EClark1894 opened this issue on Jul 05, 2019 ยท 217 posts
ssgbryan posted Sat, 20 July 2019 at 6:23 PM
Afrodite-Ohki posted at 12:51PM Sat, 20 July 2019 - #4357545
I have to say this is true for me as well.
Wanting someone to make elderly auntie characters for Poser is all fun and good, but when a vendor spends a month of work making that and only sees like five people actually purchase it, you don't have to think that "vendors aren't creative". You have to think that "vendors aren't willing to work 8h/day for a month for a total of US$30".
And I get that you don't want your passionate hobby to turn into a business. I really do. Still, money is what keeps things running in our society, as sad as that may be - and if we don't keep that money going around, the program will be abandoned. So yeah, you need your beta testers that have an outside look to it and will check the technical things, but you ALSO need your vendor beta testers that will take a look at a thing and think "that's way too complicated for casual users, that's not gonna sell" and similar things.
That's why it's beta testerS, not beta tester singular form. And this strike against vendors isn't gonna get anyone anywhere, it only benefits Poser that we have different types of users for it.
Poser isn't getting different types of users if only one type of content is available.
Coming back to what makes a "good" figure.
From a buyer's point of view - it is a figure that has the widest variety of content - a wider artistic vision is possible. Much like communism, Better Bending is a red herring.
In 2019, this means V4. I don't like that any more than anyone else here does but that doesn't change the fact that the end user doesn't buy into a new figure if it bends better - they buy into it because it allows them to execute their artistic vision; better bending only matters if they are nekkid (as they say in Tennessee).
Currently, every post-V4 figure is a young white girl with better bending and vendors by and large only make buy me drinkie outfits to go with it. None of them have gained any ground against a 12 year old mesh. Every couple of years, we get yet another pretty white girl, and and a few trashy outfits to go with her. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. They all bend better, they all look more or less alike, and all have more or less the same limited selection of outfits. Only a small portion of the user base has adopted them.
And we have more white girls inbound....
So far, this hasn't been a recipe for success.
For a few years now, I have been recommending going with a kickstarter style mechanism to get away from buy me drinkie girls. Vendors do this elsewhere and it seem to be working for them. 'Rosity would be a great place to host something like that. We have to grow the ability of vendors to make a living, because what we have right now doesn't appear to be working. The reality is that end-users that stick around (and more importantly, buy stuff) grow in their art. Making 3rd rate pin up art is fun for the 1st six months or so but then it becomes well, boring. In 2019, expanding your artistic vision means:
If we aren't comfortable with learning the Poser toolset, we stick with V4 and make art . If we become proficient with the Poser tool set - we end up harvesting legacy content and moving it onto newer figures (My option). Notice that either option doesn't provide much opportunity for new vendor sales.
Example: I have 2 sets of graphic novels I am working on (1 TOS Star Trek; 1 horror, set in rural 'Murika, about 50 miles from 'Rosity world headquarters).
Character demographics for the 1st are based on world population percentages, the second are based on population percentages of the actual location. Guess what! Tall, big boobed, early 20's white girls don't actually make up 90% of the population. In the 1st, they make up about 3 - 4%. In the second, they don't exist - 1. Woman are average sized, and vary between obese and morbidly obese - nor are there much in the way of the early - mid 20's demographic - most left as soon as they graduate from the local high school (no jobs, no future in rural 'Murika).