Is skinning a community or a market?
Frogblog: February 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
When skinning first got started, there was a kind of unspoken understanding between the people who made software and the people who used the software. There would be a symbiotic relationship between 3 groups. The first group, the developers, would create software to customize the look and feel of your applications and desktop. The second group, the skinners, would create the content for these programs. And the third group, the users, would work with the first two groups to help test and ensure the software worked fine by giving detailed reports on betas and even releases to help perfect the program in general. In return, the software was far far cheaper than software in other markets. Thus was borne the "skinning community".
Even into 2008, where a typical new game is $50 to $70 and the typical utility software is $50 to $70, the most popular desktop enhancement software programs remain $20 or less. In fact, Object Desktop, an entire collection of desktop enhancements, is only $50. To put it in collection, WinRar, which is most commonly (let's be honest here) used to compress pirated software, is about $40 all by itself.
As skinning has become more mainstream, the relationship between the three parties has evolved. Increasingly, the content creation is shouldered by fewer and fewer people. We created the Master Skinning program as an effort (a successful one) to encourage skinners with high degrees of talent to continue sharing their creations. The net result is that content is starting to cost money because so few new users are creating it (even for relatively simple things). Similarly, users are much less inclined to participate in open beta programs. Look at the CursorFX release. There's multiple posts complaining in the vaguest terms that it doesn't work on their systems. It works here just fine. Nearly everyone here is running CursorFX on XP or Vista without incident. We had an open beta but we received very few reports on it.
The reality is, while the skinning "community" still exists, it is now a small sub-section of the "skinning market" which is made up of traditional consumers who simply expect (with good reason) to pay money in exchange for a program and content that just works. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how every other market works. But those markets don't support products that are $10 to $20. Those products are $50 to $70. The only reason WindowBlinds isn't already a $40 program is because of the skinners and that it still gets significant help from the community in testing new beta versions (though drastically less than in the old days when, ironically, it had far fewer users).
Skinning is continuing to evolve. It's evolving increasingly into a more traditional consumer-oriented market. Stardock, I suspect, will have to adapt with some system that allows users who are contributing time and effort to the community to get credits which lets them buy the software at a less expensive price while traditional consumers pay the un-subsidized rate for the products.
I've written an article that goes into more detail. Click the link below to check it out.
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Reply #242 Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:00 PM
Reply #243 Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:05 PM
I think a private forums limited to certain people would be a great start with something like that.
Reply #244 Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:33 PM
Rewarding Wincustomize and Stardock interaction is a good idea. Setting read-only or read/write or no access based on criteria to certain resources might encourage all sorts of positive behavior. The trick would be to balance that so that there aren't implied or implicit "us" and 'them".
Reply #245 Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:04 PM
I've seen original PSD files of Nuvem's walls ....they're not what is readily uploaded/downloaded as jpgs or bmps, not when they were around 250 meg., with a print-quality size around 3 metres long...
Reply #246 Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:05 PM
Yes, the 'trick' is the important bit, too ...
Reply #247 Thursday, February 21, 2008 2:39 AM
Also in my experience, beta-testing of good or interesting software is rarely under subscribed. Which is why I'm unsure as to why there's a need in a community like this to make exceptional efforts.
Reply #248 Friday, February 22, 2008 12:09 AM
Well, yes and no. It's not always that the artist isn't recognized until after their death. In the past, artists such as DaVinci or Michaelangelo were certainly recognized and respected during their lifetimes, but well into the 1800s artists (even the best artists) worked on a patronage system. So, market pressures didn't really affect their work.
However, as the patronage system died (along about the time of the Industrial Revolution) there began to be a different economic structure supporting the arts. The critical value of the work, artistic merit, public interest, along with the real or perceived rarity of the artist's work all began to be important.
That's about the time that the captains of industry and the general public both began to discover fine art (other than sacred art). As that began to happen, a real market for fine art emerged. And, as in all markets, if the amount of any commodity is limited, the value goes up. So, whenever an artist is deceased, that puts a very real cap on the number of his works.
The critical value will change over time as tastes change. Same with public interest. I submit that true artistic merit remains unchanged. And an artist's work becomes more and more rare as time passes ... individual works of art are damaged or destroyed or sometimes lost. But, the end result is that, assuming critical value and rarity are high, the price of a work will increase.
And, the big problem with the digital medium is it takes a lot longer for something to become rare, especially if it is subject to easy duplication. True even after the artist has passed away. It's a given, of course, that the artist won't produce any more originals after his or her demise, but the individual works will not themselves become rare.
It's just a side effect of the digital age. However, the upside is that the general public has more and more access to some really astounding artwork. I would love to see a world where artists and musicians (and I'm not talking about pop-stars) and teachers would be compensated for the value of what they contribute to society.
Ah, if only I ran the world.
Reply #249 Friday, February 22, 2008 12:48 AM
Same here, opened a .psd by Treetog or MikeB of a WindowBlinds skin and I was like 'Wow, I will never get there in my life.'.
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Reply #241 Wednesday, February 20, 2008 8:12 PM
As with all fine art. It typically is not truly recognized by the general populace for it's merits/value until long after the the authors demise. (the artist unfortunately never saw the fame and fortune the future held for them).
One would think that with the digital age upon us, those who do the suffering and hard work would actually reap the long term benefits. While the $$ may not be quite as forth coming as one would hope, the seeds of respect/honor have already been sewn
Good posts, both insightful and thought invoking