This will be a bit more technical and aimed at people in the 3D modelling space. But if you can push through it, the author does a good job of unpacking the unique problems of making objects in...
This will be a bit more technical and aimed at people in the 3D modelling space. But if you can push through it, the author does a good job of unpacking the unique problems of making objects in virtual spaces.
So this was a difficult watch, simply because its a stark reminder on all the tools I've wasted considerable chunks of my life to learn, only for it to suddenly become "unsustainable" for whatever megacorp decided to acquire it. I still can't bring myself to learn blender or godot after the whole mess with Unity and not being able to afford Maya after uni. Hell, I can't even open a TTRPG after the OGL shitshow because it feels like I wasted so much of my time creating for DnD.
My issues aside, I think its an important watch for anyone getting started in creative/technical spaces because most commercial software is a waiting game of when dependency will be leveraged against you, rather than if. A lot of people didn't have this foresight. I had plenty of well meaning people give me horrible advice on where I should have put my focus, because they trusted their tools. Sometimes the world just moves beyond those tools but most of the time, the mix of apathy for customers, homogeneous business strategy and pure greed killed unique methods of creating things.
You can argue that centralized and standardized tools allow for greater efficiency and streamlines skills development and transfer. But in my view, it only serves to make everyone expendable and dependent, while locking out people who find those specific workflows counter-intuitive. It's bad for creators for all the reasons mentioned in the vid. Its bad for the studios using the tools because they will not get alternative tools or any meaningful innovations/improvements over time. And it's bad for the company because they are priming yourself for a user revolt and the second an open-source alternative is viable.
This will be a bit more technical and aimed at people in the 3D modelling space. But if you can push through it, the author does a good job of unpacking the unique problems of making objects in virtual spaces.
So this was a difficult watch, simply because its a stark reminder on all the tools I've wasted considerable chunks of my life to learn, only for it to suddenly become "unsustainable" for whatever megacorp decided to acquire it. I still can't bring myself to learn blender or godot after the whole mess with Unity and not being able to afford Maya after uni. Hell, I can't even open a TTRPG after the OGL shitshow because it feels like I wasted so much of my time creating for DnD.
My issues aside, I think its an important watch for anyone getting started in creative/technical spaces because most commercial software is a waiting game of when dependency will be leveraged against you, rather than if. A lot of people didn't have this foresight. I had plenty of well meaning people give me horrible advice on where I should have put my focus, because they trusted their tools. Sometimes the world just moves beyond those tools but most of the time, the mix of apathy for customers, homogeneous business strategy and pure greed killed unique methods of creating things.
You can argue that centralized and standardized tools allow for greater efficiency and streamlines skills development and transfer. But in my view, it only serves to make everyone expendable and dependent, while locking out people who find those specific workflows counter-intuitive. It's bad for creators for all the reasons mentioned in the vid. Its bad for the studios using the tools because they will not get alternative tools or any meaningful innovations/improvements over time. And it's bad for the company because they are priming yourself for a user revolt and the second an open-source alternative is viable.