I’ve been seeing games released in app stores that have been getting favorable reviews despite using pre existing assets and/or graphics that don’t have AAA quality. I know someone who is convinced that he cant make a game without professional custom made graphics, but continues to have problems finding and retaining artists. I also see games with AAA quality that amass negative reviews. What can a programmer do to make a successful game using pre existing or programmer quality art?
Write one. Seriously, there are plenty of free assets of good quality if you aren’t interested in a particular look. They’ll be plenty of catty comments for you doing that, like with that Slenderman game but so what.
I would try and get ‘artistic’ with my coding. I would think of ways to, through code, create unique or intriguing visuals, effects, gameplay, etc.
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If you want to do a 2D game with static sprites or simple animations there’s quite a lot of free stuff out there (lost garden, open game art, etc).
If you want to do 3D then in most cases you will need to at least buy some stock characters (from 3drt for example). There’s some free props and things around the place (reiners tilesets, open game art), but not a lot of good animated models (you can often find a single model but for most games you need a set of similar models).
Programmer art is another option, puzzle games and other simple 2D/3D games are pretty straight forward to draw; the tools these days make it pretty easy to get passable results even for a programmer 
You can try your hand at games where there is no art (i.e. programmatically generate the models).
You will need to limit your approach; you will need to think of games that you can draw yourself or base games on the available art work.
My website is dead at the moment as I’m migrating it, but here are a few examples:
Released Game - My First attempt at 3D modelling
Well there is a 1 man band called cliff who apparently makes all his games by himself, you have probably heard of it with the “Gratuitous games”. Or look at the cheap slender clone that has bad everything but its still #2 paid on the appstore.
Cliff is only a “1 man band” in the sense that he doesn’t employ people. He still hires freelancers to work on graphics, music, etc.
There’s nothing wrong or unethical or non-creative about buying pre-made assets and using them as your player and npc’s in your game.
The real trick is to take those elements and give them story using character, plot, and motive, and give them satisfying game play using whatever you can think of.
There are these things:
- Assets
- GamePlay
- Story
One can be stock or out of the box. The other two need to be new.
I woould be really interested to get to know these games and favorable reviews yo are referring to. Should be nothing bad to see what people can do with these assets. Just inspire us all to get to work harder, when theres proof you dont need custom made stuff all the time…
I’ve yet to fully complete a game, but having stock assets available to throw into my game to prototype ideas is a life saver for me. I’ve gone the more traditional way of buying custom artwork from freelancers and it was way too expensive, for me at least!
I could possibly do the art myself, but it would take forever and still not look all that great.
I feel that using stock graphics to work out game-play and try new things is the best way to start. Don’t worry about having custom artwork done until your about finished with making the game fun.
Then worry about grabbing custom graphics to finish off your vision.
I’m a 2D guy mainly, so finding good 2D stock assets is a bit easier and cheaper than 3D stuff. Hopefully 3D assets will become a bit more affordable for us dabblers : )
My plan is to make my next game with stock characters, then swap em out when I have the money to pay for some custom art .
On Odesk you could be able to hire someone to create a model for 300$ or so .
I guess it depends what sits comfortable with you as well. If you are okay using content that has been pre-made, and is possibly generic, then go ahead. most people will be none the wiser that it isn’t totally original, especially in the big-audience markets like mobile.
I think original content is kind of the hardest part of game development. If you’re a programmer you can pull off some content creation programmatically but when it comes to stuff like hand-drawn art, 3d models, etc… those are really tuff ones to crack in an automated non-human way. This is an area that all tools fall real short even Unity… Unity has introduced allegorithmic procedural textures which is a step towards this, but my impression is that for almost everyone, creating the artwork is a real challenge for every programmer. There has been very little done to create tools that can generate original art content, because it’s really difficult to do in code. I see a bigger uptake of procedurally generated content lately and it will only continue to grow, but it often needs augmenting with man-made artwork.
Another option for you to explore is user-generated content - let them draw and submit content for you for free… but it only works if you provide original artwork up-front that they like in the first place.
Well you might be able to get away with using stock art and going to places like desura with the alphafunding and use the money to buy new art (or pay an artist). Though I dont know how well it does.
how about brian fargo’s wasteland 2? uses 500 unity asset store assets. Nobody gives a shit, so long as the game looks and plays good.
You’re perfectly capable of modifying stock so it doesn’t look so stock, and looks in tune with your game. I don’t see a problem with stock. A lot of the AAA out there uses total textures, marlin, all sorts of stock. And you never notice.
Then you’re looking at stock rendering, stock motion capture… stock particles… any stock clouds? I know lets use speed tree for some stock trees that are modified a bit.
Stock’s here to stay, don’t be shy of it, but be sure to modify it.
It just so happens this new thread just emerged: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/159981-Greetings-from-IndieGameStock-a-new-2D-asset-store!
This sounds a bit crazy, but I’m not even worried about modify the stock assets I use since I’m just starting out . I want to focus on coding right now , when I have money to hire an artist I’m sure he can buy stock model A , and then texture pack B , mix em up and be done with it
I do both my art and my programming, it doesnt hurt to try and develop both skills, and proficiency is reachable in both, i consider it more a patience thing than a natural ability kind of thing
Im sure you can get away with using premade slightly modified stuff, i’d happily do it for prototyping and placeholder stuff, i would feel wrong and unhappy using them in a final product however (at least on a large scale), a game is a personal work to me, and these premade things make it less my own
Something I learnt from my visual fx film making days. Most people wont notice. A game I’m working on at the moment uses a bunch of stock models.
I’ll be customising some but some but in the end, it was cheaper for me to buy stock models than to pay for someone to make them from scratch, plus there was the added bonus of them being ready to use right there, not in several weeks time.
Remember, for some people game development is a business in business time = money.
And I can model, texture and stuff pretty well myself.
I think one of the big fears Indies have when using pre made assets especially for example 2d art, 3d models is the ownership of those assets. There have been many instances of fraud namely people stealing such assets from other people and peddling them at popular sites where these kind of assets such as models textures etc are sold.
The safer option at such places is to try and buy assets from well known 3d artists who will have both quality and a reputation to maintain. However, such artists will generally charge higher prices for their assets making its difficult to justify their purchase economically when it comes to small indie budgets
The bigger companies who might have the financial ability to use such assets generally have their in house artists. This is what makes it hard for artists who are just starting off to have success in such marketplaces.
One thing I find is almost all the art is different style looks like a mishmash of sorts, whats the best/cheapest way of fixing it (hiring a texture artist)?
Like that project it looks like its all from different games
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/159724-WIP-Phantom-Rush-Suggestions-Welcome…
Best advice: use an extremely low-detail art style. Right now I’m working on a 2d game in a cave. I started looking for premade assets, but eventually I landed on a simple style which only has a ground texture, and everything else is a black silhouette. It actually looks quite good, I think.