I think store has a problem and i am not talking about all the gore that makes you throwup every time you visit store, no, i talk about good assets being lost in junk assets. I think there should be some system that not only checks if some asset meets requirements for shop but also gives that asset a ratting based on quality so that good asset creators are not getting backrupt because of letscallitsimply assets.
It is hard to create quality assets compared to all those one day work done assets that they get spamed by so i think unity need to do something.
Game developers shouldn’t be making games by buying stuff from asset stores. Go to graphic forums (deviant art is a good one) and post an ad, create relationships, and get an artist doing some unique work for you.
This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. Why should I spend my time, for instance, developing a node based shader editor, or a parametric modelling system, or something like Steam Audio, when those tools exist and cost far less than the equivalent of valuing my own time at minimum wage?
Many AAA game companies do 3D models and outsource 3D models, but they also buy 3D models they modify and change textures to speed up game development
You forget lot of people doesn’t have any design skills about level design or characters design.
For users that are coders models packs is a way to get a game done.
Also unique art costs lot of time, a good balance is using models you buy and models you make yourself.
Sure it can also be hard for people without 2D skills
Anyway i was talking specifically about making 3D realistic looking characters and level design, more about some 3D open world games.
Anyway anyone is free to choose to buy 2D or 3D if it helps.
I don’t know that they’re going out of business for that reason. I think it has more to do with price.
I can’t really speak to art, but for code consider how much it costs to hire an experienced software developer per hour, and then look at how many hours the purchase price of most assets would cover. For many people you would need to be making hundreds of sales per month to justify working as an asset vendor as opposed to just getting a job that pays by the hour. (This will vary greatly by region and market value of those skills, of course.) A job that pays by the hour is also likely to get you more predictable income, and is probably safer from direct competition.
As an asset vendor, and providing you do a good job of design and documentation, a lot of that income is essentially passive income. And helping people get started with your stuff is a lot easier than scoping a new project and starting from nothing. So the way I see it, it leaves a lot of brainpower free for other things.
I agree about direct competition though, that’s an issue. There are ways and means to reduce it but I think it’s the biggest risk - someone releasing something 5-10x better is likely to destroy your sales in an instant. I think the best way to avoid this is to market yourself and you stuff as hard as possible, release the product when it’s way ahead of competition and keep driving it along (adding features and improving UI) as fast as you can.
In terms of asset store quality - I agree that there’s a problem. I’ve worked with 4-5 star rated code assets, especially starter kits, that looked like they were made by someone just learning to code (and format code, amongst other things). To be honest, I think that the reason why Unity have been interested in making starter kits of their own is because of the lack of decent quality stuff covering all of the major genres. But, providing you don’t end up competing with a free asset from Unity themselves, this lack is an opportunity - a lot of this junk could be basically killed off the market by a half-decent competitor. And I think that a popular, well-supported asset is a lot harder to take down in competition than one might think - a lot of people don’t want to waste money, and they are looking for the telltales of something that’s good vs something that’s bad.
Truly good design, documentation and implementation are quite time consuming, which is time you want to recoup. While it’ll only be a small portion of people who need it, if you’re making consistent sales you’re going to need to provide some kind of active support as well. If you look at highly rated assets on the store one of the common themes is active and responsive authors. Another common trends is ongoing updates, which also require time.
I seem to have said this a few times recently… I don’t end up using a lot of the stuff I get from the Asset Store because so often they’re not up to my standards, or aren’t designed for use at scale and/or in custom workflows.
Still, the breadth of Unity’s audience means that those things can still genuinely have value to people. So the quality “issue” isn’t an easy one to “solve”.
Sure, but it’s much more fun to sit down and design a solution to solve a large set of variations of a problem, than to be creating a new design (or extending a very basic template) each time for a particular situation.
I don’t think it’s as much time as a lot of people think - I thought it would be a lot more than it turned out to be for my radar package. I’ve probably gotten 1 support request per 10 sales for that asset, usually something very easy that I didn’t clarify, stuff that’s solved in 10 minutes. It’s not an incredibly complex package but still.
As far as updates go, I’m still working out my philosophy on this. I don’t update very often (though I probably should do it more). If you’re in a popular category you’re going to be pushed harder (but sell more). And it’s possible to design a pre-determined pathway for almost any kind of extensibility - that’s what I’ve tried to do with the space kit I just sent off and we’ll see if it works out.
All in all, with the right approach, I think it’s quite possible to work out a situation where you have a steady income and where most of the work you’re doing is taking the asset to the next level (both technical and marketing), as opposed to maintenance.
I was responding to the thread there, sorry if it wasn’t clear. I think the asset store, like Steam, is caught between the two different values of wanting to expand and be inclusive, vs wanting to maintain a high quality. I don’t think it’s possible to solve easily, but when you don’t have much in the way of competition it’s easy to let standards slip a little.
To be fair… the one package I did release for an employer didn’t end up getting that many requests either, considering it’s circumstances. A couple of them were very time consuming, though, which may have colored my perception.
A simple package, though, so I would expect something more complex to have more of that.
Others have already pointed out how asinine your comments are, but I’d like to add to that by also saying that there are lots and lots of assets that are non-graphical as well. Seeing as you didn’t consider that aspect, my guess is that you’re trolling and probably have never more than glanced at the store.
I haven’t looked at the most recent stuff but from what I’ve seen their game demo content and template stuff in the past is very short-sighted in terms of architecture, maintenance and scalability. All of the demos I’ve looked at are pretty basic.
Unfortunately it seems like there is a real market for just shoveling out mediocre stuff that’s easy to use versus creating high quality maintainable content. A lot of basic users don’t even know the difference. The vast majority of people buying content on the store don’t even get half way through their project before losing interest or realizing that it takes actual effort to create games which leaves a lot of kits looking pretty good since they only get used on a surface level.
That being said, there are plenty of very high quality assets that are very scaleable made by people that actually know how to make decent software. The same goes for art on the store too, there’s disorganized garbage that looks good in pictures, then there’s highly organized, optimized and appealing art too that basically looks the same as the garbage on the surface but is way more professional. The basic user probably won’t know the difference.
