How competitions exploit creatives

Forum organization and occasional community-building.
Forum rules
Questions about Ren'Py should go in the Ren'Py Questions and Announcements forum.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
ComputerArt.Club
Veteran
Posts: 427
Joined: Mon May 22, 2017 8:12 am
Completed: Famous Fables, BoPoMoFo: Learn Chinese, Santa's workshop, Cat's Bath, Computer Art Club
Location: Taiwan
Contact:

How competitions exploit creatives

#1 Post by ComputerArt.Club »

Recently I saw a post here that reminded me of a worrying trend that we are seeing increasingly often. It is something that I have seen happen to others and I wanted to warn people about. Basically what happens is that rather than just commissioning one artist to do a job a company will hold a contest and get multiple artists to complete the same work... and only pay one of them. Worse still, often the sponsor of the competition may also claim perpetual, unlimited use of ALL contest entries and there is often neither compensation for contest participants nor is there credit given for their work.

The particular post that I saw here was regarding a competition that would require participants to submit 50,000 word visual novel scripts. Can you imagine, they intend to get multiple people to submit 50,000 word scripts but only pay one of them! That is exploitation and that is disrespectful and it is downright unfair. If you participate in such a competition you are only rewarding this type of behavior and you are cheapening your skills and disrespecting yourself. Please try to discourage such competitions, they can really undermine creatives. This type of behavior wouldn’t be accepted in most other areas (imagine asking ten pizza companies to deliver pizzas but only paying the company whose pizza looked the best! They wouldn’t stand for it, would they?!)

Like I said before, I’ve seen people get exploited by competitions like this in the past, especially for logo design, 3D and photography. I’ve also seen people lose competitions only for their work to be used without compensation or credit. Be warned. These competitions exploit creatives. I’ll also post some links to articles on this topic.


User avatar
Zelan
Lemma-Class Veteran
Posts: 2436
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:23 pm
Completed: The Dark
Projects: Cosplay Couple
Tumblr: evns
itch: Zelan
Discord: ltnkitsuragi#7082
Contact:

Re: How competitions exploit creatives

#3 Post by Zelan »

I see where you're coming from, but the writer of the post you're referring to specifically states that they would not claim ownership of the losing scripts. Say that I entered this contest and lost; I wouldn't get the prize and have my game published under their studio, but I now have a 50,000 word script that I can use however I want to.

It can be risky to share your work like that, but as long as you read and understand the contest's terms, I really don't think contests like these are as heinous as this post makes them out to be.

User avatar
KillerQueen
Regular
Posts: 36
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 3:51 am
Contact:

Re: How competitions exploit creatives

#4 Post by KillerQueen »

Zelan wrote: Sun Aug 05, 2018 7:45 pm I see where you're coming from, but the writer of the post you're referring to specifically states that they would not claim ownership of the losing scripts. Say that I entered this contest and lost; I wouldn't get the prize and have my game published under their studio, but I now have a 50,000 word script that I can use however I want to.

It can be risky to share your work like that, but as long as you read and understand the contest's terms, I really don't think contests like these are as heinous as this post makes them out to be.
As I understand it, the problem with that kind of spec work is that you're making it to fit a set of requirements, so while you're in fact left with something usable it might not be the kind of work that you'd have done otherwise. In this particular example, say they provide you with a template - you then have to edit the work again because the template is useless for everyone except them.
Image

User avatar
LateWhiteRabbit
Eileen-Class Veteran
Posts: 1867
Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:47 pm
Projects: The Space Between
Contact:

Re: How competitions exploit creatives

#5 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

ComputerArt.Club wrote: Sun Aug 05, 2018 7:33 pm If you participate in such a competition you are only rewarding this type of behavior and you are cheapening your skills and disrespecting yourself. Please try to discourage such competitions, they can really undermine creatives. This type of behavior wouldn’t be accepted in most other areas (imagine asking ten pizza companies to deliver pizzas but only paying the company whose pizza looked the best! They wouldn’t stand for it, would they?!)
I agree. This is called "spec" work in the creative industry and is frowned upon.
Zelan wrote: Sun Aug 05, 2018 7:45 pm I see where you're coming from, but the writer of the post you're referring to specifically states that they would not claim ownership of the losing scripts. Say that I entered this contest and lost; I wouldn't get the prize and have my game published under their studio, but I now have a 50,000 word script that I can use however I want to.

It can be risky to share your work like that, but as long as you read and understand the contest's terms, I really don't think contests like these are as heinous as this post makes them out to be.
That's a really long script for a "contest". It's the equivalent of a 160-180 page novel, which is the same as a genre or pulp novel. It would be different (though still unethical IMHO) if they were asking for script treatments. But it seems like they are wanting the whole thing - multiple routes, endings, stats, etc. Basically, they are wanting get the hard part done for them and then just put the thing together with art. I'm not knocking the difficultly of producing good art and the quantity of it needed for a game (as I'm an artist myself), but mapping out and scripting the entire game is definitely the hardest part of the project.

A contest like this let's them cherry-pick the best entry. It is nice they are offering 2500 for the writer - but that is HALF what a beginner freelance writer would make per word (normally $0.10 a word on the cheaper side), and that is for prose - not planning and scripting a multipath narrative with interactive choices. And I've made known before here what I think of royalty-based payment schemes. I'm not saying the contest creators have malicious intent - but they aren't offering as great a deal as they may think they are.

I would encourage everyone to read the link I posted above and decide for themselves if they wish to participate.

SilverSea
Newbie
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2018 10:27 am

Re: How competitions exploit creatives

#6 Post by SilverSea »

I've heard of this sort of thing before in other art related areas. The ethical way to do it would be to compensate each artist that completes the entire desired artwork/story/etc and only claim ownership for the winning art(for which extra money would be recieved.)

The other way would be to pay at least three-five times as much money to the winner as one would usually pay for that art. So say that type of art usually costs $1,000 the reward should at minimum be $5,000. Then it's more like buying a lottery ticket except there's skill involved. (So the contest referenced above should really be offering to pay at least $15,000 to whoever wins assuming that 10 cents per word is good compensation.)

But that would make this sort of thing a lot less profitable and practical then just paying an artist. As things stand now I think people should avoid such competitions except to practice art skills that are not yet good enough to be valuable. It's something that should be done for experience by artists who really need the experience.

User avatar
theforgot3n1
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2016 8:47 am
Github: TheForgot3n1
Skype: saffekaffe
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: How competitions exploit creatives

#7 Post by theforgot3n1 »

It's the opposite. The writers should be happy that they're given the opportunity to juxtapose their name with a company and its visual novel production. That's a golden opportunity to elevate yourself from complete obscurity to on the roll to accomplish your dreams.

The fact is, if there wasn't such a drought of demand compared to the lakes of supply of writers then this type of thing wouldn't work. If an IT-company said "Here's a competition for writing a fully functioning software program for us!" that would not even be nearly as popular a contest, because software programmers are in such high demand anyway and can find jobs that pay them guaranteed. The same is not true for writers. A lot of people want to be writers, and not every writer will be successful, and that's why writing for free (which the majority of writers do anyway, for practice if nothing else) and taking a shot at having it be taken in by a company is a great opportunity. Which is precisely why writers take the opportunity in the first place.

To understand why this is a phenomenon you have to understand supply and demand. Comparing to other areas doesn't work because their respective supply and demand is completely different. For a pizza place to send you their pizza it costs them money and time. Furthermore, there isn't a myriad of pizza places waiting to make themselves known because pizza places are already known, that's why they own the pizza place.

This doesn't mean that a writer's or artist's competition can't be done in a nice or less nice way. Scamming people by running away with their finished product is terrible. Promising compensation but then reneging is too. But as long as the contest is honest, straightforward and doesn't go back on anything, castigating them for giving you that opportunity is a mistake.

Disclaimer: I read the no-spec stuff and would just like to add that it is indeed very important to be cognizant of what kind of company you're doing free stuff for. Only do stuff for companies you believe are honest. That's a great way to sift through and slowly kill bad companies.
"I don't mind losing to someone, but I won't be beaten by myself." - Emiya Shirou

User avatar
Selidor
Regular
Posts: 72
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2016 12:42 pm
Tumblr: gateofselidor
Location: Sussex, UK
Contact:

Re: How competitions exploit creatives

#8 Post by Selidor »

theforgot3n1 wrote: Sat Aug 18, 2018 6:22 am It's the opposite. The writers should be happy that they're given the opportunity to juxtapose their name with a company and its visual novel production. That's a golden opportunity to elevate yourself from complete obscurity to on the roll to accomplish your dreams.
If a company is prestigious enough that you can actually get worthwhile exposure from working for them, then they will be successful enough to pay you a fair price for your work. Nobody should feel they have to be grateful to be giving their time and skill to somebody else for free.

The supply and demand argument doesn't hold water, because it assumes the only option for a writer who hasn't found paid work is to work for someone else for free. Instead, you can work on your own personal projects, which allows you to show off your skills to people without devaluing yourself and fellow writers. For writers who lack other game dev skills, there are simple narrative game tools like Twine or Inky available.

People are free to do unpaid work or enter contests, exploitative or otherwise, if they choose to, but it should never be held up as an ideal (or even good) path to getting paid work.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users