• 0 Posts
  • 30 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 16th, 2023
  • JDPoZ@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•X appears to be juicing MrBeast’s views to woo the YouTuber to the platform, pushing video upload into users’ feeds as an unlabeled adEnglish
    8·
    9 months ago

    Feels like I’m probably gonna get dogged on for this as some will just call it self-promotion, but I’ve been making “content” for a long long long time - I think my oldest personal completely original YouTube video is like 14 yrs old… and I used to just make it for the fun of it.

    The problem came when my own stuff started getting bogus takedowns and copyright claims and other people sticking ads into my work or claiming that because 2 seconds of my 20-minute long video essay has a clip from a popular movie, I should get no revenue for the other 19 minutes and 58 seconds of detailed analysis… or that - because I chose to use the cartoon theme music from the 1980s animated show for the background music for a 2+ week project on a highly detailed transforming 3D model animation, I should get zero credit or possible revenue from it…

    My choice was either to delete my shit to spite them and move it somewhere else or just give up…

    Sometimes I said fuck them and deleted it. Other times I moved it somewhere else. Other times I shifted what I spent time on.

    Now though, I honestly try to put stuff up not ONLY for the fun of it, but to try and make some sort of tiny bit of money.

    My job contract with a company I had been with for 10+ years ended at the end of last year… and I got a new 6-month contract position at a different company… but it pays way less.

    Being able to make content “just for the fun of it” is nice and easier when you’re young and still on your parents’ dime, but that’s kind of a luxury to some of us older folks who are now just also looking to secure some sort of income in an increasingly shitty world where there are no safety nets, and no job seems safe from elimination.

    The worst part is that - over the years as Google and other companies have increased the requirements for being able to have any sort of monetization whatsoever, I went from making a couple hundred bucks a year to not even qualifying anymore to be a YouTube partner.

    Now with 1,100+ subscribers and over 1.1 million views on all the stuff on my channel (some of which is honestly garbage or just the best versions of otherwise maybe lost media I do NOT own and so am NOT complaining about a lack of making revenue on), I still have yet to make enough from any of the stuff that IS my original work over that 14+ years to even have it be significant to show up as required on my taxes.

  • JDPoZ@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.world•Unity is eliminating 265 jobs and terminating Weta FX partnershipEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    Again, it’s a snowball effect.

    Students and amateurs want to learn how to do something. Their choices are either - (sometimes) get an EDU address, fill out a form, apply for a discount or free version, see the watermark or lose a ton of functionality, and only see tutorials via classes or other a-la-carte method (how many folks are doing Houdini lessons online out there - probably not many if I had to guess considering Houdini’s price), or start paying $20/month for a program that they someday hope will allow them to earn money - knowing that if they stop paying, they lose access to files… OR…

    They can download a program for free, that anyone can add stuff to, with thousands of really well done tutorials online on free places like YouTube, that studios will love because there’s no licensing fee or if there is - it’s only when they are really profitable or whatever.

    The more that people use it, the more there are people doing tutorials, expanding functionality, etc.

    Blender used to be garbage in like 2010, but now - you’d be an idiot not to grab a copy and teach yourself if you used to regular in apps like 3DS Max, Maya, or other premium closed application now requiring a bunch of DRM installers, license tiers, and subscriptions…

    Same goes for Adobe’s stuff. I imagine there are more and more people sick of Creative Cloud’s garbage and are ready to find and learn and contribute to FOSS services… All that needs to happen is critical stupid event by bigwig, and suddenly a mass exodus begins.

  • JDPoZ@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.world•Unity is eliminating 265 jobs and terminating Weta FX partnershipEnglish
    26·
    10 months ago

    …which is why Godot now is quickly slipping into the niche that Unity largely used to be for.

    And since Godot is FOSS, there is no going back for Unity once Indie game devs have shifted, since - like with Blender being free to use - it destroys the competition by becoming the defacto king when it comes to things like video tutorials on places like YouTube.

    Popular tutorial channels on YouTube know their viewer audience is less likely to be large enough to be profitable via ad revenue, premium subscriptions, etc. if they are limited niche of people only willing to pay thousands for a license to an application they don’t yet have any professional reason to pay for.

    Being open source in any way also usually then leads to a snowball effect of an application gaining popularity and then people extending its functionality.

    This is also what I think will soon happen to Plex with Jellyfin since the Plex bigwigs have decided they want to be Netflix more than people’s personal media server frontend.

    All it will take is one big mistake and the ground will fall beneath their feet just like with Unity.

    All fascinating and frustrating to watch as I used to work with Unity a ton since its early days.