Buying AAA 3D Models with a group of people to reduce price

Hey there,

I have an idea about buying 3d models and just want your honest opinion on it.

Making 3d AAA quality assets is usually something that an indie team can't afford..
But what do you think about buying models let's say of a SCI-FI Modular Kit (Environment) \ SCI-FI characters
from an artist \ company who will make it cheaper because a group of people buying it so it will be profitable for the artists \ company and cheaper for us indie developers.

1) Will you be interested ?
2) Will you be willing to pay upfront to the artist \ or maybe pay upfront based on a concept art ?
3) Will you want these asset to be unique to the group of people who bought it ? Or the artist can sell it on the asset store ?
4) Will you want some sort of customization to it ?
5) What type of assets will you want to buy as a group ? -3d environment only ? characters ? etc..

I'm asking this question because although the asset store has some AAA quality assets but not all assets are usable for all yet because of variety,type of game, visual style etc.. and sometime i want a specific asset that will be more affordable + as a future maybe asset seller i want to know if this idea will appeal to someone.

Thank you!

 

You are likely to run into a copyright issue here. Generally an artist is selling you the license to use what they produce as a single company, or even in only a single game. Your proposal is that the artist is going to be selling the rights to their work to a group of people, all of whom have the same rights of use. The contract for the work would have to be very specifically worded and you would want to get it reviewed properly by an attorney.

Additionally, you could not make such a purchase from any of the storefronts that I am aware of because the licenses granted by those storefronts are specifically about granting license to a single individual or company.


There are also two other things that would have to be considered. The first is that if a group of people are all buying the same art, it is no different than buying on the Asset Store in that your games are going to look similar. This is barring, as usual, whatever modifications you are capable of making to the art after you receive it.

The other aspect is primarily from the point of view of the artist: Working with one client can be difficult; working with a committee of clients purchasing of a group would be a nightmare of nearly unimaginable proportions. I do not create art myself, but in my personal business I hate when I find out our "client" is actually multiple people working together; it seems like some issue always comes up purely from that aspect. From the horror stories I have read from various artists about issues they've had with individual clients... *shudder*

 

I buy assets from artstation, they often give you fair prices because they can sell it to others.

 

What you described is what the pirating scene has been doing for years. They all group together money to buy an expensive asset and share it.
Very not cool to the devs that take a lot of time to do this for a living.

 

Even assuming the licensing of the assets isn't a problem, it is still unlikely that I am interested in the same custom models for my game that several other people I know are interested in at the same time for theirs. You would probably be better off buying the assets all on your own and with a license that allows you to resell them yourself. Then publish them on the asset store to offset some of your costs.

 

If you have to jump through hoops with your money to make the game you want... make a different game.

If all you got is toothpicks, make a bad-ass castle of toothpicks.

If you put financial stress on top of the hard figuring and re-figuring and mountains of grunt work you got to do to build a game, it's probably going to be too much.

If you haven't built a few games and published them without any or very much money involved, consider doing that first.