Drama Breeds Drama
Yeah, okay, seriously - this weekend I'll work on updating to the new look. I've been putting it off for months and I'll most probably just wipe* the slate clean and slowly re-add updated posts with goodies.
I'm not sure what to say about the whole Façade drama on MTF. Although I think it'd of probably been best to not hype things up until they were more settled. I thought I'd take the time to talk about a few things. First off, I'm not really "sided" with anyone concerning Architect-vs-Other Theme Apps. I stopped visiting MTF because it was balls and was growing frustrated with the community and moderation. I don't mean the moderators, I know most of them and they're all awesome guys. I just feel things aren't strict enough, through no fault of their own.
Anyway, Johnny basically hit me up one day and showed me what they were working on and it got me interested. I recently helped them with their website preview. It's not as excellent as I'd of wanted but I didn't get much time to refine it. I liked how the bars, rope and frames turned out however.
So, long story short - too late! - I'm working on a theme. No hype or silly previews or anything. The Façade preview site will feature a preview but that's about it. Hopefully folks will like it. One of the decisions to try Façade and Architect was because of the idea of themes for money. I wanted to explore this. A lot of themers spend a lot of time crafting themes and, to be frank, they don't get a heap for it. The idea of paying for themes is a bit alien. I'm sure there will be a lot of folks who complain and stomp their feet but then you could turn around and say "You don't think a month of work from me is worth the cost of a coffee?" One idea I thought would work well would be for the theme-app developers to charge for the app and then hire themers to create themes. This would keep themes free to the end user, besides the initial cost of the app, and give more top quality themes to market the app with.
I've no clue how much Qui will be. This is more an experiment in seeing if people are willing rather than trying to gouge them. No more than $3 was my first thought. Opinions via comments are welcome on the matter.
Hopefully things work out and it'll breath new life in to Mac theming.
Oh and yes, if things go well, there will be a Niqu 2.
Friday, 5 September (Permalink Suds: 7) Entries: Previous Next
Comments
I actually quite like the idea Rick, especially considering it will significantly bump the quality of themes out there... It will also push theme developers to put even more work into full themes which are few and far between...
Just one thing, please tell me you're going to finish of Myre! It has to be one of my favourite themes out there.
Jess
Posted by: Jesse Dodds at September 5, 2008 8:10 AM
Niqu2? Mmmmmm.
About money, seriously, i'll BE glad to PAY for something we have been waiting for so long, almost 1 year. I'm ready to pay if there will be appropriate support.
Posted by: Steeply at September 5, 2008 8:11 AM
And the façade app preview site looks nice, although there is a bug in FF, there is a stroke around links in the bottom left corner.
look: http://mt15.quickshareit.com/share/picture16bf43.png
Posted by: Steeply at September 5, 2008 8:16 AM
i think themes deserve a bit more wad in the bucket. maybe 5$ per theme coupled with a itms like distribution?
Posted by: robert at September 5, 2008 5:16 PM
@Jesse: I think that'd be one of the biggest benefits of some themes earning the themer money. A lot of guys do it for fun but an odd couple of hundred bucks is a nice tip. I'm kind of expecting people to go different routes. Either pay themes or donation-ware perhaps, along with free ones.
Concerning Myre: My worry is that it's too Milk-like to charge for. So at the moment I'm going to see how Qui pans out - if it turns out good I'll work on Niqu 2 and see how people feel about a Myre re-release.
@Steeply: Yes, if I were to be charging for my themes they'd have much better support and such. Themes unfortunately were bumped to quite low on my priority list mostly because of the large amount of work involved coupled with the ever-changing terrain of theming. I'll pass along that bug to the dev guys.
@Robert: I can't go in to distribution stuff, I don't think the details are set in stone yet. As far as I know there'll be flexibility. It does open up some interesting possibilities though - would be nifty to have double packs from artists.
Thanks for replying!
To any other readers, I'm just as interested in "That's a bad idea" replies - I want to hear why folks *wouldn't* purchase a good quality theme as well, for whatever reasons.
Posted by: Rick 
at September 6, 2008 12:31 AM
I think the answer to your question is obvious:
Most people probably wouldn't pay for a theme because they can find a theme of negligible quality elsewhere, free.
Posted by: Anthony at September 7, 2008 3:13 AM
I think your idea is an interesting one and I shall support it. I will be the first to buy your themes, as long as updates (as in bug fixes) are released regularly. I am sick of paying for vapourware that never gets updated, the likes of Disco or AppZapper..
Posted by: duyvan82 at September 8, 2008 4:23 AM
