Commissioning mods?

[esselfortium]

1 hour ago, ReX said:

I've sometimes wondered how much a modder's efforts are worth.

 

1. Clearly, a professional mapper is being paid at a far higher rate than the minimum wage (around US$ 10, depending on where you live in the US). But we're not talking about a professional mapper being commissioned on these forums. So the rate for a commissioned job should probably be lower than the professional rate.

2. Many hobbyist mappers have steady jobs with labor rates far higher than the minimum wage (and, quite possibly, higher than that of professional mappers). So should the commissioned job be paid at the modder's wage rate? Probably not, given that the task involves a hobby, not a "job".

3. DooM mods are not the only game (pun entirely intended) in town. Many professionally-made games can be had for US$ 40; why would one pay for a commissioned job at the modder's labor rate, and possibly pay hundreds of dollars, when one can get (arguably) equally enjoyable games for a fraction of the price? [But see Item 4, below.]

4. It's possible that someone is willing to pay for a mod that can be considered a "collector's item". Imagine if someone paid Dario Casali for a one-of-a-kind map he created before he went on to become a fixture at Valve. That would probably be worth more than the US$ 40 for a commercial game.

5. Using the Patreon system, many people can pay small amounts that, cumulatively, make it worthwhile for a modder.

6. Finally, I circle back to what I said in my earlier post - the market will dictate what one would be willing to pay. If people continue to produce high-quality mods and release them for free, modders that want to charge for their work will be hard-pressed to compete and make money.

If you're wanting someone to spend many hours creating something to your exacting specifications, you have to be willing to pay them fairly for their work. If you're even considering them for the job, they've presumably already proven themselves in your eyes to be capable and desirable. It's the same when commissioning artwork or music or anything else.

 

If you would rather pay $40 for a AAA game or $7 for an album on BandCamp, then do that, but that's a very different ballgame compared with personally funding the creation of something you want. Producing that game certainly cost them far, far more than $40 in labor alone.

 

And Dragonfly's point is worth repeating yet again: once money enters the equation, it is no longer a side hobby to do for fun. The person being commissioned is obligated to follow your requests as best as they can, to a degree that isn't comparable to, say, making a map for a community project. You're paying them for this. You're their boss for this project.

 

I would expect to pay at least $200 for the creation of a single small-to-medium sized level, and even that's probably lowballing it. If I wanted a Vela Pax magnum opus built just for me, I would expect to likely pay quite a bit more.

[yakfak]

if yer a creator don't let yourself be underpaid. it sucks cos money is terrible and taboo to a lot of people but if yr base level of pay doesn't get taken seriously, it'll be eroded until you're at the level of a pub musician who moves all their own stuff in their own van, performs for three hours and then gets paid a pint of bitter and another gig

 

folks who don't respect the creative process will assume what you do is easy and replaceable

[ukiro]

My texture WAD currently has maybe 250 distinct materials (not counting recoloring or pattern variations) for close to 1500 textures in total. I expect on average I spend 2-3 hours per material from start to all being finished with all pattern variations, chopped up into patches, and added to the WAD. (Sometimes this number is 20 minutes, sometimes it's 20 hours.)

 

This does not account for gathering materials (when I'm in a new city I often spend hours walking around taking pictures of stuff I can use) or for when I decide a texture isn't up to the quality I want so I re-do it from scratch (this happens quite often lately). So a lowball estimate is still that I've put 600-700 hours worth of work into the WAD as it stands now. If someone wanted to pay me $15 an hour for that, almost $10k, I'd still say no. To give a buyer/financier exclusive rights to it, they'd have to pay way more. $50 per hour, a reasonable freelance rate, I'd consider.

[Ermin]

the figures people are coming up with is hilarious when you consider the fact i offered to design a entire stage with enemies and a boss battle for solace dreams for a minimum of $1... yes 1 fucking dollar, thats NOT per hour by the way. to bad that offer is up lol #tolate

Heres the original post for proof
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/93568-☯-solace-dreams-☯-version-163/?do=findComment&comment=1759334

[Linguica]

4 minutes ago, Ermi said:

 

the figures people are coming up with is hilarious when you consider the fact i offered to design a entire stage with enemies and a boss battle for solace dreams for a minimum of $1... yes 1 fucking dollar, thats NOT per hour by the way.

 

I'm sorry you consider your time and energy to be almost worthless, but that doesn't mean everyone must.

[Ermin]

1 minute ago, Linguica said:

 

I'm sorry you consider your time and energy to be almost worthless, but that doesn't mean everyone must.

i have all the time in the world, earning a single dollar for something i enjoy doing is better than nothing atall. And at the end of the day, if the mod is good then the reputation earned from it is more worth it than the asking prize. But whats more amusing is no one considered paying $1 for me to do a weeks work lol wow this community ...

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

Solace Dreams by itself would be worth way more than that. Since the whole game is made of voxels, pretty much...

Let's hear some figures on its monetary worth!

[Nine Inch Heels]

3 hours ago, ReX said:

1. Clearly, a professional mapper is being paid at a far higher rate than the minimum wage (around US$ 10, depending on where you live in the US). But we're not talking about a professional mapper being commissioned on these forums. So the rate for a commissioned job should probably be lower than the professional rate.

I wonder what constitutes being a professional mapper though. We can consider ourselves fortunate that people like ribbiks, essel, Dobu, et al have been around for as long they were. The maps these guys make nowadays are way beyond iWAD standards, regardless of mapping format. Commissioned or not, you hire any of them to build something for you, and I'd argue that paying them in a such a manner that -if they were to live off of mapping alone- they could actually live a decent life and sustain themselves properly without constant risks of burnouts. That's what doing something professionally means, and I don't see how you couldn't consider ribbiks, for example, a professional mapper when all you need to do is to take a look at SunLust to realize that you get high quality.

3 hours ago, ReX said:

2. Many hobbyist mappers have steady jobs with labor rates far higher than the minimum wage (and, quite possibly, higher than that of professional mappers). So should the commissioned job be paid at the modder's wage rate? Probably not, given that the task involves a hobby, not a "job".

Speaking for myself, I am what would be considered self employed in most countries, even though that term isn't 100% accurate it fits for the most part. If I were to do less of my actual work so I could get a map done that somebody wants made, I don't see why I shouldn't expect the same pay for the same amount of time spent. Obviously I'm not a particularly "acclaimed mapper™", but the point still stands: I know what an hour of my labour is worth on average, and I don't see why I, or anybody else, should settle for less at the bottom line.

3 hours ago, ReX said:

3. DooM mods are not the only game (pun entirely intended) in town. Many professionally-made games can be had for US$ 40; why would one pay for a commissioned job at the modder's labor rate, and possibly pay hundreds of dollars, when one can get (arguably) equally enjoyable games for a fraction of the price? [But see Item 4, below.]

Simple, it's for the same reason why some people pay a lot more for any other custom made product. I own several corsets, for example, 2 of which are custom made by a professional corseteur. The "normal" ones go for somewhere between 120 and 250 $ a piece, the custom made ones cost me more than 500$ a piece. Worth the money? Absolutely, yes.

 

3 hours ago, ReX said:

4. It's possible that someone is willing to pay for a mod that can be considered a "collector's item". Imagine if someone paid Dario Casali for a one-of-a-kind map he created before he went on to become a fixture at Valve. That would probably be worth more than the US$ 40 for a commercial game.

What is "worth it" is always subject to the eye of the beholder.

 

3 hours ago, ReX said:

5. Using the Patreon system, many people can pay small amounts that, cumulatively, make it worthwhile for a modder

Unless you are extremely popular, and actually mod a game that is, for lack of a better term, "less niche" than doom, worthwhile isn't a state that is gonna be easy to achieve. Let's look at Miasma, that map took several months to build and playtest (a bit over 3 months, I think it was). Let's just assume 2 hours per day have been spent on that map at least. How much does it cost to have someone work for 6 hours per day for an entire month where you live? And what amount of money would you consider "worthwhile" with that in mind?

 

3 hours ago, ReX said:

6. Finally, I circle back to what I said in my earlier post - the market will dictate what one would be willing to pay. If people continue to produce high-quality mods and release them for free, modders that want to charge for their work will be hard-pressed to compete and make money.

That's kinda missing the point, IMO. People have always been willing to pay extra for something they want tailored towards them.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Nine Inch Heels

[dew]

29 minutes ago, Ermi said:

the figures people are coming up with is hilarious when you consider the fact i offered to design a entire stage with enemies and a boss battle for solace dreams for a minimum of $1... yes 1 fucking dollar, thats NOT per hour by the way. to bad that offer is up lol #tolate

I would like to point out that you're talking about patreon begging for your own project with your own direction, which is a completely different topic than commissioned work.

[baja blast rd.]

20 minutes ago, Ermi said:

But whats more amusing is no one considered paying $1 for me to do a weeks work lol wow this community ...

 

Although 'paying $1' doesn't seem like a difficult thing by any stretch -- most people pay $1 for something on a regular basis -- it happening here would have required a confluence of several conditions:

 

- Someone has an active Paypal account. 

- Someone reads all the posts in your thread, allowing them to notice the post where you said that.

- Someone cares enough to bother.

 

Each step is a gate that reduces a significant % of prospective donators. The original sloppy presentation of your thread surely turned lots of people off never to return. It's also noteworthy that even with the polished OP, admittedly a lot better than the scattered words and low-context 100mb download that was originally there, there's still nothing to grab me -- no screenshots of in-game action. I have to scroll all the way down to the video review, past the walls of information that is irrelevant without knowing what the game looks like, and that's only if I still care to do research at that point.

 

There's a lot of other things going on around here. There's a lot of excellent stuff released for free. Given that, and the (still) poor OP, I would have been quite shocked if it turned out that anyone did pay $1.   

Edited May 16, 2018 by rdwpa

[Ermin]

7 minutes ago, dew said:

I would like to point out that you're talking about patreon begging for your own project with your own direction, which is a completely different topic than commissioned work.

you have a point.
in that case, no one here in there right mind will take the time to make a mod for them, period. this is a purist culture were everything here is about sharing and having fun (doom related). i dont see commissioned mods/wads ever working here on this forum at least.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Ermi

[Vorpal]

For a realworld anecdote/comparison, like 15 years ago I made over 3000 usd making trash vanilla maps for a sketchy company who themselves had no budget (and this was well after doom was irrelevant, well after quake3 even).

 

19 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

What's not okay for me personally is gating content behind a paywall straight away, as was the case SGT_MARKIV a good while back.

 

So don't buy it? The phrasing here implies your rights to free consumption of entertainment are being violated by someone wanting money for their time.

[Nine Inch Heels]

Just now, Vorpal said:

So don't buy it? The phrasing here implies your rights to free consumption of entertainment are being violated by someone wanting money for their time

The consequence of mark_IV's paywall was that some corporate overhead chimed in and said "you can't sell mods" the way MARK_IV did, because he still used id's IP. Shit like that threatens modding, just fyi. That said, your point is invalid.

[Tristan]

If I were paid £1 for every piece of music I was asked to make in the last year, I'd have made £6.40 by now. Can't see a freelancer lasting very long if that's what they're getting paid.

[dew]

2 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

For a realworld anecdote/comparison, like 15 years ago I made over 3000 usd making trash vanilla maps for a sketchy company who themselves had no budget (and this was well after doom was irrelevant, well after quake3 even). 

Oh shit, this whole time I had no idea the esteemed community darling bsp was a disgusting sellout living the good life of a doom mapping professional!

[esselfortium]

2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

The consequence of mark_IV's paywall was that some corporate overhead chimed in and said "you can't sell mods" the way MARK_IV did, because he still used id's IP. Shit like that threatens modding, just fyi. That said, your point is invalid.

Mark was definitely doing a number of things to put himself on legally shaky ground while also drawing a lot of attention to himself, but I don't agree that Vorpal's point is invalid. Setting aside any licensing technicalities and assuming they legitimately own everything they're selling, if someone wants to put their creation behind a paywall, whatever that creation may be, that's their work and it's their right to decide how to distribute it.

[Ermin]

3 minutes ago, Eris Falling said:

If I were paid £1 for every piece of music I was asked to make in the last year, I'd have made £6.40 by now. Can't see a freelancer lasting very long if that's what they're getting paid.

But your not looking at the bigger picture, at the end of the day its about recognition. I agree you cant live off of something as petty as a single $/£, but whos quitting there day job for doom modding lol And if your music is great and your getting regular customers BECAUSE its cheap then naturally your going to be noticed by everyone, and if your really lucky you might even be scouted by these AAA companies who are after new blood. Doesn't that make sense?

[Nine Inch Heels]

3 minutes ago, Ermi said:

But your not looking at the bigger picture, at the end of the day its about recognition

At the end of the day it's about making ends meet. Recognition buys you nothing, at all.

 

3 minutes ago, Ermi said:

if your really lucky you might even be scouted by these AAA companies who are after new blood.

You mean the same triple AAA companies who have hundreds of coders, graphic artists, and musicians applying each year?

Edited May 16, 2018 by Nine Inch Heels

[Arctangent]

3 minutes ago, Ermi said:

But your not looking at the bigger picture, at the end of the day its about recognition. I agree you cant live off of something as petty as a single $/£, but whos quitting there day job for doom modding lol And if your music is great and your getting regular customers BECAUSE its cheap then naturally your going to be noticed by everyone, and if your really lucky you might even be scouted by these AAA companies who are after new blood. Doesn't that make sense?

I don't think being known by how easy it is to exploit you makes any sort of sense.

 

also "paying with recognition" is something that morally obliges everyone else to point and laugh at you, then run you out of town

[Ermin]

3 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

At the end of the day it's about making ends meet. Recognition buys you nothing, at all.

Thats why you dont quit your day job...

3 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

You mean the same triple AAA companies who have hundreds of coders, graphic artists, and musicians applying each year?

yeah, the same companies that cant put together a ham sandwich and are sucking the gaming industry dry with DLC and gambling schemes. Looking at you EA!
It doesnt have to be AAA studios, but a band of people who need and are willing to pay for said "talent". 

[Nine Inch Heels]

2 minutes ago, Ermi said:

Thats why you dont quit your day job...

If your logic is that I shouldn't ask more than a dollar for a map that I make just because I have a day job, then I still disagree. Matter of fact: Since I have a job, my spare time is proportionately more valuable, not less.

3 minutes ago, Ermi said:

yeah, the same companies that cant put together a ham sandwich and are sucking the gaming industry dry with DLC and gambling schemes. Looking at you EA!
It doesnt have to be AAA studios, but a band of people who need and are willing to pay for said "talent".

Might as well apply then instead of waiting on the freak chance of "getting found". Not sure how to phrase it any better but: The world isn't waiting for you. You want to make money with building maps/levels or writing music for games? You put together an application and send it. Nobody is sifting through millions upon millions of sites when they always have someone knocking at their door.

[Ermin]

Just now, Nine Inch Heels said:

...

Let me break it down differently for you.
who are you going to pay to have a map made for you?
1. A professional who is charging in the hundreds.
2. someone who is prepared to do it for free OR for a small sum, at roughly the same quality. 
(im not implying im a professional by any means, im jsut throwing you a scenario.)

[Arctangent]

7 minutes ago, Ermi said:

Let me break it down differently for you.
who are you going to pay to have a map made for you?
1. A professional who is charging in the hundreds.
2. A mythical unicorn only tameable by a virgin maiden of pure heart.

i think the choice is pretty clear ain't it

[Nine Inch Heels]

8 minutes ago, Ermi said:

Let me break it down differently for you.

I don't pay anybody to make a map for me, I make maps for myself, just so we got that out the way.

 

Moving on... If I want anything made a certain way, I hire a professional, not someone who doesn't even know what their time is worth.

[Ermin]

4 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I don't pay anybody to make a map for me, I make maps for myself, just so we got that out the way.

 

Moving on... If I want anything made a certain way, I hire a professional, not someone who doesn't even know what their time is worth.

fairenough.

I just realised that the scenario i presented to you is literally the entire state the UK has been in for ages, immigrants working for nothing doing the same qualityof work than the brits can do fully paid, which is why there jobless lol

Edited May 16, 2018 by Ermi

[esselfortium]

22 minutes ago, Ermi said:

fairenough.

I just realised that the scenario i presented to you is literally the entire state the UK has been in for ages, immigrants working for nothing doing the same qualityof work than the brits can do fully paid, which is why there jobless lol

hmm, no

[esselfortium]

28 minutes ago, Ermi said:

fairenough.

I just realised that the scenario i presented to you is literally the entire state the UK has been in for ages, immigrants working for nothing doing the same qualityof work than the brits can do fully paid, which is why there jobless lol

1) So the person offering his work for 1 dollar and smugly boasting of his superiority to anyone who expects pay for their work is now complaining about people being willing to work for cheap. Okay.

 

2) People who absolutely need a job to live and can't get something better are going to work for whatever shit wage they're offered. It's ludicrous to blame the poor for low wages when they're faced with the "choice" between poverty from a badly-paying exploitative job and the complete destitution of unemployment.

 

3) I cannot even believe that you're actually going there in this thread.

[Tristan]

Immigrants in the UK over the age of 25 have to be paid (by law) more than I - under the age of 25 -  have to be paid by law. (not because they're foreign, I hasten to add)

Edited May 16, 2018 by Eris Falling

[leodoom85]

>paid mods

>inmigrants

 

Seems legit....

@ essel, you're 100% right.

[Jayextee]

I'm confused. Why has the topic shifted to immigunts?

Anywho, on-actual-topic: I was paid $50 to draw a titlepic for a WAD a few months ago. Because my time as an artist is worth $25 per hour^*, and anybody of any reasonable amount of ability in their field should be of the same attitude.

 

Only two things matter IMO: whether the client wants to pay for the work, and whether the person being commission deems the price worth the time and labour.

 

^{*; Even though, because the client and I are good Twitter-friends, I offered to do it as a freebie at first; but this is beside the point that I was paid adequately for work.}