Asset store blogs?

News & General Discussion
1

Hey all,

Are there any blogs out there that review assets from the asset store? I type in unity asset store blog in google and all I get is Unity’s asset store blog :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks!

2

saw this link while ago,
http://assetsreporter.com/

2 Likes
3

Oh, thanks! I like their blog’s format

2 Likes
4

I appreciate a review site like that but it’s really just one person’s opinion (or a few people’s). Whereas if you read the reviews posted on the Asset Store plugin pages themselves, you’ll get a much wider range of opinions on a plugin, which for me, is more reliable.

I’m curious why someone would trust 1-3 people’s reviews over 50 people’s reviews on the store. I realize that a lot of assets don’t have 50 reviews. I’m talking in general though.

1 Like
5

It’s about discovery. If I don’t know about an asset, I certainly am not going to be able to read the reviews on the store page. But a blog can help by pointing out some assets that I may not know about that I might want.

6

Right, I get that. You can also discover by browsing the admittedly ridiculously huge number of assets on the Asset Store itself. By limiting yourself to the few assets that a blogger reviews, you may miss others they don’t. So it’s a cool way to bypass the chaff they sift out and don’t mention, but until they get through everything (which will never happen), you wouldn’t know if you’re missing other really cool stuff they haven’t reviewed yet.

Of course, you may do both and speed up awesome asset finding :). I think pretty black and white sometimes.

7

That’s interesting and I really understand both points of view… I will take this opportunity to explain a little why we started this blog.

  • 40,700 assets are in the assets store, the oldest ones have 4 years old. People have some difficulties to find the ones that makes sense today, specially with Unity 5. This was our very own situation, we purchased a lot of assets to only keep few of them at the end of the day.

  • The new assets are lost inside the updated assets and have no ranking before few days or weeks. Some will never emerge even if they are very good.

  • Today 13,268 assets have no customer feedback. Worse, a part of the rankings of the others are from the publishers themselves: some of them buy 3 copies of their own product with 3 accounts so you start with a 5 stars. Most publishers are reliable but a small part of them spam the store.

So by listing our favorites we are just sharing a small part of the catalog, but that you probably can safely purchase based on today expectations - and not old feedback or feedback influenced by publishers.

We listen feedback and read the forums to understand what people want or need, including the publishers that want to meet customer expectations.
We also, based on what we read or listen, we add flags to help those who are looking for something specific Examples:

We know Unity Technologies will update the store at one point and will address some of the issues, but we think an independent blog that evolve based on feedback will still be a value :slight_smile:

3 Likes
8

Good info Assets Reporter, thanks for sharing. Had no idea about fake reviews…

1 Like
9

I wish you guys good luck. I had thought about starting something similar awhile back but I then realized the sheer amount of writing that would be involved and thought against it. I don’t mind writing a medium amount but not the quantity that a storefront review site would need.

I certainly feel like trusted independent sources when any market gets big enough is always worthwhile. Reviews on stores are good but if you find a voice that you trust that is always worth more than random opinions. Fingers crossed that the Asset Store market is now big enough to support a healthy business model for you guys.

I realize that startups need to be lean and self reliant but if you do get healthy enough to pay for guest writers, don’t hesitate to message me. Your current focus currently tends to be on the art assets (54-12) and as a programmer my focus would tend to be opposite (the coded assets and I’ve already bought a TON).