If game companies buy 3d game assets such as from the Unity store. Won’t people notice that, say, the dragon in game X is exactly the same dragon in game Y?
Just wondered who exactly buys the 3d assets? I always presumed the main job of making a game is to create new, never before seen content?
Like if you were watching James Bond and it suddenly cut to some stock footage of a zebra (such a used to happen in old Tarzan movies), wouldn’t people guess?
Have you ever spotted identical 3D assets in different games?
Well you hit on a pet peeve of mine. You’re right the main work in creating a game has become just making graphics. I don’t think that is where the focus should be though. Sure make some new content. That is fine. But there are other ways to create new games besides just making them look different / better. Like actually focus on the game design and implementation in other areas. The focus should be on designing a fun game and then the focus should be on implementing that as best as possible.
I’ve read some postmortems of Unity devs (dont have the links anymore) that used assets from the store and I never even noticed them in the game.
They’re typically hard to notice. The majority of the primary assets are original while the assets they bought from the store were either miscellaneous, background sort of accessory assets, stuff that didn’t take a front seat in the view or they used them as a base point because it was close enough to what they wanted. I was surprised how well it worked when they were pointed out.
Wasteland 2 was one that I can remember. They had that whole stint of asset store stuff though.
Plus, the users don’t recognize any of them anyway. I’ve only recognized assets used in published Unity games (like on steam) one time, and I’ve never seen two games using the same assets… Of course, you’ll see it around here in WIP projects fairly regularly, but thats a different story. Most devs aren’t so lazy that they wouldn’t make them as least a little bit original somewhere on the way to release.
Make you main characters and NPCs unique, for sure. But there is no need to do a new model for every generic building, rock, vehicle, pipe or tree. Make your artists work more on art direction, customisation and the big pieces. Maintaining your own artists is expensive, make sure you are using them in places where you can actually see a return on the investment.
Nobody ever looks at a game and goes “Wow, they did a good job modelling rock number 375 that just flashed across my scene for 2 seconds and I’ll never see again”
You mean like Mass Effect 3 used a shutterstock photo for Tali?
Or like Michael Bay reuses footage in Transformers 3 from The Island?
Or maybe the wilhelm scream?
Yes, they will notice,
but most people don’t care.
In some ways I think you’re way over estimating people. Most people don’t notice a shocking amount, let alone what’s in a video game. Also you know about Unity and the asset store now. Most people don’t. Their brain isn’t even considering identifying patterns. Yours now is.
It’s like how I can look at movies and see how it was filmed and it actually looks like a set to me, instead of a video of “real life”, or how to control posture for things lingerie advertising and celebrity portraits. I can only see that stuff because I have A LOT of professional training. I know how to look for it, so I can instantly see it. So, in a way, the illusion is gone, but that’s what happens when you get close enough to any craft.
It makes perfectly good sense to buy silly small assets and just retexture them so that you can focus your talent towards your custom more detailed assets.
I have seen assets reused in multiple games, it’s not a big surprise but these are usually boxes, trash cans, benches, etc.
I’ve never seen two different games use the same major assets (characters, level layout, etc) but I can tell you that I’ve seen the same trash can in multiple games.
//EDIT I have seen the same major assets used in multiple games, but usually as an easteregg.
Why would you waste the time making those little things?
Boxes are a great example. I don’t want to pay my artist $50/hr to spend their time developing unique cubes. Just pick a few crates off the asset store that match the general look of the game, tweak anything that needs changing to match the exact art style, and be done with it.
(That is unless you are building portals companion cube. That’s something the artist can spend a lot of time on perfecting, as it gets a lot of screen time).
Using these types of assets over and over makes sense for what they are in the real world as well.
Face it, round metal trash cans haven’t changed much since Oscar the Grouch moved into his first one in the early years of “Sesame Street”.
Trees all look pretty much alike to me. Sometimes I notice a tree and wonder if it’s one of the ones I’ve seen on the Asset Store.
If a several people’s guns are modeled on the same real world gun, they’re all going to look pretty similar. Exact if they get it right, assuming there isn’t a copyright issue to avoid with the real world gun.
As others have stated, it is the main characters and enemies that you need to worry about. Even those 30 skeletal minions might not get noticed if you repeat them in another game, as long as the bad old necromancer, evil sorcerer, demon, mad scientist who raised them up is unique and memorable.
You’re behind the times. In the UK we have multicoloured wheely bins. One for paper, one for glass, one for plastic. So we can recycle and save the environment.
Yes, a small fraction of people will notice (I speak from experience) and it does not matter at all.
Nothing further from the truth. The main job of making a game is to entertain people. You are trying to make it fun for someone to play your game. If they saw the same dragon in some other game, it has very little impact on how fun your game is.
For indies, the reality is that if you want to make all content yourself then there is a very high chance you will not complete your project. Do yourself a favor: don’t reinvent the wheel, it is much more efficient to buy that dinosaur for $20 than spend a few days making one. The most valuable asset you have is your time, spending 30 hours so you don’t have to spend $20 in an asset means you are seriously undervaluing your time.
The main job of an artist (graphics designer, animator, character designer) is to create new never before seen content. If you are an indie, you pretty much have to chose between being a artist and developing a game, you will not have time for both.
Interesting. That’s made me think about it differently. I guess it depends who your market is too. Some people might not care about reused content. Others might do. No point an indie targeting at die hard gamers anyway!
A smaller fraction of that fraction might post on forums about the same dragon in games X and Y. People do such things for attention.
It’s not safe to buy 3D models if you’re a big company. Heck even them as an indie won’t help the situation.
I tend to buy stuff on Asset Store which are mostly Editor Extensions like Shader Forge and RTP (which end consumers can’t see or feel) or 3D models which are not popular on the asset store (genuinely the ones with low ratings). Or skyboxes, which are a distant details that can’t be seen, unless skyboxes have a huge noticeable detail like e.g cartoonish graphics.
Note that expensive 3D models or starter packs will eliminate such issue as there is low demand for them meaning less people will have it in their games means you won’t have such issues.
A perfect case study are recent Minecraft-style-survival-shooters. Two developers made a game and posted them on Steam Greenlight. Both had same strategy, make barely little no no changes and release the product. Zombies and UI were first to give away that those two were clones.
Their main problem was that they have used the most popular starter kit which was also on sale!
On a couple of occasions someone posted in my steam page: “you stole the sword from xxx”
I simply replied “I bought the sword here (link to asset store). I guess xxx bought it from the same place” and that was the end of it. It really is not a big deal or something that would cause someone not to buy your game.
