While I think there is some truth in what you are saying, it’s too one sided again and shows only one side of the core issue.
Paid creators and their private communities do pull some people away from the forum. This is something that can not be denied. If a creator has a Patreon, Discord, early access, votes, suggestions, events and most of their supporters are there, then of course the interaction happens mostly within this community. It does have an effect on the forum.
Framing paid creators as the main cause of the problem, is not fair. I think creators moving away from releasing free content is more of a symptom than the origin of the issue.
Paid creators did not start moving to paid content release, because everything was great and they randomly decided to abandon the forum. Most started releasing paid content, because posting free content had already become demotivating - that was the cause for me. You spend hours, sometimes a lot of hours, creating something, post it for free and then very often there is little to no reaction. Your thread gets buried fast. No comment, no feedback, no discussion, few likes, few views, sometimes not even a simple thank you. After it a while, you become demotivated and burn out.
And at that point, releasing paid content becomes much more attractive. Not only because of the money, but because it gives you a feeling that your work is valued. You get a direct feedback loop. People support you, subscribe to you, often stay subscribed for a very long time, they interact more, people vote and suggest, commend and they show actual interest. That is very motivating. Motivation is key. All my members motivate me to keep going and to improve every month. The public forum often to provide any kind of motivation.
Yes, relationship changes when scripts become a product, I agree with that. But the relationship was already changing before that. Many users were just consuming our free work and didn’t give much back in terms of interaction or appreciation. As I said, that was not a problem in the beginning and become more noticeable over time, at least for me.
I don’t think either paid creators or free users are the problem. It’s like a cycle.
Free posts get little interaction → creators feel unappreciated → creators move to paid spaces → public forum gets quieter → free posting feels even less rewarding → more creators move away.
So I would say paid creators are paid of the cycle, but I don’t agree that they created it all alone.
I also agree that tipping free creators is a good thing. If people want to see more free content, then supporting the free creators is probably one of the best things they can do. And support does not have to be money. A friendly comment, a thank you, feedback, recommendations, discussion or just engaging with the creator in any way, can already make a huge difference.
At the end of the day I think if a community wants free content, we need a stronger and better feedback culture. Free content does not pay with money, so it has to “pay” in another way. And that is interaction, appreciation, visibility and motivation.
Paid creators can help by still releasing free content every now and then and many already do. But maintaining a healthy community culture should not be placed only on creators. That is a responsibility that belongs to the whole community.
We should move away from the utopian believe we can manually quality control scripts. That is not possible.
I speak of experience here, because I tested / rated tons of scripts for our events. It’s exhausting and very very time consuming. As you said, there are ~ 50 script releases each day. No way this can be quality checked by hand. Way too time consuming.
I repeat what I said in an earlier post.
The whole quality discussion is in my opinion meaningless and unnecessary. Yes, there might be paid scripts with low effort and low quality. But they will die out by itself. Quality always wins. People sub to creators who offer high quality content. So quality control is something that will be handled on it’s on. It has always been the case and will always be the case. Good games sell well, bad games don’t sell well.
Creators should show an example of their script in a preview, it’s really easy to do. With that alone, you can see if a script has a good quality or not. Also checking their free content is the major source of quality control. No free scripts → red flag. If I would be a consumer, I wouldn’t buy. If there are free scripts I can test and I like the quality, I consider buying.
Now to the whole token / exchange system.
Personally I find it very uninteresting. I don’t care for other people scripts. Not because they are bad, but because I already have my own library. I am not interesting in exchanging paid scripts with other creators at all. Maybe this is something for some, great. But I feel like it gets treated as an optimal solution, which in my opinion, it’s not.
It’s a nice option for some. It could even get it’s own section, where people exchange scripts with each other. But a general solution? Nah.
A script exchange section on the forum actually sounds like a great idea and I’d love to see that happen. Low overhead, no payment processors to deal with, and it creates exactly the kind of direct community interaction between scripters that everyone’s been saying is missing, while encouraging users to try their hand at making their own scripts.
Does not have to permanent right away. It can be tested for like a month or two. Then we can see how it gets accepted, how much interested there is and if that feature gets used.
If yes, keep it. If not, it was worth testing out.
But it’s also important to keep in mind that it could separate the community more. Then we have free, paid and exchange scripts. Danger is, we get even less free scripts, because people rather want to exchange scripts with other creators. Completely free users could suffer in the end here.
So the decision has to be carefully made. What also could be done is, a creator shares a script, he wants another script in exchange. Once he received a script, the script, becomes free to everyone. This rule could help preventing content getting more gated.
The only problem with a community-based rating system is that it needs to account for bad-faith participants.
To assume there aren’t some who will seek to reduce others’ ratings or boost their own through fraudulent/shill means, is naive. Especially when there is money involved - it’s a known issue nearly everywhere that involves ratings and money, and even in places where there is no financial effect. Milovana for example - there have been issues with others “burying” teases with poor ratings, to boost their own, and there’s no money at stake! Porn/adult sites have these issues because there is a subset of internet users who are immature and lack any semblance of social skills or decide to eschew any courtesy “because internet” and anonymity allows them to.
Any rating system or ranking system - esp when money/transactions are involved - needs to be able to account for 1/3 of the site users being absolute shitheads.
Yeah that’s kinda where i was getting at in a way, 100% agree
For you to take that conclusion out of it… that’s a bit disingenuous isn’t it? I’m asking EVERYONE, non scripters and scripters (paid, free or both) about their opinion on releasing content for that end.
Yeah that’s true, something to help here would be, like i mentioned before, a way to check if the user bought the script / subscription, with the Patreon API that sounds doable but having to account for other methods like Payhip and other platforms would end up being the harder part I’m assuming.
But having a bit of a flawed rating system is should be a bit better than having nothing at all, at least as a starting point.
No, the paid scripters dont get a vote on this, they get paid already and use the ES platform to sell their scripts for free. which is OK and not to be changed. The main problem is to get the paywall down for free scripters so they get motivated to share their scripts. It just does not make sense to script a 40 minutes VR for 10 hours, spoil the movie for yourself and then having to pay 5 bucks for another one you like on top but paid scripters downloading yours “seldomly”
It is possible of course, force videos that shows live action gauge and script to allow release like videolength is forced or tags. At least two sections one containing HJ/BJ that needs skill, each at least 15 seconds long (length can be debated just not too short) . Thats enough quality control for all of us. Some scripters already do that to show quality.
I am quite sure @k00gar would automate an export of two 15sec WebM Vp9 for Fungen of two quality marker bookmarks if we ask him nicely. He would place those bookmarks in all scripts and you would only have to drag them to the position you want to export at. He would even export them automatically with the script as preference, so scripters would only have to drag and drop in the release thread.
Quality check solved, no staff and worktime needed, quality visible without file or script DL.
And why is that? are you saying that scripters that have paid options shouldn’t be able to use this if it is implemented? because if so, i disagree even more with it, there are multiple scripters out there that most of the work they do is free scripts, not letting them use this new feature because they have a very small percentage of their work as paid scripts would be just absurd.
And even if they don’t participate in this, they should have a word on the matter like anyone else, as they are the ones that will be giving out their work.
I seriously don’t get why you think the scripters that provide paid options shouldn’t weigh in on such a big change in the community if applied
Come on man, this makes no sense, it’s the same as complaining that you should get a free meal in a restaurant because the last meal you ate, you cooked it yourself.
having small sections of the script is something that was already brought up before and i agree that it definitely helps to get a small idea on the individual quality of a script, I’m totally up for that even thought it’s not the “end all be all” solution but it’s a very good 1st step.
The workload there of checking if new posts have those small sections posted for preview purposes is much more manageable.
It should be good to point out though, that it’s not a perfect solution, it can easily be faked by bad actors, like just manually scripting those small previews, and keeping the rest of the 40 min video as AI slop, but i think it would be enough friction, at least at the start, to start solving the problem.
No, we are not in a restaurant and this is not about paid scripting.
If @k00gar makes exporting clips an ease, with big well visible action gauge and timeline, then be sure not only the scripter will post clips about the fake script. Will take a second to make the clip and another ten to upload. There is no way bad quality will stay hidden.
I take it back, we are in a restaurant and its even free
Long time observer first time posted. Apologies if this has already been mentioned but I akin this to art in general.
There will be people that do it for the love of the art. Other business savvy, and good at what they supply. And g90AK and other GOATs that somehow found all the infinity stones that are loved by the community.
Shitty scripts will always exists. S+ scripts will always exist. As a community grows, we’ll find issues like an overabundance of trash and things that we could’ve probably lived without experiencing.
Paid scripts are fine in my book. Free scripts are also fine. It’s a fight against free market. Luckily in here we aren’t beholden to committee or special interest groups.. Well aside from the end product.
This is all to say. If what we are worried about is garbage and trash due to bots ( I use that term for people that post without intention or thought of consequence). We should have some level of safeguard against that. There are also people on this forum who I believe script without good hardware or skillset (yet) where they lit can’t do the half frames lunge on an intense scene. You also can’t expect someone to do a 30min script for free forever.
I second @JuliaBlack’s recommendation spoken earlier hear in the thread. Paid user can review. The only thing I’d augment is mod check. As with any growing community, the more staff something takes, the more work it is for the forum head/heads to support that. I know they want what’s best for this place. But I always remember that adult swim short “TOO MANY COOKS!”
I’d say, for vetted users and longtime users to get a tag on a post that automatically lets us know this will at least be decent.
If you start to see plagerized or flat out fake tags that are in the spirit of mirroring the #legit tag, well then I think you know what you need to do head/heads. Flag it the user and keep tabs in the ways you know how.
Long story longer, I do love this place and the fact that were having just discussion on this past time is awesome. Shows that we want this place to be better even if we don’t all agree, we can still talk openly… Kinda like a forum..
Without the site even having asked nicely @K00gar built the clip with gauge and timeline export into the upcoming Fungen 2.3.0 beta. So enforcing quality demonstration is now easier than ever. No ES staff time needed. Lets check it out once its out.
So this comment i made calling it suspect is 100% in reference to the “IP legality” aspect of how this community works. As someone with a long history in game modding, custom content, etc. A very common pitfall occurs when money gets involved in a hobby itself that is very adjacent to piracy. For example if i buy a script, its not uncommon for me to get sent a pixeldrain link that includes the actual video as well in question. Even when its linked to another site, planty of common sites like r34video do not ask for IP holding verification at all for the content they run, instead operating on the sort of “open grey market” sex works communities have where stolen content rarely gets reported. In the case of getting commissioned by the author who made the video, and have permission to sell your link and maybe even share the video, thats 100% ok i have zero issue with that.
I just simply worry that if we do get money too involved (particularly as an official thing), we immediately have to comply with a whole other set of rules. Legally speaking, this site works off the “paraphernalia” excuse. “This isn’t my joint holder, its for my unfiltered tobacco” kinda thing. Because all it shares is little json file scripts, and people are handling the finances off site, its all fine. But if ES started collecting money and became a “marketplace” rather than an indirect Forum, then things like loli , animated-bestiality , rape , and all the content that its very obvious that the scripter themselves didn’t get permission to benefit from will have to go, less the site get shut down or stuck in payment processor debanking hell.
so no direct shade to you or anyone, just poorly worded legal worries.
So i am well aware of the time and effort the task takes. I have a few personal scripts mostly for stuff that’s modified for my Keon, or for content that I know i can’t share such as videos that are currently still paywall locked by the creator who is very aggressive at going after reuploads. I can’t in good consiousness say “Hey here is my script, go pay for this other person’s content as well.” In fact the no-free-links tag exists because from the first video i found clicking it here , I would need to both pay for the script and the video itself. While i did mention the risk of sharing the content (I’m not anti distribution mind you just a realist of what happens when money gets involved), this is a script that i will never in my life get to sample simply because of the costs to do so.
Actually kind related, I have found that a lot of the more problematic things exist outside the animated content bubble. I mostly gravitate towards hentai and VR conversions, but when i have tracked the real content stuff, it seems that has the most amount of AI scripts, low quality content, or paywalls or even the double paywall i mentioned above. That’s just my cursory observation of a type of content i normally don’t engage with but it seems you do, maybe we have different relationships to our media and porn in some way because of it, anyways.
In my experience i don’t see it personally. As i mentioned above, i focus mostly on hentai and even fringes within the overall 2D space. To me i see “real porn” as incredibly generic and replaceable which makes my desire to interact with a script or even get one pretty much non existent. On the flipside, it does seem to be the most active category of content, and i think some of your concerns are similar to content creation online in general. Every Youtuber i have worked with in my dayjob has told me the exact same thing, and ive noticed the ones who want to ensure their efforts are rewarded are the ones who typically never take off, while the ones genuinely making just to make are the ones who eventually do take off. I think from a “personality of the artist perspective”, its kind of reflected here too. Creators focusing on specific niches purely to share the custom script they made on their own are going to later find more success overall due to the fact that, at least for a good part of the time, they are still just making for the sake of making, and getting paid is psychologically a side thing.
Like legitimatly, this mentality of the hobby is the kind of mentality you find when you dig into the biographies of like 90% of big names in online content from Indie game devs, to youtubers. Sure it likely will shift later on, and the fans will notice, but the ones who take off the most are the ones who do what they do expecting never to take off until they have gotten good enough to take off.
My little tangent about this ties into here:
This is legitimately the kind of attitude that fosters positive communities that can sustain themselves and little markets supporting people without being over consumed. You kinda mentioned it yourself here:
As mentioned later, they moved onto SLR. So implicitly what im reading from your words is that the value of the community you build from your scripts is nice, but the potential to get into the industry is still very much a weight you have to deal with. Not to do some psychoanalysis BS but yeah i do think that’s a very big concern and again, part of why i think the community is hurting especially when regards too paid scripts.
This is a very gross misconstruction of the point i was trying to make. The point wasn’t that getting paid to make scripts is bad, it was the mentality of WHY you are both making and charging that can outright kill communities. The tangent about Skyrim modding was there to show a topic (I assume) less people have a strong emotional attachment to, wherein people who made content with the expectation of getting paid eventually cultivated a toxic community that ended up hurting the hobby and field for everyone, culminating in people racing to make “Just good enough to be paid for” content that was there to try and suckle up to Bethesda’s Creation Club scheme. To make the parallels abundantly clear this time, how many people making scripts (free or paid) in any of the real porn categories are doing so because of a genuine interest, and how many are doing so with the hope they can be like Qweer and finally “make it” and start landing the comparatively “big bucks”.
I would go on about my anti-AI stances and how a lot to a majority of people using AI for jobs are kinda in that mentality but i scrapped it. In short though, if too much of the content in a content based community feels like it only exists are portfolio building, it starts to turn the community from a community of people with a shared interest into one of competing laborers who are treating the task not as a hobby but of work. Each vying to either get to move up by some institution above them, or to stand tall on the fans that support them for “finally recognizing me”. TLDR: do the work cause you want to do the work, otherwise, you turn the community into a jobsite and can start to force out even the hobby makers.
There is a concept called the 1% Rule of the Internet or 90-9-1 rule. 90% of people are lurkers who consume and don’t engage, 9% are people who don’t make but do engage actively, the 1% makes. I’m sure if @VladTheImplier managed to pull the user stats, a roughly similar ratio of accounts would be shown between lurker accounts, accounts that vote and comment, and people who make new threads in content pages. The main thing in platform management with this rule is you want to encourage the 90% to be the 9% more than the 9% becoming the 1%. Since so few people make to begin with, and its own can of worms on intentionality (especially in regards to money), Systems that encourage people to engage with the content beyond just viewing are the ones that help build up and encourage (or fund) the 1% that’s making the content. If you only focus on rewarding the 1%, you get Twitter, where damn near every twitter blue account is there simply to ragebait and drive BS engagement just for the payout. Some issue with Youtube, Tiktok, Insta, etc. because they often neglect the experience of the 9%. Twitch and guess Discord are probably the only platforms ive worked with that actually spent energy making the 9% feel more valuable, which in turn makes them more likely to participate (and spend) on the 1%.
Literally making a followup post simply because I wish i could have an editor for my personal stuff.
Anyways I want to share a proposal i have seen floated around in different content spaces before that works similar to a kickstarter / bounty model and that is:
A creator wants to make money from a script. They open a post in #Script Proposals where they mention the video and extras like music, goals, attach their post history, etc. They can set an ask price of how much they want to do the task. The community can see if they think its fairly priced, covers a niche they like, or think the price is fair, put some money up for the creation of that script. In this scenario, the scriptor ask for $50, and the community raises that $50. Once the Goal it set and any mod actions like approval of funds goes through, the money gets put into a pool that can be audited as to not allow the platform to take the money and run. Once the creator finishes the script, they then collect their $50, and the script becomes free for all after that point.
Pros:
Creators get paid
Viewers get access to all content
Encourages producing more scripts of more specific niches
Helps to fairly calculate the value of different types of content at market price instead of just creators value
Cons:
Would need enforcement over the money handlers to ensure nothing gets stolen
Would not provide for any potential funds needed to start a project all the way though, the creator would need them all available already
Would slow the rate of works for some creators and put a pressure to work faster on others
This would in effect also spread money out from few creators into multiple depending on how many are using this system while at the same time helping to find what the paying users find is the fair price to get a new script of a certain type. Which can result in some specific content gaining or losing value as bounties for one content a creator might make $25 off of now won’t get cleared without a 1 guy funder unless its at like $5.
I kinda like the idea, because it essentially makes it so more Script Requests can get filled, while also acting as a form of QC as the community can make up their mind on who they want to do a script. For example if both @TwistedPythonVR and @Slibowitz proposed the same video, because proposals are independent but influential, both creators can get paid to scrip the same video in their own way or with their own gimmicks etc. In the positive scenario, maybe one is better at Handy 2 scripting and the other OSR versions, they could either agree to do a revenue split or both propose 2 different bounties, and if the community wants to fill them and values that creator, they get paid. This also avoids the whole “getting paid in scripts for making scripts” scenario, and puts the power over what content gets made more in the hands of the people actually paying for the content. If the creator wants to make what they want, they can always upload for free or collect tips or find a niche until people start backing them the same way, resulting in the creators making content being those the community values more, which usually coralates to “higher quality” overall. It also wouldn’t get rid of regular commission structure, and in fact work in tandem with it as maybe a creator gets commed to make a script, but can put up to bounty some extras, or maybe one guy just really loves the combo of work and creator and just buys out the bounty on their own.
Nah wont work as: Hello I am a 90% lurker from 1% Rule of the Internet and I will just wait the stupid 10% pays for the content and will get it when its free. It also does not solve the problem if money should not be in the equation.
For a token system quality check is now solved if put in place. Only work would be to hand out the token per 10 minute scripting if Quality is OK, and to collect script if token is traded in. Thats all from my side, I have nothing more to add. My scripts are ready for release if I can trade them in.
This is a fantastic idea that can solve a lot of problems but i don’t think it would be possible to apply here, if i remember correctly, i think Vlad said before that all payment processors rejected working with him / the forum, so besides crypto, anything that would need the forum to handle money directly is not an option unfortunately.
This already happens everywhere, be it paid or token systems, it won’t matter for that 90% group, the logic will remain the same either way, piracy is a thing as well, and also you can apply that same logic to your version, “Hello I am a 90% lurker from 1% Rule of the Internet and I will just wait the stupid 10% to script for the content and I will get it when its Free / Leaked”
Identifying a behavioral pattern is not a justification for a system / implementation / solution to fail instantly like that.
We do not have an official system in place, true, but why not take the initiative on that movement and start the trend to that solution yourself? There is nothing right now blocking you to do exactly what you want.
Create a topic for people to trade with you
List all the scripts and videos you have done with the respective standards you want (video previews, snippets of the script, etc…)
List in detail the requirements for what you would consider a “quality script” to qualify for the trade
Let people “negotiate” with you what video they will script or just list the videos you’re interested in to qualify for the trade, kind off like a bounty system (This can also be already scripted videos, which would incentivize new free script versions of the AI slop ones or other paid scripts, like you mentioned you wanted)
After people post the script, you evaluate it, if you find that the script doesn’t qualify for your “quality” standard, help the scripter improve those parts until it passes and cultivate a positive feedback loop of advice and improvement for new scripters.
And voila, after all that is said and done you get your trade exactly as you wanted with at the very least, close to the quality you wanted.
In terms of people holding you up to your side of the bargain and avoid problems, as you will be both judge and provider in this situation, I would say you have a relatively good standing and reputation as a scripter here in the forum, so the possibility alone of you losing that, i think would be enough to avoid any funny business, but worst case scenario maybe the mods could pop in if needed.
Sounds pretty good to me if that is what you want.
Try it out mate! Wish you luck
I would have done that but it is prohibited by site rules. Meaning, you can not buy a script and give it to me as trade for releasing a free script. Buying a script for someone else is also not possible. That would be the easiest way for sure and was my first idea years ago.
What I also tried but it failed was to unscript a free script. Meaning someone needs to script one of my requests similar length to have the free script released. Very few got released. I accepted scripts that are in sync turning points matching.
So I am quite sure “why dont you do something yourself” does not apply to me.
Overall I am quite tired of the discussion and will simply retire from scripting other than for myself and hope AI will get clever enough one day to reduce scripting time for HQ scripts.
I’m not talking about that, It’s not against the rules. (At least from what i saw)
Forget the scripts that are already done as paid, leave those be as is, they are not the point at all here, the actual objective here is to bring people that are interested, be it veteran scripters or new ones, to make a new script for a video you want and in exchange they get one that you already made.
Simple as that, 100% influx of new free scripts in trade of yours.
To be more clear for example:
You have 5 scripts, for simplicity they are named 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
You want scripts for 3 videos, for simplicity they are named X, Y, and Z (There is no scripts for “x” and there is only paid scripts for “Y” and “Z”)
A new scripter comes to you and offers to script the video “Z” as a free script and in exchange they get your script 3
That’s it, now you get a free script version for the video you wanted.
As I said already I tried that, wont happen and training newbs addionally wont happen either. But please be my guest and try.
This was my last post in this thread, setting it to muted. Es will pick up the ball or not.
I was about to go on a rant, but it’s better not at this point.
I think your outright refusal to try out something so minimal as creating a topic properly done for the exchange, not just random script requests, and later on maybe give some advice if needed, speaks volumes of what you actually really want in all of this conversation
