Using common/popular art assets to develop non-MVP games

News & General Discussion
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At first glance I thought this Unity game was using Robot Kyle as the main character.
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Robot Kyle is that you?

Looking closer and watching the trailer I realized it wasn’t ‘him’ but it got me thinking, what does everybody think about using common (good) art content from the asset store - to develop a game that is not MVP, that you consider to be a quality product?
When I say common (good) art content from the store - I’m talking about popular packages. These packages are popular because the asset publisher is good at what s/he does and develops quality products. As a result the packages are bought and used regularly.

Do you have a negative reaction to seeing a non-MVP game (above average presentation of visuals and mechanics) that use some visual assets from the asset store that you recognize?
Or do you recognize visual assets from the store used in a non-MVP game and think - this developer prioritized the game correctly by focusing on mechanics over visuals, and used what he had available to develop a good game?

I have mixed reactions - as a developer I can see the benefit of using visual assets from the store as a big time saver when time to market is one of the top priorities. The other main benefit is using the asset store to overcome limitations in ability/skill.
The asset store is an awesome cache of tools and art pieces that allow us to ‘have’ things we may not able to create because of whatever reason, lack of time or ability.

However when I see the same unedited art asset used over and over again, I instantly have less interest in checking out the game. This reaction is probably because I’m just too close to the source - and know where the assets come from, how they are used, how long they’ve been around, and how many other times I’ve seen them before.
Most likely this reaction is also due to my personal interest in characters and enemies and my opinion that great character work is one of (many) the most important elements in producing a high quality product.

For me personally I’ve realized I only have this reaction when I notice (unedited) main characters, enemy characters, or buildings/floors that have been used numerous times in other games. And when these assets are used in non-MVP releases that are meant to be of a higher quality than MVP products.
Mostly I don’t see terrain and environment content the same way. This may be due to the customizable terrain/environment content in the store.

What opinion/reaction do ya’ll have when seeing art assets used in a game - that you recognize from the asset store, that you have seen used in other games?

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If it’s simply games people around here are working on it wouldn’t bug me. I’d consider it to be a very smart thing if they took advantage of existing audio and visual assets so they could focus their time on building an excellent game. If they were actually doing that I’d think it was awesome and say great job!

But if we had like 10 people all making FPS games and 10 more all making RPGS and so forth and all of the FPS games not only looked basically identical but actually were basically identical (felt identical)… and same for the RPGs and so forth… then I think it would be a complete waste.

I suspect that is more or less how it would be too. Only it’d be maybe 8 or 9 out of 10 would be nearly identical. And 1 or 2 would feel unique despite looking like all of the others. So these very few games I would be interested in seeing their progress.

For releases, if the games all played differently enough to stand out I don’t think I’d care at all. The problem is not so much the visuals it is more a problem of the games themselves. I mean we have this problem right now with drastically different looking games that so many of them are basically just clones. I’d see it as a great thing if by using existing audio and visual assets someone was able to make a game that is about 15% to 30% unique gameplay experience and is darn enjoyable to play.

If you look at most of the popular Indie games in recent years these games have not been popular due to their graphics. In fact, some might have become popular despite of their graphics. What you mainly hear people (as in the players not game devs here and elsewhere) talking about is how these games play. The unique experiences they provide the player compared to what was available at the time. Again, not drastically different. Too different is not good. But maybe 15% to 30% unique. That is what the most popular games have done.

Think about games such as Crypt of the NecroDancer, Papers Please, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Overture, Environmental Station Alpha, Hyper Light Drifter, Roguelands, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure, Downwell, Risk of Rain and the many others. Each of these is a very well done game and each offers a bit of “new” on something that was already popular.

I think any person could knock out these graphics quite quickly or find similar graphics around the web for free…

…but most of them wouldn’t be able to actually put it all together… make the actual game (like this one that sold 140,000 copies).

TLDR: Sure it makes sense to me. Focus on the game. If you want to make the presentation beautiful and unique go for it. If you want to use existing assets for the presentation you can do that too. Just be sure to make an interesting game.

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Well, for some of us it means the difference between being able to make a game and not being able to make a game, so I have no problem with it. :slight_smile:

What does MVP mean in this context? I’m pretty sure it’s not “Model-View-Presenter.” :wink:

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Minimum Viable Product - i.e. the least you can do to create a fully functional and complete product.

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To be blunt… I’d use the hell out of the art on the asset store if I could make it work for me.

Many times I have went to the asset store looking for 2D art for a game I was thinking about making. I’d literally spend hours searching and browsing only to find very little assets that worked together for the game I wanted to create.

Ultimately I just got burnt out on wasting time there and said to heck with the idea. But like I said… many times… so at some later point I did the same thing again with the same results.

I finally decided to tackle this problem head on. Just last night in fact.

I browsed the asset store 2D art for hours checking out screenshots, watching videos, throwing out ones I didn’t like and and documenting the links to the remaining 297 2D art assets that looked good to me.

Was going to hire this work out but it ended up I just needed to do this initial work up front.

Now the next step is to go through each of these 297 links… click on each one and check out the art.

Then Categorize the art so I end up with a document along these lines:

  • Genre 1

  • Ultra Lowres Pixel

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

  • Pixel

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

  • HD

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

  • Superior HD

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

  • Genre 2

  • Ultra Lowres Pixel

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

  • Pixel

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

  • HD

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc

  • Superior HD

  • Link 1

  • Link 2

  • etc.

etc.

And then I will be able to go through each sub category such as Genre1->Pixel and check those links for duplicates. I can do that much easier after the assets are categorized.

Reason being I noticed last night there seem to be some art assets listed more than once on the asset store (different URLs). Either that or there are some that are extremely close to each other.

After this next step is complete and the step after (removing dupes) then I can move on to the whole point of this project. To go through each asset and put them into sets. A set is a group of assets that are of a similar enough style they can be used together in a game.

At the end I will know which kind of games can be made from content on the asset store and which cannot.

There is just so much stuff up there using so many different art styles… it is kind of like this massive collection of art like going through a museum. Lots of talent and work to appreciate but hardly any of really fits together. I need to know which pieces fit together.

EDIT: I think the asset store has a lot of potential. And I hope it eventually reaches its potential. Whether that happens or not is entirely up to the artists creating the assets. If the store remains a sort of random grab bag of a multitude of different art styles and mainly just duplicating the same subject material over and over with those different art styles then it will remain something only slightly useful. If people start creating art to complement what is already there and fill in the holes. Well that is what I have been waiting for and still am. :slight_smile:

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These games all have a unique aesthetic though. For instance Papers Please visuals are very simple, elegant, stylized perfect to relay the feeling of oppression. This is something you will never find in the asset store because the game needs the art to be perfectly related to the feeling the game wants to deliver.

I would love to see any reference to a game that has used some (characters or enemy characters) visual content from the asset store that has sold 100k copies. Does anybody have an example?

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I wouldn’t be surprised if any inverse correlation between making money and using asset store content has much more to do with the other attributes that asset store content users have, such as inexperience, lack of money, and so on.

If you make a well-selling game you’re probably going to have worked in the industry for some time, know a lot of people who are artists (who you know that you can trust to make good stuff and not swindle you) and also you’re likely to be cashed up at least in the order of 20-50k dollars. So apart from rocks and such, there’d be no reason to use the store considering how difficult it is to get stuff to fit together.

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If someone with money, skill and experience was forced to only use assetstore assets I’d imagine they’d take inventory of the assets first and then build the game around what they have available, which looks good and cohesive. But who wants to really work that way? Having custom art that follows your original vision is just so much better if you have the option to go that route.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the slaughtering grounds has sold more copies but that really really really isn’t the kind of example you are looking for ^^. I’m having my doubts a significant number of games exists, that are made mainly from assetstore assets and still are successful both commercially and review-wise.

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I’d like to see these examples as well. I think there have to be some IF the people using asset store content are making interesting enough games and making enough noise (or having enough luck) for their game to get eyes on it.

What stands out to me the most about any of the most popular Indie games is the games themselves had enough uniqueness to them in their concepts and gameplay it made it easier to cut through the noise and get attention.

I wonder if maybe we’d need to look at mobile instead of desktop for Unity games? It seems like the majority of Unity devs are focusing on mobile. So maybe that is where we’d find some popular games using graphics from the asset store? But it is a different kind of ballgame over there. We’d likely not see 100k+ sales and instead have to look for 1 million+ (?) free downloads.

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I wanna throw my two cents in, just to say that for me, when making a product MVP, doesn’t necessarily mean “of lower quality”, but instead just that it’s basics are fully functional and there is not much “fluff” that might have made it in with a longer dev cycle…

So yeah, MVP != crap, in my case :stuck_out_tongue:

But more on topic, I suppose if somebody made the next world changing game, let’s say minecraft like in its innovation, and they used only asset store models and such, it wouldn’t bother me at all as long as the game itself rocked. If they were using it as a crutch to just fill in and didn’t feel like paying an artist or something, and the characters or levels didn’t seem natural to what the game was, then well, I probably would think bad things about the game!

It all comes down to execution I suppose.

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@theANMATOR2b I just remembered… at one time someone from UT started a thread asking people to let them know how the Asset Store helped them to finish their games. Not sure if any of the responses were for popular games or if much art was involved… but if we could find that thread there might be something in there.

Maybe UT used the responses to make a blog post about how the Asset Store is helping developers or otherwise used it in their Asset store marketing. So this might be another place to check.

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Even when games are not using popular art from the Asset Store, the question of whether their art really comes up different can occur. I just recently read an article pointing out how a bunch of upcoming MMOs all look basically the same.

Link here.

I don’t have a problem with Asset Store art. It’s only when it’s a jarring combination of styles that do not match that I feel like it was not used properly.

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The same can be said for many games. Especially ones the AAA companies make. I saw an article a couple of years ago that showed screenshots of the popular AAA military FPS games for the same reason. As they continually strive for more and more realistic graphics they end up all looking more and more alike.

I think gamers are just going to have to learn something that gamers learned long ago in the 80s and 90s. You cannot tell much of anything about a game by looking at screenshots. Screenshots might give an idea of the type of game and surely they will give an idea of how the game looks. But to find out the meaningful things you will need to play it. And that is why games could be rented or had demos or had many magazines doing reviews.

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I’m not entirely sure what your trying to say here, even after re-reading it a couple times. I’m pretty sure the majority of the popular art assets are developed by very qualified/competent artists. The content developed by inexperienced artists - shows and are most likely not the popular packages I’m talking about.
For an experienced artist to develop content that sells well they do not need to have ‘experience’ developing there own games as an indie, nor do they have to have extensive prior triple A experience developing content.
IMO - The best experience for an artist who produces asset packs for the store, is a solid and knowledgeable foundation in developing game art, and solid experience with Unitys art asset pipeline.

Good point, You are probably right about this. Might find a slew of games that are (marginally) successful on mobile that have used asset store art products in there games.

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I’m talking about asset store content users, not producers. The idea is that the people using the store to buy content for their games are often lacking other attributes that predict the success of their games, such as experience and money.

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Your statement makes total sense now. My brain was keeping me from looking at the issue from that perspective.
Stupid artist brain! :face_with_spiral_eyes: :smile:

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