Is art worthless on the Internet?

Today Stardock Design released its first "Master" Dream to the Dream (animated wallpaper) gallery. It's the one Microsoft showed off at some of its events.  As some know, Microsoft worked with Stardock to make some of the animated wallpapers for use with Windows DreamScene. Windows DreamScene (the software) is a feature for Windows Vista Ultimate users.  Most of the content we created for Microsoft hasn't been released yet (it will be available from Microsoft).  In the process of creating the animated wallpapers for Microsoft, we made a bunch of extra ones for WinCustomize.com which had nothing to do with our work with Microsoft.

So far, Stardock Design has released 6 free .Dreams and 1 premium .Dream.  On top of that, Stardock has released DeskScapes as freeware and DreamMaker as freeware.  And of course, we host the Dreams here on WiniCustomize which, on their own, used over 2 TERRABYTES of bandwidth.  So from our vantage point, Stardock's been "the good guy". Providing lots of free stuff, lots of free software and providing a free site to get it on. 

But Stardock's also a business. The costs of producing all this has to be made up somewhere or else we wouldn't be able to keep doing it.  But some people seem to be very vocal in their outrage that artists won't work for free. They'll happily pay Microsoft $400 for Windows Vista Ultimate but cry bloody murder about paying third party artists $4.95 for content.  My Xbox 360 cost quite a bit too but amazingly, the games aren't free. Those "greedy" game companies! 

Here's some of the comments on Blissful Sunset:

"It's absolutely ridiculous that they're charging for this-- it's just wrong. But for people who own Vista Ultimate, just wait, I guarantee you that this will come w/ the final Dreamscene when it's released. "

According to this user, it's morally wrong for artists to be paid for their work.  He's quite incorrect about Blissful Sunset coming with the final.

Another user wrote this:

"The implication (with MS showing it at official events) is that this development is work that was part of your contract with MS and therefore has already been subsidized and is in fact being paid for by all of us by our shelling out extra bucks for Ultimate edition."

This falls under the "no good deed goes unpunished" category.  Microsoft was looking for high quality content to show off during their demos but didn't want to give away some of the stuff that will be coming in the final release so they asked us if they could show the extra content we made. We agreed to let them. After all, it's pretty cool to see your work up on stage. But this person (and others) have tried to argue that we should simply give away all the animated wallpaper for free that we've made because we made the ones that come with it.  How does that make sense?

Over at Valve's Steam website, a user posted "Stardock sux" and writes:

"This is just unbelievable. Stardock is now charging us for what is supposed to be a FREE Vista Ultimate Extra"

This line of thinking is equivalent to saying that someone who bought say Half-Life 2 via Steam is somehow entitled to HL2: Episode 0 and HL2: Episode 1 and so forth. After all, they paid for Half-Life, why should they have to pay for additional content?  In fact, that's been one of the trends in the "outrage" group. Sure, there's 18 dreams that are free. But they shouldn't have to pay for anything because they bought Windows Vista Ultimate. I just totally can't grasp that mindset.  In what universe does someone buying a version of Windows entitle them to free software and content created by third parties?  Heck, my cell phone tries to get me to pay money for additional ring tones!

So here's what's going to happen -- one of these 2 things are going to occur:

Possibility #1: Users decide animated wallpaper is worthless.  In that case, Stardock Design won't be creating any more for consumers. Remember, Stardock Design currently has a 6 to 1 ratio in free to premium content.  At that point, consumers would just have to hope that individual artists  --who understand that there's no chance they'll ever be able to even make some extra side income from their efforts-- will take the time to create spectacular animated wallpapers that loop perfectly and are encoded in high quality at high-definition. Maybe that would happen but I wouldn't count on it.

In addition, since the bandwidth bill would still exist, users would have to buy WinCustomize subscriptions to download after awhile.  So the "free beer" crowd would have to find their content elsewhere. But don't count on these being available on most sites. At 50+ megabytes a pop, it's a lot of bandwidth. Someone has to pay for it.

And of course, that would mean the software would have to start charging for extra features. Want to pay 3D dynamic content? The user would have to get the "Pro" version.  The point being, the costs of producing, supporting, and developing this stuff has to come from somewhere. Personally, I think a system which nearly everything is free but a handful of premium content isn't free is a pretty good arrangement for everyone.

Possibility #2: Enough users decide that there's value to animated wallpaper. If something comes along that is of exceptional quality happens to ask for a few bucks, then it's worth buying.  In that event, what would happen is that it would attract more and more talented people who would submit lots of free ones in the hope of eventually being able to occasionally release premium ones to help recoup their time and costs. It's worth mentioning one more time - Stardock Design's free to non-free ratio so far is 6 to 1. If other studios and independent artists of great skill start to do the same, that sounds like a win-win.

So far, the results have been good. In the first 4 hours of "Blissful Sunset" we sold over 200 copies of it. Whether that trend continues remains to be seen. There's always a big bump at the beginning. The typical WindowBlinds Master skin has an initial bump and then eventually trends to around 5 per day after awhile.  But even 5 per day, put over time, is worth it.  The author's share of that ends up being around $3,500 per year per skin (not counting the initial bump) -- enough to buy a new computer.  But skins are different because it's an established thing.  Animated wallpapers are brand-new. How things progress with animated wallpaper remains to be seen.