CONFESS! How many of you pay for downloads?

[BeckerCheez]

I usually try to make my own skins and genetics when I can.  If I *need* to download something, I'll try to avoid a paysite since...uh...yeah...

It's hard to pay for subscription fees.  Damn WoW and Sims (Maty) are expensive.   

[Marg]

 It always comes back to the same thing.    Some of us volunteer not only our money, but our time as well,
to things that are important to us.    One of my hobby's happens to be the sims.   I do it for me.   It keeps me home from the bars and away from the malls.    It also goes a long ways sometimes to keeping me sane.
It becomes "ME" time.   That's very important to be able to just relax and forget all about the multiple stresses we all accumulate in our daily lives.   And I do put money into the collection plate at church too. 

All the people who are kind enough to share their creations with us do it because they want to.  Not because they have to.     I will pay for a donation set if I see something I particularly want, or I will just donate if I feel like it.     But sometimes all the creator really wants is a little recognition or even a just a Thank You.   

[Jysudo]

There are some sites that I will never suscribe to, because I think they charge too much.  One particular site I'm thinking of is Peggy Sims.  There's not enough content on it to justify that much money.  I don't mind paying for something like TSR, because you can find a lot of nice stuff on it, and it's cheaper than Peggy Sims too.

You know, considering that she operates in China, and considering the US-Yuan exchange rate, and considering that the avg. Beijing family makes about $2,000 a yr, I'm betting she must make a fortune off of this game.

Meanwhile, there are tons of pple in China who can't even get a proper education b/c of money issues. Her stuff is good, and sometimes I'm *really* really tempted, but then I think of the utter waste it would be, funneling money into a game, when it could be put to better use, that I always stay my hand. Not that I have money to spare, anyways - college student and all that.

It depends. If she lives in the city like Shanghai, she is noy going to get by with just makiing profit off that site. Shanghai is very expensive.
And she does have more free stuff than member downloads. I mean if its really* to maintain her site thats why she need US9.95, I might cough up the $? But does she really need that much money - is what I have been wondering...and her site is soooo....slow.

I am not sure of hosting fees. I have no idea how expensive they can be.
Can anyone enlighten me? I haven't run a website before...

[Regina]

Here's a funny little antecdote about The Sims and the way it can keep people occupied and seriously out of trouble or at least seriously out of a lot of duress they cause themselves.

My sister called me this evening ranting and raving over how my dad's estate is being settled.  The thing is, in the late 1970s my parents bought one acre of what was zoned commercial property and because they owned the adjoining property which had a business on it they were allowed to put a home there because the home was being used for business purposes.

Well, my mom and dad opened another business in the early to mid-1980s and when they'd run short of cash one of my sisters would chip in to help them.  Things weren't going great but doing okay for a start-up and my folks decided that since my sister had given them several thousand dollars they would give her the back one-third of that acre of property.  Because of some bad decisions on my dad's part, he ended up putting a mortgage on the property which was absolutely huge (payments of $850+ a month) so when he died there was still a bunch of debt on the property (almost $70,000).

Now since they had given a third of this land to my sister, that meant when we sold the property after Daddy's death, one-third of the sale money (minus realtor and closing costs) would go to her, then the remainder after the mortgage was to be split four ways.

Well, over the past several months my youngest sister apparently hasn't had anything better to do with her time than to plan on how she's going to spend this 'whopping' amount of money she's going to get from the inheritance.  She called me tonight just madder than hops because I had originally figured the money wrong and inadvertently told her she'd be getting about $3,000 more than she actually will.

Okay, now switch to my side.  During the time since the property's been sold, I've hardly taken the time to even think about the money I'll be getting.  Oh sure, once in a while I think about how great it'll be to have a new computer and we've lightly discussed a possible vacation plan.  Otherwise I've been spending my spare time at my computer, organizing my downloads and making new stuff for my game!  The thing is, 10 years ago I'd probably have been in the same boat my sister is in.  I'd have already had every penny of that money spent in my head!

One thing I can say for sure is I'm sooooo glad I have a great hobby that keeps my spare time occupied! 

[Regina]

Okay--now I'll make another response to some things I read above and are actually still in my head! (Like as if anyone wants my opinion!)

Flowerchile, when you use PayPal to send money to someone via the internet, the recipient gets no more information about you than your e-mail address and possibly your real address.  If this is web content which isn't going to be shipped, you don't even give them your real address.  PayPal isn't perfect (after all, eBay owns it) but it's a relatively quick and painless way to send money--for most people at least.  As for me, I don't know where I'd be at times without online shopping in general.  I sometimes have trouble getting to town and many things are in excess of 50 miles from where I live.  I've shopped online for around 6 or 7 years now and only ever had a couple of bad experiences, and one of those was a lamp I'd purchased through eBay which was broken upon arrival due to poor packaging and the seller wouldn't refund my money because I'd paid for insurance (she was clueless), and another was when one of my CC numbers got into the wrong hands somewhere and signed up for a subscription to an Anime porn site.  The CC issue was resolved satisfactorily.  In fact, that's one reason I'll use PayPal when it comes to some purchases because in most cases I can have them charged to my CC and have protection from the CC company.

-----------------
Now, about those websites.  We started ours up a few years back because I always liked making walls and floors for TS1 and couldn't see much point in keeping them to myself when I could share them.  We already had a 'reseller's' account with a web company so setting up another domain name was nothing.  As it is, I'm grandfathered in with this company to a terrifically low price of around $20 a month for a huge amount of bandwidth so I've always been reluctant to close the account.  So, my daughters and I got together and Bog Sims was born.

A few years back, though, I ran an information website for Zoo Tycoon and basically all of the downloads I had on that site were the ones released by Microsoft and I can tell you the amount of bandwidth that was eaten was nothing to sneeze at.  There were many sites with this same content and there were a few months when my site used almost all the bandwidth for my entire account.

We're only just now really starting to get our site together for TS2 (I worked all day today writing HTML for skins and object retextures) because unfortunately we had no time to do it until now.  I figure if bandwidth gets to be a problem we might put up a PayPal donation button or we'll just archive the old stuff.  While I really don't mind the thoughts of subscribing to a site with super stuff, I don't think I could try to force anyone to pay for my stuff (well, for one thing it's not THAT good! LOL).

[Dark Trepie]

I don't pay for custom content because 99% of the custom content out ther just doesn't interest me.  Sure, I have a bunch of custom floors and wall in my game, but every single one of them came with houses I've downloaded.  Which now that I think about it is the only thing I actually download other than the mods here.

My downloads folder is a grand total of 53.2 megs.  Now doesn't that make some of you jealous?   

I've tried downloading hair and clothes and objects and sims and everything else, including the kitchen sinks!.  And when I get to play around with them in-game they just leave much to be desired.  And eventually I delete them because I don't use them anymore and they're just clogging things up.

I'm quite content with mostly Maxis only content at the moment.  Even if some of it is a bit strange.  Like those everyday female adult clothes that came with NL that look more like patch-work bikinis with a scarf...

[Hairfish]

Why start a site if you have to rely on others generosity to maintain it?

Why buy a game if you have to rely on creators' generosity...

Oh, forget it.

I love free stuff, but I also respect my fellow creators enough to occasionally chip in a little on costs...or for them to buy themselves a drink or a candy bar, or whatever, after they've slaved for several hours over a hot keyboard. I just DO NOT understand this pride that some people have about never having paid for anything.

You PAID Electronic Arts ~ one of the greediest corporations in the US ~ for the game. And you belittle CC creators for asking you to pay a dollar or two for the privilege of downloading their work?!? I just don't get it.

[idtaminger]

It depends. If she lives in the city like Shanghai, she is noy going to get by with just makiing profit off that site. Shanghai is very expensive.
And she does have more free stuff than member downloads. I mean if its really* to maintain her site thats why she need US9.95, I might cough up the $? But does she really need that much money - is what I have been wondering...and her site is soooo....slow.

I am not sure of hosting fees. I have no idea how expensive they can be.
Can anyone enlighten me? I haven't run a website before...

Avg. Shanghai salary is about the same. And, I mean, $10,000 is the avg. salary of the nouveau riche in China. If she gets just 100 people to fork out a subscription each month, that's about $12,000 a year. She's frigging rich by Chinese standards. And I'm betting that she gets more than just 100 subscriptions a month, judging by how ubiquitous her content is online.

And I get that this stuff does involve some investment of time and whatnot, but honestly, it's not that difficult - cutting and pasting and some smart image manipulation. If you have some talent, it comes out a bit better. Still stands that it's not that difficult. It doesn't sit well with me that doctors make less than she does. Maybe that's why healthcare is down the sh*thole over there. At least EA has developers developing code and whatnot. That's definitely a heck of a lot more involved than meshing or texturing. I can do meshing and textures, but I sure as hell can't develop complex AI code. And the code developing is bound to take a whole lot longer than a few hours fiddling w/ pictures.

So yeah, I have never, ever paid for a TS2 subscription, and I am definitely proud that I haven't.

[flowerchile]

Why start a site if you have to rely on others generosity to maintain it?

Why buy a game if you have to rely on creators' generosity...

Oh, forget it.

I love free stuff, but I also respect my fellow creators enough to occasionally chip in a little on costs...or for them to buy themselves a drink or a candy bar, or whatever, after they've slaved for several hours over a hot keyboard. I just DO NOT understand this pride that some people have about never having paid for anything.

You PAID Electronic Arts ~ one of the greediest corporations in the US ~ for the game. And you belittle CC creators for asking you to pay a dollar or two for the privilege of downloading their work?!? I just don't get it.

Hey Dickwad, read carefully...I bought the game, I was quite happy with the game...Looking for some info lead me to websites telling me to have this and have that for free.  I respect the creators, more than you know, but I don't respect you.  I haven't belittled anyone so shove it where the sun don't shine.  I don't need you to read into my thoughts and opinions, or presume to know me; I am not proud that I've never paid, it's just a fact.  I gave an honest answer, next time I'll just lie.  Save me a lot of agro.

[Hairfish]

Get bent.

[flowerchile]

Get bent.

And a big juicy rasberry to you..

[Renatus]

And I get that this stuff does involve some investment of time and whatnot, but honestly, it's not that difficult - cutting and pasting and some smart image manipulation. If you have some talent, it comes out a bit better. Still stands that it's not that difficult.

Out of curiosity - have you done any skinning or meshing to know how difficult it is? I mostly ask because, well, I am unfortunately used to people who don't know nothin' about nothin' making statements about how 'easy' something is (usually with digital art - you just press a button! The computer does it all for you! That 30 hours wrangling a tablet did nothing towards the finished product)...

Not that I don't feel the same way about creators who take photos from fashion sites and paste them onto a skin - at least, when they throw a fit about it being theirs. Especially when they didn't do any seam matching or cleanup work. Shudder.

[Bangelnuts]

Ok I confess to paying for in the order of importance of course .1)MATY . 2)TSR(I love their stuff) 3)The Sims Vault. 4)The Sims Connection .(Their retail stuff is awesome). 5)Sim Chic .6)WDS (I rarely download from there so I will probably cancel soon) . 7) Valdea .Com  (one time donation)  Sussi (I pay per item).
  Free sites I use  1) MTS2 .2)Parsimonious 3) Retail Sims. 4)Mermaid Cove .5)Simological 6)MangoSims. and several other sites including Pronup for Custom Hair

[Jysudo]

It depends. If she lives in the city like Shanghai, she is noy going to get by with just makiing profit off that site. Shanghai is very expensive.
And she does have more free stuff than member downloads. I mean if its really* to maintain her site thats why she need US9.95, I might cough up the $? But does she really need that much money - is what I have been wondering...and her site is soooo....slow.

I am not sure of hosting fees. I have no idea how expensive they can be.
Can anyone enlighten me? I haven't run a website before...

Avg. Shanghai salary is about the same. And, I mean, $10,000 is the avg. salary of the nouveau riche in China. If she gets just 100 people to fork out a subscription each month, that's about $12,000 a year. She's frigging rich by Chinese standards. And I'm betting that she gets more than just 100 subscriptions a month, judging by how ubiquitous her content is online.

And I get that this stuff does involve some investment of time and whatnot, but honestly, it's not that difficult - cutting and pasting and some smart image manipulation. If you have some talent, it comes out a bit better. Still stands that it's not that difficult. It doesn't sit well with me that doctors make less than she does. Maybe that's why healthcare is down the sh*thole over there. At least EA has developers developing code and whatnot. That's definitely a heck of a lot more involved than meshing or texturing. I can do meshing and textures, but I sure as hell can't develop complex AI code. And the code developing is bound to take a whole lot longer than a few hours fiddling w/ pictures.

So yeah, I have never, ever paid for a TS2 subscription, and I am definitely proud that I haven't.

I am disturbed you think that average Shanghai salary is US$2k a year.So I did a check with CNN daily http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-03/15/content_425174.htm
and realised that you are right. So what's up with the starbucks and Gucci in Shanghai? It makes me wonder who is buying them. Thanks for showing me the salary of Chinese. I had the impression that it is as high as folks in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea etc.

In that case, you might just be right she making big bucks.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are very westernised metropolises.  Hong Kong was, until 1997, the banking centre of the Far East.  Of course salaries in these cities will be higher than in mainland china, which has only recently embraced a form of commercialism.  Anything else is like expecting average salaries in the old East Germany to have matched those in West Germany the day after the wall fell!  Only a great sacrifice on the part of the West German people brought about  a speeding up of equalization in Germany, otherwise this kind of thing takes many years.

But once people have the awareness if what the lifestyle in very rich places can be like, they want it too, and some have the skills to go out and carve a piece of the action for themselves.

What you also don't know is how many friends, family etc., someone in China may be supporting with earnings like this.

[Swiftgold]

Incidentally, my sister just got back from a week in Beijing for her graduation present. I will have to ask her what things were like, including prices, but from the little she's put on her LJ so far, there was tons and tons of shopping... (/random)

[ZephyrZodiac]

That doesn't surprise me - the Chinese are very good business people and once the economy started to open up, they would have been quick to seize opportunities.

[holly]

Does it really matter if peggy sims is making a fortune or not she is only charging "market value" for what she does, and i also confess to paying lots of subscribtions , 8ds,simchic, tsr, peggy sims, simslice, sims connection, and i have paid for many donation sets over the years, and why not its my money i earned it and im entilted to spend it as i choose,

i also think that if sombody i dont know in a diffrent country is good enough to host there creations , using there own time and somtimes own money , surely they deserve a little somthing for there efforts, after all i wouldent expect terry pratchett to write his books for free , and if the person doing the creating items enjoys it does it as a hobby ect thats even better,

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well said, Holly!

[idtaminger]

Out of curiosity - have you done any skinning or meshing to know how difficult it is?

If you actually read the whole of my post, you'd realize that yes, I have done skinning and meshing. Still, I personally find playing the game more fun than making stuff for it, so I don't create much.

So what's up with the starbucks and Gucci in Shanghai?

There's the super-rich Chinese. And then there are the foreign expats living there. These places target these groups. The avg. Chinese couldn't afford Gucci w/ their year's salary. It's just like the fashion stores on Fifth Ave, what w/ their thousand dollar blouses and whatnot. Not everyone in NY can afford it, but obviously there are a select group of pple who can.

i also think that if somebody i dont know in a diffrent country is good enough to host there creations , using there own time and somtimes own money , surely they deserve a little somthing for there efforts, after all i wouldent expect terry pratchett to write his books for free , and if the person doing the creating items enjoys it does it as a hobby ect thats even better.

Spending a few hrs in front of the keyboard does not justify $40 for a 6 month subscription. That's the cost of the entire game, for goodness sakes, which I'm sure the creators laboured over for a much longer pd. of time. Novel writing also takes longer than skinning or meshing. People spend months & years laboring over a good novel. And the end result is still a few bucks for paperback, maybe $20 or so for hardcover. I just don't think the amount of effort put into skinning & meshing justifies the prices that some of these places charge.

Sure it's your money, but there are better ways to spend it, IMO.

[BlueSoup]

Sure it's your money, but there are better ways to spend it, IMO.

I think that's basically the crux of the situation right there: 

It's everyone's money to spend how they see fit.  If they want to give money to a website that makes downloads for a game that they enjoy playing, then what does it matter to anyone else?  I spend money on what makes me happy.  This includes custom content for my game, the game itself, books, movies, dining out, alcohol  and a few other things.

One person thinks it's a waste of money to spend even more on a game that we already pay (perhaps a lot if you upgraded your computer to handle it) for.  Well, that's fine; don't spend your money on it.  But who is anyone else to say anything about it?

[Renatus]

Pardon, I missed that bit. I still think it's a bit odd to claim that meshing and skinning easy; it took me a number of hours to do a relatively simple recolour of some pants, and I'm pretty handy with Photoshop. Perhaps it depends on what one's standards of quality are.

[Ellatrue]

Well, sure it took hours, and meshing might take a week, but if you ask me, it still isn't something worth paying for. This is still something that people are doing in their free time, as a hobby. I mean, if I spend 4 days making a house, I don't have the arrogance to assume that it was enough to justify asking someone to pay for it, since I do it for fun, and because I want to share something with other players. As far as I'm concerned, charging for custom content outside of trying to cover the cost of bandwidth is just greed.

[holly]

I think its proberly fairly arrogant to expect people to run sites with quality custom content for free , what i think your failing to understand is running a site like tsr and such is very nearly a full time job so why shouldent they sell what they produce, if these people were say making cakes as a hobby and started to sell them at a bake sale or opened a shop they would be marked up in price by at least 3 times what it cost to make. would u complain about that , and if not how is a sims site so diffrent.

and to complete the metophor , i can bake cakes but when i want somthing special i will buy one ,

[ZephyrZodiac]

I also happen to know that some creators spend weeks working on a new mesh, just so they get it as near perfect as possible, with all the animations working correctly,  Meshing a bed is about far more than just making a new shape and some bedding.