What do you do for a living Jeffrey?

What I do for a living I get paid for, what I do for a hobby I do because I enjoy it, if other people get enjoyment from my hobbies then that pleases me.

Don't get me wrong if the skinners are doing this for a living then so be it. I am very thankful to all of the wonderful skinners that have GIVEN so much to the community. However when I first joined OD many years ago their were no master skiners, only artists with passion.

I am not upset with skinners because as Philly0381 said "sounds like a smart move on their part". Stardock however is a different story, by making masters skins they have taken what people did out of passion and turned it into a business. If a skinner makes a super awesome unbeatable skin in the past it would have been released to everyone for everyone to enjoy. Since everyone loves money and if releasing this unbeatable skin as a master skin =money then of course they will release it as a master skin. Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Everyone is entitled to their opinion, all I am saying is say goodbye to the days when skins were about the art and the passion of the artist it's a business now. And this transformation was Stardock's brainchild, for better or worse.

My personal stance is that when I bought OD it was a community with passion I was buying a product, but the community was a big part of that decision. Right now WindowBlinds 6.0 does just about everything I need it to, and since I can no longer have the latest and greatest skins without paying additional fees I think I will just stick to the skins I have and enjoy. Unless Stardock pulls an unforseen rabbit out of their hat there will be no reason to ever upgrade WindowBlinds again. Perhaps I am alone in this decision, who knows... However if there are more customers like me it starts to look like Stardock shot themselves in the foot.

Well, I can only speak for myself but I fully intend to keep on making free skins also of equal quality. Personally, I think quality wise Solarion is just as good a skin as Optix, Where are you seeing lack of quality, Its fully skinned and as far as I can see bugless too. I'm not sure what your objection is.

Jeffrey,just because you don't like this skin as much as previous offerings doesn't mean it is of a lesser standard than them.Surely it just shows that it's down to personal taste and that we all like different styles of skins.


You're kidding right?
  

I really like how everyone thinks that just because a skin isnt a physical thing that they dont need to ever pay anyone for their work.

If i made wooden Ducks as a "hobby" and i stated making them for my friends, and they liked them, then i got better at making them, and they looked better and better, then i took a few of them to a flee market and sold them, would anyone say "hey you cant expect me to pay for that, its just a HOBBY, what gives you the right to ask me to PAY for that!"?

But if i spend weeks on a gadget or skin and decide it would be great to make a few $ off all my hard work, them im just an ass? Well I only have one thing to say.. If you dont like it, make your own and then you will see how HARD this stuff is. If you want o GIVE your work away thats your call, but dont ever begrudge someone trying to make some $ off of their HARD WORK.

Just because someone does something as a HOBBY doesnt mean that its not still WORK.

I love the entitlement people, I want it all, I want it for free, and if i dont get it, then ill take my toys and go.. well.. GO there isnt anyone standing in your way, there's the door.. GO.

Dissing on anyone who makes it to Master here and wants to take their YEARS of learning and growing and try to make something off that, is just lame. I will fight to the end to defend the rights of ANYONE to sell their WORKS. Hobby, no hobby, i dont give a damn, its work. And the time i spend making a gadget takes time from my family, my web design part time job, and my full time job, so i can charge whatever the hell i want for that, and if you dont see the value in it there isnt anyone forcing you to buy it.

Premium skins have been around since long before Stardock Design. All they did was put all the top talent together instead of them competing for business.

There are many other sites that have premium content and had it before Stardock Design.

but go ahead, blame Stardock for... not sure what.

If all skins were free, people would go back to complaining about having to buy the software. Stardock cannot win becuase they are a business. There will always be the "what have you done for me lately" clients.

I have clients that bought houses from me 8 years ago that call me to complain that their house needs repainting and I should be responsible for it. I tell them that when the sun burns out, I will then work it into my contracts that they will get lifetime guarantees on their paint.

and then theres the clients that... I had a rough week.

Many of the master skinners were selling work around the web before Stardock hired them.

By hiring them, Stardock has likely improved their marketability and general presence. Nothing has changed except the visibility is higher here. That's a good thing for skinning and skinners everywhere.

Now there is one place to go to get the very best skins (free and pay) and one place for new skinners to go and say "I want to make skins like that!"

Good for Stardock; Good for the skinners; and Good for the users!

bobbyhundreds, not kidding, maybe it's just temporary but right now all of the latest and greatest skins in my opinion are the master skins. There are some really good alternatives, but the master stuff has more appeal to me. I haven't used a new blind in months and that is rare for me. Even after downloading v6 I'm back to an old blind.

In my opinion and peoples will vary, Optix would be a high 9 this is a 6-7ish. I feel Optix has a much nicer feel to it, once again my opinion. Not to mention I was never into the whole retro thing. Maybe it's just one skin and I'm reading too much into it...

However the thing a lot of the people commenting here need to understand is I am a content consumer. I would be willing to bet that the majority of Windowblinds users are content consumers, not content creators. When I bought Windowblinds it was a bit like a television, I bought the TV because there was a lot of free content available I wanted to watch. Now I can continue watching the same programs that I always watched but all of the good TV programs coming out are pay per view. How the actors and TV show producers get paid is not my concern, I bought a TV because I wanted to consume the available content. I have no interest in pay per view TV. When good content stops becoming availabe my TV loses it's value. TVs lose value the TV maker loses customers. Simple.

I do not think I am entitled or due anything from anybody, whether or not people charge or do not charge doesn't affect me. What concerns me is the availability of good free content, and this should be what concerns Stardock as well. I am not blaming skinners for anything, every skinner is entitled to thanks and appreciation from everyone. The only thing I am doing here is stating the truth of how I feel about the current state of affairs as it pertains to WindowBlinds the product and content available for it.

It's not about paying people for their work, because as a content consumer my concern is whether or not there is good content available. period. I don't watch TV wondering about how the actors get paid. Stardock sells a player for what used to be free content, now the good content is not free and some people are not going to want to buy a new player. This is not my opinion, this is a business reality. Whether or not "some people" is only me or a larger number of customers is open to speculation. Stardock has a vested interest in having good content available and if the community that origanlly provided this free content is shrinking there is a number of ways Stardock can handle this from encouraging people to skin to actually hiring professional skin designers to create free content to fill the gap. If from day one the content was not free that would factor in to people's decision to purchase the product, however that is not the case and by changing that aspect they will distance some customers like myself. If Stardock is fine with that then so be it. It's their company. However if the the content consumers like myself feel that not enough good free content is available to warrent buying the next version of the program, that is the reality that Stardock has to deal with.

That's exactly what they are already doing... just beacause you don't like the skins they have released isn't their fault, the way I see it they are going above and beyond what might be logically expected of them. Like you said though, it's your opinion and your entitled to it, I don't think your going to find many who agree with you. Honestly saying that all of the good content is now gone is probably offensive to the hundreds of sinners that aren't Master skinners yet. These skinner's need to be encouraged not downtrodden.

At least he's honest.  Although mixing "the truth" and "how I feel" can be disengenoius.

I think that there are many excellent skins available for free.  I think that your standards have changed over the years and you've become spoiled by the level of skins produced by the master skinners.

Oh well.

As I said (and you too),it's clearly down to personal preference,just because you don't like a skin doesn't mean it is substandard or not as good as the old days,it just means that YOU don't like it.
So are you saying that the none master skinners skins just aren't good enough for you?Because if you are then you know what the solution is,make your own or buy Master skins.If on the other hand you think it is unfair to have to purchase skins I really don't know what to say apart from look around you,stuff costs money,and in the case of the master skinners here it is well deserved in my opinion.
  

I don't read his posts as being unfair.  Just that Stardock (and the skinners they've hired) are killing thier base of users by only having the great skins for pay.

I disagree with him on his definition of great skins and his assertion that it will kill the user base.

I'd be willing to bet the user base hasn't decreased in recent memory.

Jeffrey, I took the time to go back and read your replies. They were put together with thought and opinion. Then I read the rest of the replies that dealt with yours.

I am left with one overiding theme. You don't want anything to change. When you first came to Stardock and WB things were a certain way and you liked it, trust me you are not alone in that thinking. Now some years later things have changed, alot of us here feel for the good. Don't get me wrong it's fine to want things to always stay where and how they first started. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

I will agree that not all change is good. For instance over the air TV, used to be no more than four or five channels to choose from. Without cable or satellite you now can get upwards to 10 channels and in some cases more. Problem I have is that the so called major networks are all now showing reality programs. Not an improvement as far as I can see. So I have satellite services. In other words, things change, we move on.

What I like about all that has happened here and elsewheres is that my ability to choose has not been taken away from me. Much more important than anything else that has been posted here.

Jeffrey, choose what you want and move on. If you choose to stay here, great, if not that's your choice.

Have a great day.   

The Master Skin process was designed to help encourage new skinners to get into skinning.

I think there's a major variable being ignored: Most of the good skins we speak of in the past are made by people who have left or no longer have hobby time to justify continually making them.

Like anything, new people need to rise up.  Master Skins is one way to encourage this because only someone with MASTER access can make them which requires a great deal of effort and having demonstrated their capability and passion over the course of time to make their way up.

There is a significant misconception if someone thinks that Treetog and Alexandrie and Essorant and all the other long long LONG time skinners are going to simply continue to crank out amazing skins indefinitely.

Like all hobbies, once you get to a certain level, it becomes work at which point it's not a hobby. Master skins encourage skinners who have reached a certain level to still makes skins even when it's not a hobby.

We need an incentive to get NEW artists into skinning. Master Skins is that carrot.

btw, does anyone else see the irony in discussing this in a news item announcing the second (in less than a week) free skin from Stardock Design?