This thread got me thinking: I think there would be a market for game assets that are for a complete game, but without the code to tie them together. They’d be a great way for programmers to get their feet wet with Unity and learn their part without worrying about team management and art.
I know I’ve seen some small things on like CGCookie (the lander) and the Unity sample projects could be used the same way, but I was thinking about more complex games with more than 1 level, really.
And of course, the new Unity “Learn” area has assets for that purpose as well.
Anyone got any other sources for that stuff? I’m not looking for a link to opengameart.org. I know it exists, but piecing together a full game from those assets is pretty difficult.
It’s a good idea, and also vice versa if a programmer makes a game with placeholder graphics, makes it complete, then they could sell it as a template for artists to customize with all of their own graphics. The programmer could also build in some very easy to use customizing options/user interface allowing the artist to adjust the game to their needs and keep them from being the same as others. It’s basically like modding without having an initial game that’s already released.
There are a few complete games or templates on the asset store but honestly they are a bit basic and usually asking way more than anyone would pay for them as a player of the game.
But maybe you’re thinking more along the lines of the programmer ending up hiring the artist to do the graphics part and then reaping the majority of the rewards, rather than the artist being the one who claims ownership of the game? It could go either way.
Definitely wasn’t thinking about profit at all. Though now that you mention it, someone is sure to try that. Perhaps a non-commercial license would be appropriate for those assets. The idea is to learn, not to profit. The game itself only has to be good enough to hold the learner’s attention the whole time. They’re free to improve on it, of course. But to sell it, they’d need to purchase assets that allow commercial use.
I hadn’t considered the other direction, but I could definitely see a would-be artist using an existing codebase to practice with. They can already do this with a lot of the construction kits for games out there, though, so I’m not sure how well it’d sell.
The other question is, who is the game designer, the artist that makes assets for a programmer to wrap a game around, or the programmer who makes code for the artist to work with?
Regarding profit, either way I think it’s probably not likely that many people would buy the same code base in efforts to make a commercial game because there likely wouldn’t be enough difference between the games to make it worthwhile. The game programming would have to be generic enough like a shootemup-creator or a platform-game-creator type of thing, in order to give enough artistic versatility, and then more of the how it works stuff needs to be tweakable by the artist without getting into coding.