Pawborough Open Beta Review: Literally What Is Going On And What Are They Thinking
This is going to be strongly worded thoughts on PawBorough's Pelts system (the equivalent of custom skins/accents here on Flight Rising).
So I joined the Pawborough open beta test (servers opened about an hour ago), the cat-themed petsite that ran an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2022. It is one of the latest in the many, many petsites that have tried in recent years to offer an alternative to the Flight Rising-esque petsite demographic (think Dappervolk, Lorwolf, etc).
It's been interesting so far: forums use markdown which means that you if you want to show images you have to upload images directly to the Pawborough server. Which, just why? That cannot be scalable, but I don't know if they're thinking about scale or if that's just temporary? (For the sake of their own budget I hope it's jank left over from alpha.)
Anyway, you're not here for that, you're here to hear my take on the Custom Pelt system. I'm an artist, of course I want to see their take on custom content. My thoughts? It's sort of like if the worst bits of Lioden's custom decor, Flight Rising's sometimes arbitrary queue, and Furvilla's paintie systems were rolled into one giant heap of 'no, seriously, were you thinking about scalability here?'
PART I - Style & Limitations Guide
I don't know if users can view the guides without an account, but in case you can't, I'll run through just some of the chief concerns I have quickly. Let's have this series of images in their Style Guide speak for themselves:
That's right! No pure cel shading! No shading that's too 'soft!' What's that? You're using highlights on your custom Pelt? Nope, that's not allowed. Don't even think about using texture or painterly shading in your custom design. You think I'm playing around?
Get ready to get real familiar with the airbrush tool, buddy. What's next, you need to make sure that the light sources in your drawing is completely consistent with the light sources on the cat? Oh, wait:
If you're adding fur texture or markings onto cat, it has to follow the fur lines on the bases. Let's check out a few other bangers from their style guide. Can you tell the critical rule-breaking difference between these two?
That's right, line weight and softness must match the cat’s lineart, and direct from the guide: "The brushes’ “stamp” may not have any strong aliasing, nor texturing." So it's default G-pen and airbrush only from here on out? Got it.
Oh, there's an exception though.
We try to avoid completely smooth, digital gradients when possible. We either use [Grainy Airbrush], or [Blotchy Smudge] to give a gradient a bit of texture. See the brush packs for reference.
You have to use an airbrush, but be careful! Your airbrush can't be too smooth or digital, whatever that means. Uhhh, got it. So texture brushes are permitted and even necessary here?
It's not over yet: You're not allowed to repose any of the cat's limbs or put human features on them: (helllooooo, Furvilla painties!)
You can't use any existing PawBorough content in your Pelt design. So if there's a Pawborough-distinct animal/food item that isn't an existing accessory item, are you allowed to draw an animal companion? Or no?
PART II - What Kind of Culture Are We Creating Here
Pelts are PawBorough’s primary source of income, and participation in Pelt creation and trading by users helps to upkeep and support the game!
If I wanted custom content to be my primary source of income, I would attempt to make it as easy and welcoming as possible for artists to participate in the custom system. That's not what they've chosen to do here with their immediate and challenging style and limitations guide. Now, in all fairness they've put this up top:
But why are you monitoring for all of these in the first place?
If you play Flight Rising and you're following this blog, you'll know I've been making custom skins on there for about 5 years now. Flight Rising has far less stringent style limitations than this, two skin moderators dealing with custom content queue, and it still takes a week or more sometimes to get the first round of approvals/rejections on a skin approved. Most people who try making skins just stop here because it's discouraging. I've played Lioden which has a similar style limitation on its custom items too, and that's even more discouraging.
I'm not just speaking on player culture. I hope PawBorough will have one superhuman moderator for the queue that has 24 hrs a day to breathe down the neck of the custom content queue, because imagine getting your pelt denied for having shading that's too soft, you go and fix that the best you can, and then when you resubmit again now your lines aren't matching the 'site style'.
Humans have to check all that and make their own judgements on it, by the way! These guidelines all have enough 'artistic' wiggle room that it's completely unsustainable for if they want PawBorough to get huge. Why even make your own moderator's jobs harder, make it harder on the people you're supposedly relying on to be your primary income source, make it harder and feel worse for new artists to get started? And why even specify things like a furmap and using a textured airbrush if you also want to say 'but it's totally okay!! we'll be understanding and reasonable!!'
What is the point here? To farm out your own site content to users and have them pay you for it?
Also, there's this pose discount thing that feels like it's taken straight from the Flight Rising blueprint playbook, except if you think about it for more than a few seconds, you'll realize this will lead to people burning out and never completing pelt designs because you need to complete and upload all their poses at once for the best discount and most 'efficient' use of the premium currency.
And, by the way? PawBorough does not enforce and will not care if other people start closely copying your custom designs. Cool and awesome, right?
PART III - Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, it's their site and they can do what they want with it. If they don't want to have custom content that doesn't match their vision of the site style on their site, that's ok! But I just don't expect this Pelt system to work in a healthy or sustainable way for players OR staff the way it is now.
I hope I'm wrong, and the guidelines aren't going to shoot everyone in the foot as much as I fear. But for now, I'm giving PawBorough and its custom content system a hard, hard pass.
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