The Asset Flip (The Jimquisition)

I don't understand this argument at all. It's basically putting forth the proposition that Steam is the one place on all of the internet, in the entire history of the internet, that regular users don't dump on products that they don't like. It happens on Amazon, it happens on the App Store, it happens on Google Play. The internet is a cesspool of negativity, and PC Gamers are notoriously some of the most negative.

It further puts forth the proposition that, not only is all of Jim Sterlings audience made up of developers, but all of Nerd Cubed's, all of Total Biscuit's, and all of the other Youtubers and journalism outlets that have complained about the mess that Greenlight is are also made of developers. And not just any developers, AAA developers. Because many of the discussions of Greenlight dump pretty heavily on Indie developers.

We live in a society were nobody seems to be willing to admit that people can simply have different opinions on things, so we rationalize their disagreement by assigning nefarious motives. I don't like gold rushers. I don't like people out to make a quick buck for no effort. This doesn't just include people in my line of work. I don't like junk SEO websites, I don't like spam, I don't like pyramid schemes. Of course it hits harder to home when it is the industry I earn a living in being disrespected by people just looking to cash in on some perceived get rich quick scheme, but it would be wholly uncharacteristic of me not to be annoyed about it whether I am a developer or a plumber.

As far as hard work goes, of course it doesn't guarantee success. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't help a bunch. It doesn't mean that you should forego it. And it certainly doesn't mean that building the 1235th version of UnitZ or building 19 "games" in a year and plopping them on Steam Greenlight is going to lead you down the path of becoming the next Activision, or even down the path of being able to buy yourself a large pizza once a month.

 

@HemiMG You make some great points. The reason I wonder if it is more game devs than strictly game players making those comments is because of the way the comments are worded. It is possible that gamers actually check out the Unity Asset store. That is true. But I can tell you right now not a single gamer I personally know has any clue what Unity is or the Asset store. Now Unity game devs? Sure they know. Probably some other game devs know too. So that is one thing that makes it seem at least a little more likely these are mainly game devs moaning about the asset flips.

Beyond that is the wording. The "stealing", "thief" and so forth. Yes anyone can use those terms but it seems like these people feel very threatened by these asset flippers.Of course, it could be just a few gamers that have watched videos such as Jim puts outs and are now on the hunt for things to complain about.

I also get the same kind of vibe reading this thread. And here I am pretty sure they are all from game devs.

Definitely agree hard work can help. I work hard on things I want to succeed at. However, there are people who have succeeded at things much more than I have while putting in only 1/10th of the amount of effort. They just bought things that helped them. Had relationships with the "right people". Just all kinds of things really.

When I think of the game dev community these days it reminds me a lot of looking down at an ant colony. Little ants scurrying around working away. No one particular ant really stands out from the rest. There are so many of them and they are all active doing something. Occasionally, I notice an ant kind of heads out from the rest. Not sure where that one is heading but is noticeable because it is not just working away like all of the others. Perhaps while all of the others are busy bringing back tiny bits of food this one ant is heading to some windfall a short distance away just sitting there waiting to be taken. And that is how I see a lot of the people who succeed. It's like fishing, hunting or anything else. You can be skilled and you can put in the hours and still come home empty handed simply because there is nothing there where you are hunting or fishing during the time you are there. And yet another person comes along maybe 3/4 mile away and leaves in 30 minutes with their deer or a cooler of fish. It wasn't hard work that made the difference.

 

If a 13 year old managed to make a game and get it released that's not a "mistake". That's awesome.

I think the QA process of a store that lets such a thing through is a different story, but we all know its in its early days yet.

Or they could be people who watch Jim Sterling videos?

Also remember that while Greenlight is accessible to anyone with a Steam account it's still going to have a pretty niche audience of repeat or regular visitors. You're not going to spend much time there unless you're interested in upcoming games or how games are made, and if you have that interest then Greenlight probably isn't the only such place you hang out. So even without being developers, the same interest that brings people to browse Greenlight means that they might have a passing familiarity with things like Unity and it's Asset Store.

 

The mistake was incorrect business approach. The dude was looking for cash-producing easy loophole.

As for "making a game and getting it published", yes, that's a huge improvement compared to situation from, say, 15 years ago. Nowadays you don't have to write your own tools, your own engines, and most of the components are freely available for you if you want to make your own game. Back in 2000 that would've been a dream come true.

 

Oddly, that's the reason that I assume these people aren't developers. I think anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the asset store would use the word "purchased" rather than "stolen."

Again, I agree that luck, or connections, or any number of things can win out over hard work. But contrary to claims made in this thread, nobody is saying that making games has to be hard. If the definition of "hard work" includes writing a single line of code, or taking the time to find assets that fit coherently together, or bothering to spend a few minutes figuring out a game mechanic is, then yeah, maybe it should require hard work. But if that is what we now consider "hard work" then we have lowered the bar far more than anyone should feel comfortable with and certainly more than anyone should be defending.

 

I'm impressed that a 13 year old managed to build a game, even with purchased assets. I don't expect them to be a business expert on top of that.

How does anyone know that?

(Should I "demand" some evidence, here? )

 

I've tried so hard to be a good boy so this thread doesn't get locked. Please don't summon the Hippo and make my restraint in vain.

 

@HemiMG and @angrypenguin I hear what you are saying I do agree those things are also possibilities. They could be gamers. I just think they are just as likely to be game devs. Another reason is because so many people are coming into this for money. And from what I've seen it wouldn't surprise me at all for some game devs to be freaking out thinking "OMG those guys are getting all of the money and they are cheating!!!" lol It seems like people are so freaking obsessed with money in game dev. When people are out there actually running businesses to give low ratings to dev's games, leave bad comments, contact game devs offering promotional services and threatening to leave low ratings and bad comments if the dev doesn't take them up on their offer... it certainly wouldn't surprise me in the least that many of these folks complaining on Steam are other game devs. At some point over these past several years of the gold rush some real bad apples came into the community.

They could be gamers. Certainly some of them are I am sure.

And @HemiMG yes I don't think game dev should be any (well much anyway lol) harder than it already is. I also don't think it should be any easier. It is quite easy as long as a person finds the right tool for the job and for themselves. Each of us will find that certain things will make things a lot easier for us. And when I say "quite easy" I do think it is a lot of work and is hard. But it is manageable. It is reasonable for the end product. I don't want the day to come when a person can click 5 buttons and build Skyrim.

It's like when I do a 3D game I will almost certainly use Unity for that. I just think it will make it much easier. Yet for 2D having done many little projects in Unity and then trying several others for me Monkey X is so much better for 2D game development. I just knocked out a Halloween game (in my signature) in two weeks start to finish with MX. I could not have done that with Unity. BUT you and many others here maybe could have done it in two weeks or even less in Unity and yet maybe it would have taken a month or more in MX. So I do think this is already easy as long as you are using the right tool for the job and the right tool for YOU.

 

@GarBenjamin I think most of the only in it for the money folks are the ones that are putting in no effort. I can't speak for every developer, but I personally am not all that concerned about asset flippers and shovel ware pushers taking all the money. For one, I don't think they are making that much money. And for another, I always have freelancing to fall back on. I'm finishing up a gig now that gave me a nice little nest egg so I can finish up the first version of this VR app I've been working on. I was pretty burnt out on coding from the client work, so I've just been making the graphics until now. I'm pretty anxious to take a little break and start making things move in the game. Then I've got a whole boatload of work to catch up on with iOS projects and assets that need updating, and a couple other projects that have suffered from my burn out on coding and minimal amount of free time.

 

Honestly, I don't think it would be the end of the world if that did happen. If somebody could build Skyrim in 5 mouse clicks, then I suspect all of the games built that way would be exact clones of each other, basically rivaling the value of UnitZ. The really valuable thing for newbies would be if somebody could build a custom, unique game with the scope of Skyrim in just a few mouse clicks, and the trade off between simplicity and uniqueness would automatically self limit that from happening.

 

The statement indicated my opinion on the subject.
Said opinion was formed based on bit of cynicism, previous life experiences, assumption that murphy's law is more likely to be working than not, and belief that there are people who are looking for ways to get easy money, which was, in turn, caused by past encounters with people, who, as far as I can judge were not hallucinations (which was in turn based on the assumption that the universe I perceive is real, which is ultimately unprovable, see solipsism).
The statement was written in short form in hope that the person that is supposed to read it, possesses sufficient intelligence to reconstruct original idea based on provided text, deduce correct meaning of every word, and understand every possible implications and edge case scenarios where said statement is false, recognise it as opinion and not claim of a fact without me going into full programmer mode and providing complete and unambiguous definition of everyword and searching for irrefutable proof of every part of the statement.

So, you know, the usual communication stuff.

You know, we could also explore the whole idea of solipsism and mutually request evidence of each other's existence, then fail to provide it, but what's the point? It is boring.

The "demand" you refer to was written as a half-joke. If somebody didn't get it, that's not exactly my problem.

 

I have been working with and tweaking Unitz for over a year and kept it close contact with the dev. He is a great guy, it really pisses me off to see people literally make a build of unitz and add it to the app store under a new name. changing nothing about the game. shameful. i saw a unitz clone get 500k downloads and you know there is ad money in that. not to mention the clones i have seen get 10k plus downloads for 99cent.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.argaming.pixzuntday

some bs, on the app store they got more then 30k dl last time i looked on my phone.

 

it would saturate the market with so much free awesome everyone is locked in indecision. like all the minecraft clones now. thousands.... which to choose which to pay for... it would suck

 

So what? maybe the author of Unit Z should have stormed greenlight instead. He chose to make an asset. Unity doesn't get pissed when a simple mobile game makes millions made in Unity does it?

All this drama over a few recognisable assets. Pointless. Films do it all the time, non stop. Nobody moans. Who the hell cares? The entire issue is stupid. If the game sucks, then moan.

 

I definitely agree with @hippocoder plus it's not like anyone is stopping the UnitZ developer from throwing it out there on the market himself. He could make his own game using his own asset if he really believes there is more money to be made that way.

 

this is more about laziness to me. to take any template off the store and rename it doing no work. thats why everyone is upset.

 

Right I get that but you could look at RPG Maker or GMS or even Unity itself in the same way. I think it is terrible all of these people using such a high level tool to build games instead of coding it all up in C and random 3rd party frameworks.

 

thats beside the point though right? the entire issue is that lazy devs are just repackaging the demo content of frameworks and templates as their own content. we know it comes free, but you know you should replace it also. thats why all the unitz clones get negative reviews. because its just "asset flipping" for a quick buck.

 

The day people realize there aren't any shortcuts to success. They will finally reach success.

 

Oh yeah I get that. I was just typing to pass time more than anything. lol

Yeah I can see the frustration to a degree. It's just to be expected though. People see there is gold in them thar hills. Anytime there is money to be made you'll get all kinds of people. The ones struggling for years to make some incredible thing putting maximum amount of effort in, the ones doing the opposite the absolute bare minimum and all of the others at various places in between.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your preference) great effort doesn't guarantee success and doing the bare minimum doesn't guarantee failure.

TLDR: there is money out there and people want it.

 

Get rich quick schemers always annoy me, regardless of their method. Before asset flippers there were "reskinners" pushing out thousands of copies of the exact same game and cramming them with ads.

 

and i work with unitz right now

 

As much as I probably shouldn't say it... if a person... let's say me... really wanted to make money and that was my #1 priority. Let's say I absolutely had to be making a decent amount of money within 6 months to 1 year starting from scratch.

I wouldn't design a game with much thought of making some super creative cool thing. I certainly wouldn't plan out some 3 to 9 month long game project. That'd be financial suicide.

Instead I'd spend a few days doing tons of research to find the best combination of the simplest and most popular games I could find. Then I'd make a list of dozens of variations I could make of that game. Minimal changes here and there. Different looks and so forth.

Then I'd get to work knocking out game after game after game all centered around that core game concept. All basically using the same exact code with just slight enhancements as needed to differentiate them from each other. After I had the core game completed (say it takes 2 to 3 weeks for that) ideally I would be able to complete 2 variations of that game every week. Much of the time the only real differences would be in swapping graphics sets and perhaps sound fx.

So then I'd just keep completing them and throwing them out there. Then I'd contact as many places as I could each week to let them know about the games. Every week same thing. With the whole idea being a lot of this is just chance. It's the right place at the right time. The right name of the game. The right screenshot of the game. The right whatever at the right time.

I'd have far more chance of hitting that "luck" by creating numerous variations of the same game instead of focusing on making one larger scale game during the same period of time.

On top of that each of these little games becomes a promotion for my website or Steam page or whatever. The games cross-promote each other as much as possible. So I am building a tiny ever growing spider web.

And if I am very lucky I will get one of these games to "stick" meaning one of them for whatever reason is like 10x or even 100x as popular as the rest. As soon as that happens. I change to knocking out variations on that exact game. The Whatever Game 2, The Whatever Game 3, as holidays approach Halloween Whatever Game, Thanksgiving Whatever Game, Christmas Whatever Game.

So basically yeah I would just be doing the reskinning thing for the most part. But only because I have to get as many games out there as quickly as I possibly can. I have to build my spider web as large as I can as fast as I can. I have to find that one angle that shows me some sign of success so I can refocus my efforts around it.

I simply don't have time to focus on making some fantastic game because I am too busy making game after game to make money as quickly as I can.

Fortunately, I am not interested in making money from this at this time so I can sit around and think up whatever I want to make. I am not feeling desperate thinking "I have to make money asap!!!!" I definitely do not envy the people who feel that way.

 

Just about everything in these images is from asset store, including ships, gui, textures, etc. Nothing programming wise though, all programming is mine.

 

It doesn't have that randomly cobbled together look though. It looks cohesive and deliberately designed. If you manage to get your game featured by Jim, please link the video here. I'd love to hear what he has to say about it.

 

I'm tired of all this Engine Flipping!
Most games look, play and feel like either Unity, Unreal or Cryengine.
I remember before when each game felt different, before all these "engine flippers" started showing up.

Before we can tackle Asset Flipping, we need to take care of the core Engine Flipping problem! I'm just tired of experiencing the same code everywhere, people don't even bother trying to tweak anything anymore.

Seriously now, if you use assets properly, and make something worth playing, you don't have to worry about the lame people out there trying to make a quick buck. Its like a restaurant, if what you make is bad, people will try it and never come back, if what you make is good, they will keep coming back for more. No one cares whether the restaurant grows all its ingredients or buys them at the market

 

That comparison doesn't work. It'd be like someone compiled empty game in RM, GM or Unity, then it would work. Like putting no effort to export from RM or Unity (as it happens with UnitZ).

 

They had to find the asset, buy the asset, download the asset, import the asset, build the "game" (I mean do the build inside Unity), create the Steam page for it (including possibly creating their steam account), pay the money to put it on Steam (I think I read it costs about $100?), take some screenshots, make a video (or at least find one) upload the various screenshots and videos.

I see what you are saying but there is always some effort involved. Even when things look like there was none there were quite a few steps and possibly $150 or more spent.

 

In case of empty RPG Maker game they had to find the program to make it (likely by typing "how to make rpg" into google), buy the program, download the program, build the "game" (by clicking export button),

 

Exactly! That is what I was saying basically using such a high level game creation program is about the same thing.

Ha ha! Actually I am just being silly. Although there is some truth to the comparisons.

Certainly people don't even need to get something like UnitZ because I think I remember seeing the Unity demos themselves being released as games as well.

I suppose sometimes it is just a big thrill to be able to put something out there then show their family & friends "see it is under my name! I made this!" and other times they might be wondering if it is really worth the time to actually make a "real" game.

So they throw the demos or assets like UnitZ out there and see what kind of feedback it gets. If they get bad feedback they probably think "just like I thought. This is all a sham. Can't make money from this. Sooooooo glad I didn't spend 6 months building this thing".

Who knows really. Those are just guesses. I don't know what is going through their heads. Wouldn't surprise me if those two scenarios I just described happen sometimes.

 

I should totally put up an empty scene on steam and see what happens.

 

You could add a turkey on a platter to the scene.

 

And name game "The thanksgiving". With a GL description thanking Steam and Unity for being such great service/software.

 

Hmm... that may work for a short-term cash grab. Just a Thanksgiving / Christmas scene. Sell for a dollar. "Please buy this if you like Steam!"

 

Honestly, the only people who really annoy me are the ones that post the stock images and video from the Asset Store to Steam Greenlight before they have installed Unity and bought the asset. I have seen quite a few people do that on Steam Greenlight this past year. On the flip side, if somebody buys an asset, takes their own screenshots and videos, and then posts that on Steam Greenlight, I am fine with that since it is legal.

 

Haha.. The 'indie' game scene became a maleficent, gigantic, joke.

 

Well, every industry does when it gets in it some maleficent, gigantic... I better end it there as children may be reading this.

 

i love space sims and fleet battles this looks great!

 

Been a long time since this thread has been updated

Well, I just stumbled upon "Final Flight":
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=631952058

If it looks familiar, it's because it's the new asset "Flight Kit" which is currently featured:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/55700

And of course, it's already free and playable:
http://dustyroom.com/flight-kit/demo/

EDIT: e-mailed the dev of the asset and is fine with it

 

Why would the author mind? that's the purpose. To sell assets. It's not against the terms and conditions. Who would mind however, is whoever was duped into paying for it on steam.

 

Maybe it would be helpful to post this on Steam, if possible.

 

The dev of the template asset "Hammer 2" wasn't really OK with it (he issued DMCA against the Greenlight "reposts") so I guess it's a case-by-case basis(in the present case, dev is fine).

Now for the end-consumers, that's another story.....

 

Yup, I'll post the link to the "free game" tomorrow, hoping it won't get deleted afterwards.....

I was quite amused by this "dev" comment on the page:
"May I ask why you don't like the color scheme? We had a professor of art create the scheme for us."
I didn't know buying assets was the same as getting a full art course

 

Wow...LOL Someone should buy it and put a link to the asset in his comment section. lol

It isn't against the rules, so that is fine, but to claim credit for someone else's artwork seems really very lame.

 

I'd really like to comment to the users that they don't need to wait for the green-light and that if they think 1.99 is a good price they should check out the free version that's already available (the demo).
But apparently since I've never bought games via steam I can't comment.

 

It isn't really a case by case basis. You can use the asset to make and sell a game without changing a thing. What you can't do is to rip off videos and other promotional materials that the asset seller created but didn't include in the asset.

 

Done (but since the GL entry is not brand new, my comment won't really be seen by the majority of people who already voted)

 

Never been a fan of the asset store. I didn't want to cheat my unity education with shortcuts.

 

I don't mind using tools to build the game, but I'd probably not use the asset store to get something to place directly into production.

Who cares how good that $5 3d model looks? Players are going to get sick of it if it's in a million games, good or bad. Today's generation is all about graphics, this issue is not discussed enough.