Change Is Good (Except For When It’s Not)

The apparent dive downmarket of the Abbywinters.com front page
should come as no surprise. The image projected at Las Vegas was
carefully controlled, as is everything this company does, especially
its vice-like grip on protecting the myth that someone called Abby
Winters ever existed or was involved.

Because, beneath all this, there is a troubled corporation. In the
past few months staff have left, often for reasons relating more to the
company’s lack of finances than their wish to broaden their horizons,
and a smaller and already overworked team is about to be faced with
generating increased content for a site being split into three
divisions on 9 April. It is clear that the care with which images were
created, the understated design and presentation, and the notion that
it was all real and unscripted is to be a thing of the past. The shame
of it is that here was a site which claimed to be ethical and to
empower the models, but which is now more about the power of its sole
owner, Garion Hall.

DFTR: I think what SemperVeritas is saying is that the quality is likely to go downhill, with the apparent changes at AW, both internal and external.

In my opinion, AW has been going downhill for quite some time now – and the warning signs came around when Vid Dude, one of the site’s co-founders left, seeming bitter and marginalised, and when Garion and Richard Lawrence (aka Elvaar in AW nomenclature) started cutting ties (the separation seems almost complete, now that Feck’s sites no longer use GMBill for billing).

Before then, there was a raging small energetic team producing a indie-spirited site. The old front page told you it all from the start. It was elegant, minimalist and arty and dignified (thanks to carefully chosen stills showing girls enjoying themselves, or in a moment of passion), and clearly made it evident that the operation was more about respecting women, showing the world that porn can be done differently, without all the catches that mainstream porn sites throw at you, or overloading you with too much information.

In the earlier days it seemed as if Garion was more than happy to take advice from others. Richard and Vid Dude came up with many concepts that led to AW’s current success, such as Intimate Moments[1]. Vid Dude had a plethora of video shooting/editing ideas that he wanted to try out – many witty twists were present on the earlier AW videos, and he even had some scripting ideas, some being realised (“Lara Croft” video), others not (eg. lesbian soap opera[2]). The unrealised potential of his ideas could have made AW a site like no other on the net.

But Garion has pushed these very useful people away from him, and no longer seems to value their input any more. He seems to have made some bad business blunders as well. Over the last year, the shoots seem to be becoming homogeneous, bland and rushed (with the exception of a few rare gems). The fact that they’re asking members to accept more reduxes instead of new models (through a thinly veiled poll[3]) implies that they have likely exhausted their new-model release queue buffer[4], and increasing the shoot release schedules (for the site split) is a poor-sighted response to this problem.

They have also recently lost some other intelligent, creative and uniquely dedicated valuable staff. Althea clearly went out of her way to keep the models comfortable and informed at all times (she posted about what she did on the boards). Diablo wrote some fantastic classy, witty humorous raves during his stint on the news page – entertainment in its own right. And Prue, her own personality being a fusion of sexiness and edgy humour, came up with the guerrilla shoot idea, that provided fresh hope from the sea of repetitiveness evident from other AW shoots. But these people have been forced to leave on less than amicable terms, by the sounds of it, and it seems they don’t comply with Garion’s vision of the site.

It seems Garion is very risk-averse, and seems to want to focus on the money aspect of the site, rather than any of its previous ideals. He seems to lack creativity on his own and wants to settle into a cookie-cutter formula. He also seems to be afraid of humour as well – something that glues together well with sexiness – to the point where it only plays a token role in the shoots if at all, rather than be a central element in entertaining the viewer. It’s like it’s written into his paradigm “no humour”.

Rather than rely on the indie charm that made the site so popular in the first place and take on the mainstream sites with it, he’s gone and changed AW so it fits into the mainstream’s expectations instead. What good is trying to change the world’s attitudes on things if you just go and compromise your own individuality and conform to everyone else?

He’s made that clear with the new front page. It’s cluttered, over-animated, pretentious (the awards aren’t really that useful for a member, as some of them are rather pretentious and have limited scope compared to some of their competitors), overloading (especially the review quotes and DVD blurbs), and yes, some of those model shots are so impersonal and disembodied that I think they do “make the models seem cheap”. And why should a prospective member want to read unsubstantiated self-written puff press pieces? This new page lacks vision and it looks like a convoluted peace deal between four warring factions.

And that could be just the beginning. AW may be good on technical quality, and for now they seem to treat the models ok, but creativity-wise, the site is heading towards brain-death. Garion could make up for his own deficiencies by taking advice from others, instead of trying to make the whole site revolve around his ideas only.

AW might seem like a good thing, but you could have had it so much better.

References:
[1] [forums.abbywinters.com]
[2] [forums.abbywinters.com]
[3] [forums.abbywinters.com]
[4] [forums.abbywinters.com]

Rumour has it that the Abby Winters Sydney office has closed it’s doors. Hard to see how they are going to produce sufficient material to keep three sites going after the site split with a halving of their production capability.