One, it seems to me like Korean style RPGs (particularly MMO's) are "grind-heavy" by nature. The thought sounds horrible to me personally, but they're pretty popular over there, so it could just be a matter of taste. Maybe people like grind-heavy gameplay.
But let's assume, for a moment, that people *don't*, and these games really are poorly designed. I guess the difference between art and design is that good and bad art are both pretty easy to identify (there is, of course, an entire school of thought that there's no such thing as bad art, but I suspect most of those people are bad artists). Good and bad design I think are a bit more nebulous.
If I were to draw a picture of someone, you might look at it and say, well, the anatomy is off, or the shading is wrong, or something. But sometimes if you play a poorly designed game, it just doesn't feel right. You can guess at the flaws, you can follow all the design rules, but in the end, you just have to fiddle with it until you end up with something that feels good. That's a long, iterative process that I think ultimately requries a lot of feedback from your players. Take Wesnoth or WoW, for instance. These are both highly polished games. The key is that they've been around for years, and that whole time, the development teams have been gathering feedback from players and updating the game and interface to make them more fun to play.
You don't end up with good design by accident, and most of the time you don't have good design right out of the box. It takes a lot of time and effort.
Maintaining absolute GPL bundle-ability (in other words, staying Debian and FSF-safe)
Giving people the freedom to set whatever conditions they want, provided #1 is true
Keeping the licensing choices reasonably simple
Obviously #1 is a non-issue for this particular question, since the licenses you're listing are all "safe". The problem, really, is the balance between allowing a large number of licenses and keeping things simple for the user. It's one thing if you're a hardcore Free Software Licensing Geek, but it's quite another if you're a regular user who'd just like to use (or donate) some art and have a clear understanding of the conditions.
To this end, I'd like to propose a standard that we can use in order to determine whether a license should be added. The license (obviously) must satisfy our requirement that the content can be bundled with the GPL. It must also satisfy one of these two conditions:
The license offers conditions that are different in a meaningful way from all of the other licenses we already allow, or
There is a substantial body of high quality content which we would not be able to otherwise add to the site (though contacting the author and convincing them to re-license the content, for instance)
In the latter case, I would suggest that, in order to avoid confusion, the additional license be available to site editors only.
This really brings up the need for the simplified licensing options, which I've been avoiding because it's going to be fairly hard to implement. I should probably get started on that.
As usual, I'm looking for any comments people could provide. Even if you don't want to add any artistic criticism, I'd also be interested to know what people would like me to add to it next.
I like this one a lot. Clearly a lot of work was put into it. On the technical side, the shading and dithering make it really obvious that the grey material is chain mail and the red material is cloth. All in all, a very solid entry.
Steampunk Gentleman
Creativity: 43 Execution: 43 Effort: 32
This is another excellent entry with a lot of really useful pieces, but I have to knock some points off of Effort for the incomplete suit. Kudos, though, on dividing this up into multiple independant parts.
Starsteel Barbarian Armor/Claws
Creativity: 40 Execution: 45 Effort: 39
This is definitely a fun one. The scar and the beard make him look rugged and fierce -- not the kind of guy you'd want to pick a fight with. Also, he comes with his own weapons, which is cool.
Male Armor and Hair
Creativity: 38 Execution: 38 Effort: 45
This is a cool submission, but I have to knock off a few points for execution -- something bothers me about the way the armor is shaded. That said, it's quite usable, and the hair is excellent. A very good submission overall.
Top Hat - Lolhat
Creativity: 35 Execution: 25 Effort: 20
This is a fun entry, but it's a lot smaller than the rest, and it needs a little more in terms of shading. Still, I can't help but like it.
Turnip Armor
Creativity: 50 Execution: 45 Effort: 10
This is hilarious. Unfortunately it's not eligible to win because it doesn't cover all of the frames. Someday it would be pretty cool if someone would pick this up and finish it.
I can de-thread all of the comments and make them like the forums. Would people prefer that?
Bart
I have two thoughts on this.
One, it seems to me like Korean style RPGs (particularly MMO's) are "grind-heavy" by nature. The thought sounds horrible to me personally, but they're pretty popular over there, so it could just be a matter of taste. Maybe people like grind-heavy gameplay.
But let's assume, for a moment, that people *don't*, and these games really are poorly designed. I guess the difference between art and design is that good and bad art are both pretty easy to identify (there is, of course, an entire school of thought that there's no such thing as bad art, but I suspect most of those people are bad artists). Good and bad design I think are a bit more nebulous.
If I were to draw a picture of someone, you might look at it and say, well, the anatomy is off, or the shading is wrong, or something. But sometimes if you play a poorly designed game, it just doesn't feel right. You can guess at the flaws, you can follow all the design rules, but in the end, you just have to fiddle with it until you end up with something that feels good. That's a long, iterative process that I think ultimately requries a lot of feedback from your players. Take Wesnoth or WoW, for instance. These are both highly polished games. The key is that they've been around for years, and that whole time, the development teams have been gathering feedback from players and updating the game and interface to make them more fun to play.
You don't end up with good design by accident, and most of the time you don't have good design right out of the box. It takes a lot of time and effort.
Fixed.
I should have marked this as solved.
There are three issues at play here. These are:
Obviously #1 is a non-issue for this particular question, since the licenses you're listing are all "safe". The problem, really, is the balance between allowing a large number of licenses and keeping things simple for the user. It's one thing if you're a hardcore Free Software Licensing Geek, but it's quite another if you're a regular user who'd just like to use (or donate) some art and have a clear understanding of the conditions.
To this end, I'd like to propose a standard that we can use in order to determine whether a license should be added. The license (obviously) must satisfy our requirement that the content can be bundled with the GPL. It must also satisfy one of these two conditions:
In the latter case, I would suggest that, in order to avoid confusion, the additional license be available to site editors only.
This really brings up the need for the simplified licensing options, which I've been avoiding because it's going to be fairly hard to implement. I should probably get started on that.
Bart
As usual, I'm looking for any comments people could provide. Even if you don't want to add any artistic criticism, I'd also be interested to know what people would like me to add to it next.
Thanks!
Bart
I'm not 100% certain about how to fix this, but I'll look into it.
Bart
Prod me about this on Monday. I'll see if I can make it happen.
Brigand Armor
Creativity: 38 Execution: 45 Effort: 41
I like this one a lot. Clearly a lot of work was put into it. On the technical side, the shading and dithering make it really obvious that the grey material is chain mail and the red material is cloth. All in all, a very solid entry.
Steampunk Gentleman
Creativity: 43 Execution: 43 Effort: 32
This is another excellent entry with a lot of really useful pieces, but I have to knock some points off of Effort for the incomplete suit. Kudos, though, on dividing this up into multiple independant parts.
Starsteel Barbarian Armor/Claws
Creativity: 40 Execution: 45 Effort: 39
This is definitely a fun one. The scar and the beard make him look rugged and fierce -- not the kind of guy you'd want to pick a fight with. Also, he comes with his own weapons, which is cool.
Male Armor and Hair
Creativity: 38 Execution: 38 Effort: 45
This is a cool submission, but I have to knock off a few points for execution -- something bothers me about the way the armor is shaded. That said, it's quite usable, and the hair is excellent. A very good submission overall.
Top Hat - Lolhat
Creativity: 35 Execution: 25 Effort: 20
This is a fun entry, but it's a lot smaller than the rest, and it needs a little more in terms of shading. Still, I can't help but like it.
Turnip Armor
Creativity: 50 Execution: 45 Effort: 10
This is hilarious. Unfortunately it's not eligible to win because it doesn't cover all of the frames. Someday it would be pretty cool if someone would pick this up and finish it.
I'll work on this.
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