Unity what are you doing?

It might be, Gigi, that your level dots are too simple, that it doesn't give the impression to people that it does something for them that would it hard for them to do themselves. People purchase pain relief, or to save time. It seems pretty easy to implement some level dots, so that might be why people aren't biting? Also you kind of have to look for where there exists a real need, because it's much harder to try to get people to perceive a need that isn't really there. An asset has to do something interesting, saving time and effort and providing something that the developers themselves would find it hard or time consuming to create themselves. It could be that so many games implement level dots because they are easy to implement? These are just my thoughts. Keep up the good work.

 

Are there strategies for the Asset Store? I've struggled to make sense of what marks a success - like the iOS/Android stores, it's not JUST quality that matters. For me, I tend to purchase/investigate three types of assets:

1) Must-have, right-now scripting stuff (ex Vectrosity, Prime31, EzGui/NGui, ...) - these solve an immediate problem
2) Fun imaginative (ex particle systems) - sparks creativity, is playful RIGHT NOW!
3) Beautiful art assets (ex scenes, characters, models, textures) - might add beauty to my game

#1 is what I personally purchase most, so in keeping with Bullets-Then-Cannonballs, I took something easy to identify and easy to incorporate. And, I think Level Dots solves an immediate problem. Though, now I'm wondering if there is something else at play. Maybe there are different types of shoppers!

A) Hobby developer who is looking for fun, beautiful, creative things to add to their game.
B) Pro or Semi-pro who is quite confident and makes purchases that provide MASSIVE functionality.

This may explain why Level Dots struggles. The hobby dev may never be at the stage where a little polish helps take their game to the next level. And the pro is sufficiently skilled they aren't going to purchase level dots. To them, the cost is nothing compared to the risk that they'll waste time with a poorly done asset. Maybe I targeted a decent category (#1), and yet missed the two types of shoppers.

All is not lost though. I tried; I failed; and now I'm in the improve phase.

Gigi

 

So what will happen, will the users still be able to download there old now removed assets, just you wont sell it any longer? Otherwise its possible you are actually going to lose some of your assets which you thought might be available in the "cloud" for a later use or maybe I am just a collector of virtual assets.

 

I have to agree with this, Gigi. While your dots look cool, thinking from a use case perspective, if I were to design a UI that needed them I'd just factor their creation straight in and not even consider purchasing (and integrating) a 3rd party asset for it. Approaching it from the other side, I wouldn't design them in just because I saw them on the asset store.

What problem do you see them solving? I think that you see the problem as "I need level dots, I do not have level dots, pay money and get level dots". But, like imaginary says, they don't solve a pain point or save me time - I've never thought to myself "darn, I really wish I could have level dots but I just don't have the time/skill to code them up!"

 

Here's a prime example of something that is freely available online, which the person selling doesn't have the rights to sell, as a $100 asset sitting there since 2011. Why is it there?

Asset: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/1723

Notice the texture from that asset and check out this tutorial/example: http://benbritten.com/2009/05/19/fun-with-unity/

Unless the seller, "jesonzhong" is really named "Ben Britten", it's not his to sell.........

Not to mention there's no video or demo of what it is. lol why take up the space in the asset store with S*** like that?