things down because it’s not to their taste. It’s not very pluralistic.

Amateurs are definitely not like scabs. However, a business offering spec work to amateurs in lieu of hiring professionals is like a business hiring scabs to avoid paying workers. The comparison is not between the individuals getting the work, it is between the actions of the businesses making the profit.

That's why nobody was on Twitter slamming artists who participate in these competitions; rather, we let the company know that we recognise spec work as exploitative. That's also why "campaigning for people not to enter" is not a useful idea; the individuals do not have the power in these scenarios. It would be like blaming a DoorDash driver for taking work from a garbage company that undermines minimum wage law and exploits poverty—the worker is not the problem. The power lies with the company, the faulty practice lies with the company, so that's who we criticise.

I just want to make sure I understand-
You don't use their product.
You don't play 5e.*
And this wasn't spec work (to be clear, and to avoid miscommunication like earlier in the thread, you mean "on spec" and not "to spec" since someone like me will usually use it to mean "to specification").

It is spec work though (on spec obviously; I don't know how anything I've said could be misinterpreted to the point that you need to post a massive wall of splaining at me). I disagree that anything you have said shows how this is materially different from spec work; that's not a valid point to argue here AFAIC.

It's clear in how you've listed my "credentials" that you don't consider my connection to DNDB valid, but that's not for you to decide. I've already made it clear why this community is important to me as a professional and as a fan. But even if I didn't, spec work from any well-funded company helps devalue the entire industry one tiny bit at a time, so we have a stake in this whether you like it or not.

But you are happy that you pressured D&D Beyond into canceling the competition, because you felt that it exploited artists.

I'm happy that DNDB listened to public opinion and decided that there are better ways to garner public goodwill than to use a fundamentally exploitative business practice, yes. Because that's all this is; a business tried to drum up some publicity with an art/design contest, copped some flak because said contest was recognised by artists/designers as dodgy, and ultimately pulled the plug because they judged the bad publicity to outweigh the good.

You seem to be under the impression that I care whether DNDB thinks they were actually wrong, or were "pressured" into withdrawing the competition, but as far as I'm concerned that's a nonsensical question. Businesses* are by design amoral money machines concerned with what's profitable, not with inherent values of "good" or "bad". Being "pressured"—whether by law, market forces, public opinion etc.—is the only reason they ever appear to act in anything that resembles moral fashion.

(*Save the very smallest businesses which can genuinely be spoken for, and answer to, maybe one or two people)

So, while it would be just swell if some individuals involved had a personal epiphany about why spec work is garbo, I'll settle for convincing the business that it would not be profitable to do the bad thing, just this once, even though we obviously know they're only covering their bottom (line). That—and the possibility that more community members (even non-professionals) will recognise and call out dodgy practices like spec work—is the best we can realistically hope for.