Thank you so much for watching gang! This episode was a big experiment so let me know below how you found it and what you would like to see in the future
@@GayBearBro2 This is a problem that's been happening since the 2012 Kickstarter Scam-Wars. It's not a call-out of any one particular scam, because there's a million with entire RUclips channels dedicated to calling them out, exposing the amount of money spent on scam games.
@@ArchAngelLevon Well, with the tongue-in-cheek "maybe we can even get Nvidia to promote it" comment I think he's calling out The Day Before, which scammed Nvidia into promoting the game before it released and everyone realized how terrible it is.
Very good. Obviously it still needs a title, setting and point, but those are for the future episodes. Lazy marketing could just call it “Z Nazi Bang” based on the what’s in the game. A lazy setting would just be somewhere in America. A lazy point would be to keep yourself alive. A few good gameplay shots tied together gives you the trailer and a good screenshot with a tag line gives you the poster.
Asset flips are not an issue because of the assets, it’s because the subtle details of level design and mechanical cohesion are lost in the mad dash towards release. The flipped assets are just the easiest way to tell at a glance that the game has no care put into it.
THIS!!!! it shows that the devs either couldnt or wouldnt care about how uniform (in aesthetic or in mechanics) the final product would be when played or examined
Yeah, but it's not a problem when a big time AAA company does it. We'll just give it a name that's unique but familiar. We'll call it Final Fantasy XV.
As an example/counterexample, look at Only Up. The game is literally just a giant pile of countless thousands of assets, thrown nonsensically into the air in open defiance of both cohesion and gravity. And yet, it's obvious that every single object was placed with careful deliberacy, for both the gameplay and the aesthetics. The platforming is tight, as both a casual rage-bait game and a speedrun game, serving both of those completely contradictory styles perfectly. And the visual style leans into the absurd messiness, elevating the cluttered cacophony to a grand scale. Yeah, that's probably waxing a little too poetic for a rage-bait game with janky controls. But whatever that game is, it is the opposite of "lazy".
A DOG peer pressuring a person into making an asset flip for a quick buck is probably one of the funniest concepts I've seen, should be a skit or short movie
There's nothing wrong with condiments, even if you didn't make them, but if you add all of them that you can fit on a single slice of bread with NO culinary experience or intent for flavor, that's when you've made an Early Access Sandwich.
I hate how people equate asset flips with early access..... BOTH can be used for good purposes but one has little to do with the other. The fact scummy/lazy devs use asset flips speaks to THEIR nature and not the assets just like how they'll use the EA-label to hide behind their own laziness/scummy behaviour and in doing so give both a bad name and the illusion that they somehow equate where the only thing that is similar between them is usually the intention and/or motivation of the dev.... Good devs will make good games regardless of the assets they use... Meanwhile lazy and scummy devs will keep use glorious assets to make a turd sandwich
Ludo is the game developer we deserve right now (but definitely not the one we need)! I absolutely lost it at the "bang bang" sound. It was glorious! I demand you put it into your next game as an easter egg 😂
One RUclipsr called Wolfie(also known as HarshlyCritical) was on adventure of playing almost any horror game there is on steam. And for the VAST majority of them asset fliping was... almost a staple. One fifth of those were using the same house that came free with unity, so some of his videos were "Oh hey, it's this house! I wonder what's in the basement this time?". There WERE some intresting games that were using assets, and when they came up, he was really joyous.
For a similar series based on watching people play hot garbage and asset flips, Loading Ready Run does a series called "Watch and Play" because the premise is that one of the hosts is inflicting these terrible games on the other. They make clipping out of the map a goal whenever they can manage it.
The problem with asset flipping isn't the "assets" part, it's the "flipping" part: If your goal is to make a game as fast as possible with as little work as possible, it's never going to be good. This is the problem. Your game could be 100% bought assets, as long as they fit together nicely and there is attention to detail, I don't think anyone is going to call it an "asset flip", because most people wont notice. It's a problem the moment someone who hasn't looked at the source code/development cycle notices and calls it an "asset flip".
@@bloodywilliam3083 Ofcourse it depends on the exact situation. I personally have never seen an asset flip in RPGMaker, but I would also expect games made in RPGMaker to have a different focus than the most normal assets flip. You are not gonna make a first person zombie shooter in RPGMaker.
@@bloodywilliam3083 I really wouldn't call RPG Maker games asset flips. Rather i'd classify it as a particular style that makes it easy to tell if a game was made using that engine. They do have a kind of asset store where you can purchase various assets for the game you want, but they usually come as tile sets instead of entire premade levels. There are developers that do create their own assets for that engine too but it will still carry the signature style that makes it recognizable as an RPG maker game.
@@bloodywilliam3083 Unfortunately, those of us who use the engine are already stigmatized for a whole lot of other things, so there's no winning for us anyway. XD
@@nendymion the game does come with some premade areas, so all you would need is to connect them together with transitions. There are also quick events, which can be created by pressing control plus a number.
Seeing Mixamo, Unreal Engine, and asset packs back to back really highlights the double-edged sword of more accessible game dev tools. On the one hand anyone can make a game, but on the other hand *anyone* can make a game
The fact that anyone can make a game is great, the issue is that people can then sell said game and that people will buy it. Well, at least they get refunded in the end, so the only losers there are the people who sold it.
@@Oscar97o You forgot to account for damage to the engine "brand". See: RPG Maker getting a bad rep for crap games outside the very niche indie horror genre and the high-value translated Japanese games, Scratch games being considered a wasteland of amateur child devs' really crap projects, the old meme that every bad 3D game was an Unity asset flip that tarnished the platform and festered in Steam Greenlight for a while... Some of those have recovered, but it's taken nearly a DECADE to weather the bad rep the engines' accessibility got because the ratio of trash to treasure was so skewed.
As someone put it, "every good RPG maker game is good DESPITE it, not THANKS TO it". For people that know how to code, it's famously inflexible and it's a massive pain trying to do something custom that's not a Dragon Quest clone, and the big codebase rewrites (it switching from Ruby to Javascript to whatever language it runs on now) didn't help, making all old script assets unusable so you were back to square one.
@@neoqwerty And its really only in recent years that Unity started to get better public perception then absolutely shit the bed with it's attempt at it's new monetization model that nobody could agree on how it worked.
The gun sound effect just being "Bang" could be a great start to turning the whole thing into a comedy game. You'd have to do different lighting, and I don't think those are the best zombies for it, but it gave me a giggle.
Anyone remember the Deadpool video game from 2013? I think both the "Bang" weapon sound effects and asset flipping in general would work great as gags in a sequel.
The best thing about the release of The Day Before is that we get all these videos breaking down the entire catastrophe surrounding it and how it played out.
Fantastic video. I didn’t realize how easy it was to cobble something like that together for free and it’s scary how similar it looks to a lot of the genre out there.
ikr, ive used mixamo before to help me put bones on a ripped game model so i could use it in clip studio paint as an art figure but yeah it does make sense it gets used for asset flips too.
Asset flipping is absolutely fine (HOLD ON), so long as the pieces fit together properly. Fitting aesthetically, narratively, and of course, on a gameplay level. It also helps if at least one person has a vision of what they expect the final product, to look like. Lastly, to be called a game, it needs a failure state, and/or a form of progression. There has been some decent games, made from nothing but those pre-made assets. Just look at some game-jams. Some development studios also do semi-regular game-jams, which is kinda cool, and helps the creative juices.
@@Mernom I see asset use in game design like scrap metal artwork. You can't just weld a buncha crap together willy-nilly and call it "art". There needs to be effort put into what pieces you use, how they are affixed together, and you should probably modify/clean up the pieces first.
@@erinfinn2273 the point is that it isn't an "asset flip" if you take effort to make it work well. Asset flipping is sticking together a bunch of asset packs and releasing some barely functional - if at all game with a mishmash of stuff that doesn't fit together.
Working to make a cohesive whole is not asset flipping. Asset flipping is just hurling a pile of shit together and shipping it as fast as possible, that's what makes it a flip. They just buy assets, stick them together, and flip them like a really cheap real estate agent going into a fucked up house and putting up new wallpaper over the black mold to sell for a profit. Using stock assets and carefully selecting them to fit together and altering ones that don't to make something that feels complete is a perfectly viable business, not a flip
Elden Ring had store-bought assets in the game, it's just they were so high quality and well-designed for a souls-like that people had no idea and were even trying to incorporate glyphs found on that asset into secret ER lore. Even Vaati has a section on it in one of his videos. (edit: I should add he knew and explained as much, before anyone comes for me lol)
Wow I love this. It does 3 things really well; 1) Shows how easy it is to start making a dumb game for your friends to screw around with 2) Shows how much stuff you can grab for assets, way more than I ever thought about 3) Shits on one of the best examples of a broken game I've ever seen. I cant wait for part 2
@formorian5 the game "The Day Before" was an extremely hyped game that was essentially just an asset flip shell. There's a great "Cold Take" on it from this same channel. A lot of the jokes (no vaulting, mismatched animations, sponsorship by NVIDIA, etc.) directly tie to it
@@probablypragmatic6893 ah, THAT one. Thank you, I've seen the Cold Take video but otherwise only know of it as being really bad and likely a scam, not the specifics being mocked here.
You don't need to raise the cow and chicken for the milk and eggs, farm the wheat for the flour, or harvest the cane for the sugar. You just have to make a cake.
And the inverse of that analogy is also true. Dumping milk, eggs, flour and sugar in a cake pan and putting it in the oven doesn't make a cake. Relevant to asset flips: smashing a bunch of assets together and then marketing it doesn't create a game, it's just a bunch of assets smashed together marketed as a game. Making games is hard, and the assets are not the only hard part.
@@cecilkorik And putting a cake you purchased from someone else in a different box after you squiggled a name on the icing does not count as baking the cake either.
@@spinyslasher6586 who's pitbull? No, seriously, I dunno who Pitbull is. I may not know Daft Punk's real names, but I can at least name a whole album from them and three songs off the cuff.
I should make this assigned watching for my game dev students lol You’d be amazed what they try to get away with. One student turned in a one week solo project that would’ve taken a large team an entire month or two to complete
@@JUSTxK1LL1NGxT1M3 i forget what the theme for the week was but he turned in this massive action adventure game with multiple detailed enemies, all of which had their own unique animations. And it even had a freaking inventory system and crafting menu. And this was from a student who’s regular team made the worst games in the class every week and put in almost no effort
I actually bought and played "The Slaughtering Grounds" for a review in my university newspaper. Had a good laugh showing my friends just how awful it was.
As others here have mentioned, it's not exactly a matter of the assets themselves but rather the lack of effort when it comes to making everything work. They also make good placeholders so you can provide a proof of concept when you may still need a team for art design, modeling or animation. The issue comes in using everything out of the box then just selling it.
Honestly it comes down to the original intent of the usage of the asset and the vision of the designer. If they are creating a deep mechanical game and need visual representation and just works, then assets are great. If they need basic gameplay mechanics so they can tell stories and change the assets as the game progresses, assets from the store are great. If they are making a multiplayer game and are focusing extremely hard on the net code it makes sense to use the assets, but all of these examples the assets aren't the final product, they are placeholders for the final product. At least in theory, but it isn't used by larger companies that way anymore it seems.
I think there's this magical, fuzzy line between a game where you can't tell they used pre-bought assets and a game where they just gave up an hour into development and just wanted to make a quick buck. You start to notice the fuzzy line whenever you see things that clearly don't belong in the game, when the quality between the trailer and the gameplay is massively reduced, and when the shop starts deleting every review that points out what they're doing.
I am going to cite Stephanie Sterling on this one. "Talent is an asset." You can use premade pieces but you must put something of yourself in them. Break them apart and put them back together in new and thoughtful ways, blend them together with your own work, things like that.
I think that cohesiveness in style is a pretty strong bellwether as to whether or not something is an asset flip. If you have a zombie survival game set in a modern American city full of Nazi zombies with a fully-automatic AK-47 leaning on the TV stand in every other house on the street, and the kitchens have cabinets full of an English brand of crisps, then you've probably got something that was thrown together without any care as to whether or not it "worked" on a stylistic level.
Imo, pre-made assets are most useful for background fill, but it shouldn't be used for key elements that defines the game. Like if your game is aimed at a specific crowd, said crowd will definitely tell if you have cut around the corners on the one niche thing they are obsessed with. I occasionally watch videos about horse games - there is actually a pretty active horse gaming crowd - and I sometimes see ppl rant about how they can tell when someone has used a premade horse-rig asset, because those assets make horse legs bend unnaturally. And if there's something horse ppl know, it is how horse anatomy works.
In my opinion, the problem comes when assets are used without a plan on how they will come together. Like cooking, you dont have to make everything from scratch, but you have to know how to tie it all together.
My main take-away here is we need to support the Second Wind team to save Ludo and J-M8 from having to design asset flip games to EAT!!! GET THAD PUPPY A SAUSAGE ROLL!!!!!!!
I thought of a broken metaphor to explain the difference between using marketplace assets responsively and creating an asset-flip : Using marketplace assets is like adding a mod to Minecraft that add blocks to the world. Good, these blocks now exist, but you still have to gather them and build your house with them, which can lead to very good building down the line. On the other hand, making an asset-flip would be the equivalent of just downloading a Minecraft map made to showcase the content of a mod, changing two blocks, adding more mods that conflict with one another and presenting the final mess as your own creation.
At first I would say the scam would be making promises and not following through. But after seeing this video I am not sure. Thanks for the for of thought JM8.
For a long time I thought of asset packs as being a lazy, easy-way-out choice that diminished a game's appeal, but Vampire Survivors really changed my point of view. Rather than just trying to cobble something together without doing any real work, the designer started with the a gameplay idea already functioning on a basic level, and then stuck some generic assets in there to get it up and working immediately. It was quick and dirty, but it helped him see the appeal right away and showed that he had found something worth expanding upon. Plus, when he released the original version of the game on Steam, he priced it in a way that acknowledged the shortcuts he had used on the presentation side. It showed me that asset packs can be a great tool if used in the service of a real idea, and without the intention to rip anybody off.
Great video! As an electrical engineer we all so deal with this same issue. To build something from the ground up can be costly, time consuming, and by the time you’re almost done you find out that some other company has a product that does exactly what you need. It is far more common to find pre existing off the shelf parts that can be made to what we need done with a bit of tweaking. For me the difference Good and garbage for an asset flip is the intent and planning from the beginning. If you plan your budget, tone, and time something good maybe even great can come from it, where on the other-hand you pull a Ludo and smash together incompatible assets and mechanics and you have just created a hot steaming shite sandwich that cools fast, and a Cold Shite sandwich tastes worse. Again great video and besides Ludo being a crap game designer he’s a good Boy!
Plus, art benefits from uniqueness in a way repair and maintenance doesn’t. No-one is going to care if you kitbash the behind-the-scene wires if it works
There's something cathartic about watching all my favorite content creators who cover games just completely tearing apart The Day Before with varying flavors of creativity. This might be one of my favorite ones yet :D
Some interesting games to look at for this discussion are Getting Over it and Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica. Both made completely with store bought assets and really simple mechanics, but they're pretty good. I think a big part of it is that the genres they're in are relatively unpopular, so it's clear from the audiences perspective that they're not trying to get a lot of money. Also, they both have a pretty cohesive artistic vision, so you can still get the feeling that the game was created with care and attention to detail.
An even better example is to look at phasmophobia. Things went full circle with it. They started out using free/paid assets. But over time they gradually replaced those assets with their own self-made assets. And now everyone is making an asset flip phasmophobialike
Assets like these are like applying glue, there's a very real difference made between something being very smoothly glued on vs something being clearly made of 90% glue. I feel it depends on how easily you can see the seams so to speak. If I can't tell/don't notice when you use an asset that wasn't made by you, then hey, mission accomplished. You clearly put in work to make sure you presented a coherent whole. But asset flips typically just throw whatever was free in together, regardless of if it fits together, if they work properly, if it's bug free, or heck, even if it's got a matching art style. To return to the glue analogy, there's a difference between something looking constructed and something looking like you glued whatever was in the room together.
This is fantastic. I have no practical experience, but just browsing assets and toying with basic tools gave me the impression that with even a little know how you can throw a piece of garbage together in no time flat. And you proved it!
Asset flips can work well when used in two major circumstances. First, if the assets are used merely as the framework/skeleton that the final art style goes over. Second, when they're used for minor background elements instead of the major parts of the game (i.e. using pre-bought shrubs or something while the characters and major locations are your own design).
Probably not any self-respecting studio. Tho steam is full of those and they call themselves "studio". And sadly, when kickstarter was THE thing you could see so many mess of games that were asset flips, but that was during the era where people "couldnt tell". Which was also really sad because people fell for them on premise "it looks so good" and "look at those graphics! ofc gameplay is janky its alpha!" aaand eventually looked 10 times worse and ran at 15 fps. If it ever came out..
i feel the major difference between an assets flip and just useing assets comes with creativity elsewhere. bassically it boils down to what the dev is uniquely bringing to the table, whether it be a mechanic, or a story ,map design, game play loop, or even simply a super polished experience, but you should be able to look and say this aspect is what the developer was passionate to make, and the rest is supporting that idea. if you cannot distinctly point it out then its likely an asset flip (and in some cases just new/ bad devs)
Three main problems I see with asset flipping are: 1. When assets don't fit together with each other, usually because they're made by different people 2. When you don't know how to use the asset to integrate with other aspects of your game (either because it's above your skill level or the documentation is opaque) 3. When you start getting a lot of games that all use the same assets (such as Synty Pack) and it becomes really obvious that it's just an asset flip. None of these are inherently insurmountable, but it takes more work to do it. Assets are also perfectly fine for prototyping so you have something to work with.
Using assets like this is honestly a pretty great way for a newbie to get started in game design. ...just don't try to *sell* it. It's a learning project.
To me, what matters is the care put in. Like, I make and release free RPGmaker games as a hobby, and I don't make my own audio, visuals or plugins...But I put in the work in both the mechanics and the narrative. And honestly, despite only operating on the higher game design concepts, I've made some genuinely good stuff. Meanwhile, most asset flippers seem to just slap everything in without a care in the world for how it all fits together, or worse still, just buy a sandbox set of tools and republish it as a game. Like... How can anyone have pride in that?! I don't mind if someone uses stuff they bought off the market, as long as they make sure it all fits, and actually makes an experience worth playing. They have to put in actual work.
This was a great video on the way it was presented. I didn't realize these type of assets were so available so devs and studios can be even lazier than I imagined.
Asset flipping is like a hammer. Very useful to save time and effort, in the hands of skilled people it can do miracles, but if you use it too much and not properly, it just makes a broken mess. It's a tool, in a vast repertoire of the craftspeople
Ludo doing his best Jason Welge impression. For context, he's a prominent asset flipper on steam. The lead(maybe only) developer on games such as Time Rammeside and X 23 among others. LoadingReadyRun's Watch and Play streams catalog many of his games to be ultra long developments only to end up being something worth watching if you're into design. The Thriller Zombie brought back flashbacks to a moment in particular I thought I've forgotten about.
I'm surprised at how many surprisingly good (or at least okay) assets were free. Like, I can totally see a newbie dev making their very first game just slamming together a million free assets just to have stuff to work with. Especially when people tend to imagine like, mechanics or gameplay and not the assets involved when they're imagining their ideal game.
Man it's impressive what nick Calandra and the gang cobbled together here! Over at the place that shall not be named, but we all luckily *escaped* from, I hated most shows, just clogging up my inbox. But here, I love it! Banger after banger. Second wind quickly became one of my main channels on YT!
If you can't immediately tell what is unique artwork and what is bought from the store, you've got a good start. I remember an Elden Ring speculation thread where they were trying to glean more information from the decorative motifs on the buildings. They were getting pretty far until someone pointed out that at least three of the pieces he was examining were unlikely to have lore significance since they were assets you could buy right now on the Unreal Marketplace
This is REALLY engaging, as a satire and instructional! It takes the lid off the "black box of game making" and makes the process seem a lot more approachable! Of course we want to use all the bad examples here and do the opposite... hopefully the fact that it's satire is clear to everyone... XD
There was this old abandoned game called GRAV that, in spite of its somewhat aggressive asset flipping, had a fun game at its core. It was a survival shooter, yes, but instead of zombies it was dinosaurs and a lot of giantic creatures using some pretty stock animations. And what the game mostly did was play out like Remnant and ARK: a souls-like, with guns and base management/upkeep. There were three special things about it: -Random friendly NPCs spawning in to greet hostile mobs before getting massacred; you'd just hear a "AAAOUGH" in the distance. It was funny to go 'rescue' or watch them. -You would pay taxes to players. This meant that grinding resources was beneficial to the late-game players who'd been there before you. You'd hope to get to that point, too. -Invasions would just happen, sometimes spawning mobs of rare enemies that dropped what you needed. Like I said though, it's abandoned. I'm not sure the servers are even still up. I know my base's decayed for sure, though.
This was a fascinating look into the asset flip parts of making games. I was not aware of any of this existing, however, with the little bit of video editing that I've done, it shouldn't surprise me that there are so many assets available to just use in whatever. It certainly gives some insight into how a game can look so good yet be so terrible, or at least that it has the potential to look good yet be terrible.
I think the problem with asset flip games often starts before development even begins. The reason we view them with such derision is they often lack creative vision. The effort using assets saves can be felt by the audience in the lack of cohesion. You need a strong creative idea and the ability to clearly communicate it to get past that, a enthralling unique mechanic, a really well told story, etc. Something slammed out quickly to make money lacks creative vision to hold it together, and the other kind you see is individual’s with an inflated ego who think they’re gifting their vision to the masses, but that vision is either basic or completely inscutable (Gilson B Pontis). Stephanie Sterling did a little audience contest aaages back to take a really overused asset from the asset flip drek and make something innovative using just itself. Someone made a *font* out of it’s pieces, someone made a game using this creatures model as the surface you move around. That’s creative vision
The fact that character implementation somehow removed the built in steep/climb on the Z axis that unreal has by default on a Character, hell even in general Pawn, class
Thank you so much for watching gang! This episode was a big experiment so let me know below how you found it and what you would like to see in the future
I loved it and look forward to episode 2. Is this meant to call out a certain terrible scam that was promoted as a game?
@@GayBearBro2 This is a problem that's been happening since the 2012 Kickstarter Scam-Wars.
It's not a call-out of any one particular scam, because there's a million with entire RUclips channels dedicated to calling them out, exposing the amount of money spent on scam games.
Game looks pretty good. I couldn't find it on steam, what's the name?
@@ArchAngelLevon Well, with the tongue-in-cheek "maybe we can even get Nvidia to promote it" comment I think he's calling out The Day Before, which scammed Nvidia into promoting the game before it released and everyone realized how terrible it is.
Very good. Obviously it still needs a title, setting and point, but those are for the future episodes. Lazy marketing could just call it “Z Nazi Bang” based on the what’s in the game. A lazy setting would just be somewhere in America. A lazy point would be to keep yourself alive. A few good gameplay shots tied together gives you the trailer and a good screenshot with a tag line gives you the poster.
Asset flips are not an issue because of the assets, it’s because the subtle details of level design and mechanical cohesion are lost in the mad dash towards release. The flipped assets are just the easiest way to tell at a glance that the game has no care put into it.
Whenever I've played free asset flips everything just feels off, I'm not sure what it its but it's just wrong.
THIS!!!! it shows that the devs either couldnt or wouldnt care about how uniform (in aesthetic or in mechanics) the final product would be when played or examined
Yeah, but it's not a problem when a big time AAA company does it. We'll just give it a name that's unique but familiar. We'll call it Final Fantasy XV.
As an example/counterexample, look at Only Up. The game is literally just a giant pile of countless thousands of assets, thrown nonsensically into the air in open defiance of both cohesion and gravity.
And yet, it's obvious that every single object was placed with careful deliberacy, for both the gameplay and the aesthetics. The platforming is tight, as both a casual rage-bait game and a speedrun game, serving both of those completely contradictory styles perfectly. And the visual style leans into the absurd messiness, elevating the cluttered cacophony to a grand scale.
Yeah, that's probably waxing a little too poetic for a rage-bait game with janky controls. But whatever that game is, it is the opposite of "lazy".
yas we heard that in the video
What an incredibly savage takedown of one game in particular, without ever even saying its name. 😂
James gets it
Redfall?
I bet it won't even be a day before someone mentions the name in this thread.
@@blaster915 Nope
@@SheeplessNW6 44 sec at the time of writing
"Is this because you want people to know you made it? Ludo i don't think you want that" gonna be my favourite quote of the year.
A DOG peer pressuring a person into making an asset flip for a quick buck is probably one of the funniest concepts I've seen, should be a skit or short movie
Puppy needs her bones!
Ludo is pretty mercenary.
The Dog Before
bit like the oppawsit of wallace and gromit
Or a.... game? 😁
There's nothing wrong with condiments, even if you didn't make them, but if you add all of them that you can fit on a single slice of bread with NO culinary experience or intent for flavor, that's when you've made an Early Access Sandwich.
I hate how people equate asset flips with early access..... BOTH can be used for good purposes but one has little to do with the other. The fact scummy/lazy devs use asset flips speaks to THEIR nature and not the assets just like how they'll use the EA-label to hide behind their own laziness/scummy behaviour and in doing so give both a bad name and the illusion that they somehow equate where the only thing that is similar between them is usually the intention and/or motivation of the dev....
Good devs will make good games regardless of the assets they use...
Meanwhile lazy and scummy devs will keep use glorious assets to make a turd sandwich
1:51 I love the little touch of Ludo kicking dirt on unity.
I don't think that was dirt...
Ludo's paws were still...that was not dirt...
@@legomaniac213 @Vilamus the dirt was kicked because that's what dogs do after what you saw on the untiy logo 😁
Best boy.
Ludo is the game developer we deserve right now (but definitely not the one we need)!
I absolutely lost it at the "bang bang" sound. It was glorious! I demand you put it into your next game as an easter egg 😂
Timesplitters: Future Perfect had human-voiced foley as an unlockable Easter egg. First thing that came to my mind lol
@@captainnurbles9169 Didn't the first Dead Space also do that as well, on top of using a foam #1 Fan! hand?
One RUclipsr called Wolfie(also known as HarshlyCritical) was on adventure of playing almost any horror game there is on steam. And for the VAST majority of them asset fliping was... almost a staple. One fifth of those were using the same house that came free with unity, so some of his videos were "Oh hey, it's this house! I wonder what's in the basement this time?". There WERE some intresting games that were using assets, and when they came up, he was really joyous.
Oh hell yeah, a fellow John Wolfe fan!
Loved this archnemesis of Residential House and then having people do a Game Jam using that assest
At the time it was Unity horror games.
Now it's Unreal realistic shooters.
Different engine, same phenomenon.
For a similar series based on watching people play hot garbage and asset flips, Loading Ready Run does a series called "Watch and Play" because the premise is that one of the hosts is inflicting these terrible games on the other.
They make clipping out of the map a goal whenever they can manage it.
@@parkerdixon-word6295 That sounds like a fun series, I'll check it out now, thank you!
The problem with asset flipping isn't the "assets" part, it's the "flipping" part: If your goal is to make a game as fast as possible with as little work as possible, it's never going to be good. This is the problem. Your game could be 100% bought assets, as long as they fit together nicely and there is attention to detail, I don't think anyone is going to call it an "asset flip", because most people wont notice. It's a problem the moment someone who hasn't looked at the source code/development cycle notices and calls it an "asset flip".
How does this apply to games made with RPGMaker, whose assets are VERY recognizable?
@@bloodywilliam3083 Ofcourse it depends on the exact situation. I personally have never seen an asset flip in RPGMaker, but I would also expect games made in RPGMaker to have a different focus than the most normal assets flip. You are not gonna make a first person zombie shooter in RPGMaker.
@@bloodywilliam3083 I really wouldn't call RPG Maker games asset flips. Rather i'd classify it as a particular style that makes it easy to tell if a game was made using that engine. They do have a kind of asset store where you can purchase various assets for the game you want, but they usually come as tile sets instead of entire premade levels. There are developers that do create their own assets for that engine too but it will still carry the signature style that makes it recognizable as an RPG maker game.
@@bloodywilliam3083 Unfortunately, those of us who use the engine are already stigmatized for a whole lot of other things, so there's no winning for us anyway. XD
@@nendymion the game does come with some premade areas, so all you would need is to connect them together with transitions. There are also quick events, which can be created by pressing control plus a number.
Seeing Mixamo, Unreal Engine, and asset packs back to back really highlights the double-edged sword of more accessible game dev tools. On the one hand anyone can make a game, but on the other hand *anyone* can make a game
The fact that anyone can make a game is great, the issue is that people can then sell said game and that people will buy it. Well, at least they get refunded in the end, so the only losers there are the people who sold it.
@@Oscar97o You forgot to account for damage to the engine "brand".
See: RPG Maker getting a bad rep for crap games outside the very niche indie horror genre and the high-value translated Japanese games, Scratch games being considered a wasteland of amateur child devs' really crap projects, the old meme that every bad 3D game was an Unity asset flip that tarnished the platform and festered in Steam Greenlight for a while...
Some of those have recovered, but it's taken nearly a DECADE to weather the bad rep the engines' accessibility got because the ratio of trash to treasure was so skewed.
As someone put it, "every good RPG maker game is good DESPITE it, not THANKS TO it". For people that know how to code, it's famously inflexible and it's a massive pain trying to do something custom that's not a Dragon Quest clone, and the big codebase rewrites (it switching from Ruby to Javascript to whatever language it runs on now) didn't help, making all old script assets unusable so you were back to square one.
This is the double edge sword with level design tools in your favorite games, too. Not everyone is creative and skilled enough to make good things.
@@neoqwerty And its really only in recent years that Unity started to get better public perception then absolutely shit the bed with it's attempt at it's new monetization model that nobody could agree on how it worked.
The gun sound effect just being "Bang" could be a great start to turning the whole thing into a comedy game. You'd have to do different lighting, and I don't think those are the best zombies for it, but it gave me a giggle.
Yeah you could totally work from that
Absolutely the right zombies. Comedy Nazi zombies - ever seen Dead Snow?
Anyone remember the Deadpool video game from 2013? I think both the "Bang" weapon sound effects and asset flipping in general would work great as gags in a sequel.
The best thing about the release of The Day Before is that we get all these videos breaking down the entire catastrophe surrounding it and how it played out.
Fantastic video. I didn’t realize how easy it was to cobble something like that together for free and it’s scary how similar it looks to a lot of the genre out there.
ikr, ive used mixamo before to help me put bones on a ripped game model so i could use it in clip studio paint as an art figure but yeah it does make sense it gets used for asset flips too.
Asset flipping is absolutely fine (HOLD ON), so long as the pieces fit together properly. Fitting aesthetically, narratively, and of course, on a gameplay level. It also helps if at least one person has a vision of what they expect the final product, to look like. Lastly, to be called a game, it needs a failure state, and/or a form of progression. There has been some decent games, made from nothing but those pre-made assets. Just look at some game-jams. Some development studios also do semi-regular game-jams, which is kinda cool, and helps the creative juices.
@@Mernom I see asset use in game design like scrap metal artwork. You can't just weld a buncha crap together willy-nilly and call it "art". There needs to be effort put into what pieces you use, how they are affixed together, and you should probably modify/clean up the pieces first.
@@erinfinn2273 the point is that it isn't an "asset flip" if you take effort to make it work well. Asset flipping is sticking together a bunch of asset packs and releasing some barely functional - if at all game with a mishmash of stuff that doesn't fit together.
Working to make a cohesive whole is not asset flipping. Asset flipping is just hurling a pile of shit together and shipping it as fast as possible, that's what makes it a flip. They just buy assets, stick them together, and flip them like a really cheap real estate agent going into a fucked up house and putting up new wallpaper over the black mold to sell for a profit. Using stock assets and carefully selecting them to fit together and altering ones that don't to make something that feels complete is a perfectly viable business, not a flip
Lixian's cleaning game springs to mind as an asset flip done well
Elden Ring had store-bought assets in the game, it's just they were so high quality and well-designed for a souls-like that people had no idea and were even trying to incorporate glyphs found on that asset into secret ER lore. Even Vaati has a section on it in one of his videos. (edit: I should add he knew and explained as much, before anyone comes for me lol)
We have (allegedly) "The Day Prior" to Thank for this Informative, Educational and Enlightening Experience.
My Motto: NEVER Stop Learning.
Wow I love this.
It does 3 things really well;
1) Shows how easy it is to start making a dumb game for your friends to screw around with
2) Shows how much stuff you can grab for assets, way more than I ever thought about
3) Shits on one of the best examples of a broken game I've ever seen.
I cant wait for part 2
This is the third comment I've seen mentioning dunking on a specific game without naming it.
Would you enlighten me?
@@formorian5 im suspecting its about the day before
@formorian5 the game "The Day Before" was an extremely hyped game that was essentially just an asset flip shell. There's a great "Cold Take" on it from this same channel.
A lot of the jokes (no vaulting, mismatched animations, sponsorship by NVIDIA, etc.) directly tie to it
@@probablypragmatic6893 ah, THAT one. Thank you, I've seen the Cold Take video but otherwise only know of it as being really bad and likely a scam, not the specifics being mocked here.
@@formorian5The way they never mention "The Day Before" but kept showing clips from the most recent trailer was subtle but perfect.
You don't need to raise the cow and chicken for the milk and eggs, farm the wheat for the flour, or harvest the cane for the sugar. You just have to make a cake.
And the inverse of that analogy is also true. Dumping milk, eggs, flour and sugar in a cake pan and putting it in the oven doesn't make a cake. Relevant to asset flips: smashing a bunch of assets together and then marketing it doesn't create a game, it's just a bunch of assets smashed together marketed as a game. Making games is hard, and the assets are not the only hard part.
@@cecilkorik And putting a cake you purchased from someone else in a different box after you squiggled a name on the icing does not count as baking the cake either.
What's even worse is when the chef gets mad at you for critiquing them when they haven't even cooked anything.
Okay, i have amde a universe, whatt do i do next?
@@chaim1842Carl Sagan reference?
Asset flipping is like sampling music, you got your Daft Punks and you've got your Pitbulls
Atleast Pitbull got money and fame while doing it.
Or worse... David Guetta
Your Avalanches & your Vanilla Ices
@@spinyslasher6586 who's pitbull?
No, seriously, I dunno who Pitbull is. I may not know Daft Punk's real names, but I can at least name a whole album from them and three songs off the cuff.
@@neoqwerty pitbull is a latin american rapper that says "mami" every two or three words, sorry to be this broad
"Press the Any key" Incredible
Goat Simulator had that on the title screen
I should make this assigned watching for my game dev students lol
You’d be amazed what they try to get away with. One student turned in a one week solo project that would’ve taken a large team an entire month or two to complete
wait huh? is it possible to elaborate???
@@JUSTxK1LL1NGxT1M3 i forget what the theme for the week was but he turned in this massive action adventure game with multiple detailed enemies, all of which had their own unique animations. And it even had a freaking inventory system and crafting menu.
And this was from a student who’s regular team made the worst games in the class every week and put in almost no effort
Both design delve and Yahtzs "Dev Diary" series would be great for learning purposes imo
@@justinbuergi9867 Sounds like plagiarism to me.
@@justinbuergi9867 wow....yeah thats um. Pretty obvious its a asset flip!
Fully ramblomatic and design delve are my favorite series rn!
Make sure to make it incredibly broken and offensive so Stephanie plays it.
I enjoyed the whole Digital Homicide debacle, in retrospect.
I actually bought and played "The Slaughtering Grounds" for a review in my university newspaper. Had a good laugh showing my friends just how awful it was.
@@jamesboyle6134 Therefore it became profitable and now there will be more of them.
@@MedievalGenie It did not
How is "Stephanie fucking Sterling, Son" these days?
As others here have mentioned, it's not exactly a matter of the assets themselves but rather the lack of effort when it comes to making everything work. They also make good placeholders so you can provide a proof of concept when you may still need a team for art design, modeling or animation. The issue comes in using everything out of the box then just selling it.
Honestly it comes down to the original intent of the usage of the asset and the vision of the designer. If they are creating a deep mechanical game and need visual representation and just works, then assets are great. If they need basic gameplay mechanics so they can tell stories and change the assets as the game progresses, assets from the store are great. If they are making a multiplayer game and are focusing extremely hard on the net code it makes sense to use the assets, but all of these examples the assets aren't the final product, they are placeholders for the final product. At least in theory, but it isn't used by larger companies that way anymore it seems.
Ludo dumping on Unity was a good touch
I think there's this magical, fuzzy line between a game where you can't tell they used pre-bought assets and a game where they just gave up an hour into development and just wanted to make a quick buck. You start to notice the fuzzy line whenever you see things that clearly don't belong in the game, when the quality between the trailer and the gameplay is massively reduced, and when the shop starts deleting every review that points out what they're doing.
Ludo did develop really well into a character, clearly she is the main character of the series now
I am going to cite Stephanie Sterling on this one. "Talent is an asset." You can use premade pieces but you must put something of yourself in them. Break them apart and put them back together in new and thoughtful ways, blend them together with your own work, things like that.
This was a fntastic look at how, a day before release, a game can be thrown together.
I think that cohesiveness in style is a pretty strong bellwether as to whether or not something is an asset flip. If you have a zombie survival game set in a modern American city full of Nazi zombies with a fully-automatic AK-47 leaning on the TV stand in every other house on the street, and the kitchens have cabinets full of an English brand of crisps, then you've probably got something that was thrown together without any care as to whether or not it "worked" on a stylistic level.
Sure but having Walkers brand crisps in a zombie game is funny enough that you can keep my $1.20
"Explain yourself!? ... God your cute, whatever!"
🤣EVERY pet owner has had some variation of that dialog exchange in their life. Even some parents.
Imo, pre-made assets are most useful for background fill, but it shouldn't be used for key elements that defines the game. Like if your game is aimed at a specific crowd, said crowd will definitely tell if you have cut around the corners on the one niche thing they are obsessed with.
I occasionally watch videos about horse games - there is actually a pretty active horse gaming crowd - and I sometimes see ppl rant about how they can tell when someone has used a premade horse-rig asset, because those assets make horse legs bend unnaturally. And if there's something horse ppl know, it is how horse anatomy works.
"Have you been eating producer pills" is such a wild sentence xD
But very much on point, looking forward to the next episode on this one.
In my opinion, the problem comes when assets are used without a plan on how they will come together. Like cooking, you dont have to make everything from scratch, but you have to know how to tie it all together.
My main take-away here is we need to support the Second Wind team to save Ludo and J-M8 from having to design asset flip games to EAT!!! GET THAD PUPPY A SAUSAGE ROLL!!!!!!!
... thank you so much for the sausage roll gift
I thought of a broken metaphor to explain the difference between using marketplace assets responsively and creating an asset-flip :
Using marketplace assets is like adding a mod to Minecraft that add blocks to the world. Good, these blocks now exist, but you still have to gather them and build your house with them, which can lead to very good building down the line.
On the other hand, making an asset-flip would be the equivalent of just downloading a Minecraft map made to showcase the content of a mod, changing two blocks, adding more mods that conflict with one another and presenting the final mess as your own creation.
The sound effects pack being someone just flatly yelling, "BANG," had me rolling.
At first I would say the scam would be making promises and not following through. But after seeing this video I am not sure. Thanks for the for of thought JM8.
For a long time I thought of asset packs as being a lazy, easy-way-out choice that diminished a game's appeal, but Vampire Survivors really changed my point of view. Rather than just trying to cobble something together without doing any real work, the designer started with the a gameplay idea already functioning on a basic level, and then stuck some generic assets in there to get it up and working immediately. It was quick and dirty, but it helped him see the appeal right away and showed that he had found something worth expanding upon. Plus, when he released the original version of the game on Steam, he priced it in a way that acknowledged the shortcuts he had used on the presentation side. It showed me that asset packs can be a great tool if used in the service of a real idea, and without the intention to rip anybody off.
Great video! As an electrical engineer we all so deal with this same issue. To build something from the ground up can be costly, time consuming, and by the time you’re almost done you find out that some other company has a product that does exactly what you need. It is far more common to find pre existing off the shelf parts that can be made to what we need done with a bit of tweaking. For me the difference Good and garbage for an asset flip is the intent and planning from the beginning. If you plan your budget, tone, and time something good maybe even great can come from it, where on the other-hand you pull a Ludo and smash together incompatible assets and mechanics and you have just created a hot steaming shite sandwich that cools fast, and a Cold Shite sandwich tastes worse.
Again great video and besides Ludo being a crap game designer he’s a good Boy!
Plus, art benefits from uniqueness in a way repair and maintenance doesn’t. No-one is going to care if you kitbash the behind-the-scene wires if it works
There's something cathartic about watching all my favorite content creators who cover games just completely tearing apart The Day Before with varying flavors of creativity. This might be one of my favorite ones yet :D
"Have you been taking producer pills?"
Perfect, no notes.
I misread the title and thought it said "how to asset flip responsibly," so when you started making the day before I was very confused
Some interesting games to look at for this discussion are Getting Over it and Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica. Both made completely with store bought assets and really simple mechanics, but they're pretty good.
I think a big part of it is that the genres they're in are relatively unpopular, so it's clear from the audiences perspective that they're not trying to get a lot of money. Also, they both have a pretty cohesive artistic vision, so you can still get the feeling that the game was created with care and attention to detail.
An even better example is to look at phasmophobia. Things went full circle with it.
They started out using free/paid assets. But over time they gradually replaced those assets with their own self-made assets. And now everyone is making an asset flip phasmophobialike
i do wonder what the best possible asset flip would be like
If the assets are re-used from earlier games instead of bought from a store, New Vegas and Majora's Mask are solid contenders.
I thought the dog would be a gimmick but everything it talks to you I smiled
Assets like these are like applying glue, there's a very real difference made between something being very smoothly glued on vs something being clearly made of 90% glue. I feel it depends on how easily you can see the seams so to speak. If I can't tell/don't notice when you use an asset that wasn't made by you, then hey, mission accomplished. You clearly put in work to make sure you presented a coherent whole. But asset flips typically just throw whatever was free in together, regardless of if it fits together, if they work properly, if it's bug free, or heck, even if it's got a matching art style.
To return to the glue analogy, there's a difference between something looking constructed and something looking like you glued whatever was in the room together.
This is fantastic. I have no practical experience, but just browsing assets and toying with basic tools gave me the impression that with even a little know how you can throw a piece of garbage together in no time flat. And you proved it!
I just want to say, supreme kudos to the writer that's doing all the bracket subtitles for all the videos. They're all hilarious!
Very different from the usual design delve episode but i really liked it, looking forward to the next one
Love that the final shot had a zombie doing the thriller dance on the background, hahahaha
The Day Before is turning into a great source of content for so many game journalists. So at least some good came from it
I will happily salute the Ludo flag!
J: “Explain yourself…”
Ludo: “🥺”
as a sound designer myself, gotta love ludo's barking sound
Those gun sounds had me 💀
Asset flips can work well when used in two major circumstances. First, if the assets are used merely as the framework/skeleton that the final art style goes over. Second, when they're used for minor background elements instead of the major parts of the game (i.e. using pre-bought shrubs or something while the characters and major locations are your own design).
This was so awesome to see. Can't imagine any studio actually doing this though.......
Probably not any self-respecting studio. Tho steam is full of those and they call themselves "studio". And sadly, when kickstarter was THE thing you could see so many mess of games that were asset flips, but that was during the era where people "couldnt tell". Which was also really sad because people fell for them on premise "it looks so good" and "look at those graphics! ofc gameplay is janky its alpha!" aaand eventually looked 10 times worse and ran at 15 fps. If it ever came out..
Hope that's sarcasm, given the way there were subtle clips of the same game running throughout the episode 😂
I love the peak behind the curtain kind of videos. Excellent job explaining it to a simpleton like myself.
i feel the major difference between an assets flip and just useing assets comes with creativity elsewhere. bassically it boils down to what the dev is uniquely bringing to the table, whether it be a mechanic, or a story ,map design, game play loop, or even simply a super polished experience, but you should be able to look and say this aspect is what the developer was passionate to make, and the rest is supporting that idea. if you cannot distinctly point it out then its likely an asset flip (and in some cases just new/ bad devs)
Three main problems I see with asset flipping are:
1. When assets don't fit together with each other, usually because they're made by different people
2. When you don't know how to use the asset to integrate with other aspects of your game (either because it's above your skill level or the documentation is opaque)
3. When you start getting a lot of games that all use the same assets (such as Synty Pack) and it becomes really obvious that it's just an asset flip.
None of these are inherently insurmountable, but it takes more work to do it. Assets are also perfectly fine for prototyping so you have something to work with.
The "BANG-ang! BANG-ang!" absolutely slayed me.
I love how no title is mentioned, but everyone knows what it's about
I found this a fascinating look behind the curtain into a marketplace I barely knew existed
This was awesome! Easily one of my favourite Design Delve episodes so far. The new format added a lot.
Stephanie Sterling has entered the chat.
With her wrestling outfit.
I love the fact you are killing it on y'alls own
David Wehle did a great GDC talk on how to use asset stores responsibly, for his game The First Tree. I recommend checking it out!
Using assets like this is honestly a pretty great way for a newbie to get started in game design.
...just don't try to *sell* it. It's a learning project.
I really liked the energy, speed, and overall pacing of this.
I love these videos, specially Ludo. Thanks for creating great content. I had a great laugh with all the asset flip examples in this video.
Wow, I can't believe making a game is so easy! Thanks doggy!
To me, what matters is the care put in.
Like, I make and release free RPGmaker games as a hobby, and I don't make my own audio, visuals or plugins...But I put in the work in both the mechanics and the narrative. And honestly, despite only operating on the higher game design concepts, I've made some genuinely good stuff.
Meanwhile, most asset flippers seem to just slap everything in without a care in the world for how it all fits together, or worse still, just buy a sandbox set of tools and republish it as a game. Like... How can anyone have pride in that?!
I don't mind if someone uses stuff they bought off the market, as long as they make sure it all fits, and actually makes an experience worth playing. They have to put in actual work.
This was a great video on the way it was presented. I didn't realize these type of assets were so available so devs and studios can be even lazier than I imagined.
Very much looking forward to the rest of the series
Asset flipping is like a hammer. Very useful to save time and effort, in the hands of skilled people it can do miracles, but if you use it too much and not properly, it just makes a broken mess. It's a tool, in a vast repertoire of the craftspeople
One man's bag of sand is another man's stained glass window, just a matter of how the medium is used.
I have notifications turned on for this dudes content. Good stuff
Ludo doing his best Jason Welge impression.
For context, he's a prominent asset flipper on steam. The lead(maybe only) developer on games such as Time Rammeside and X 23 among others. LoadingReadyRun's Watch and Play streams catalog many of his games to be ultra long developments only to end up being something worth watching if you're into design. The Thriller Zombie brought back flashbacks to a moment in particular I thought I've forgotten about.
This video is a joy. Very insightful.
How did you find this candid live footage of MGS: Survive development? 👀
Another really educational video! Really loving design delve and look forward to the next part.
i feel like this series has really found its voice as of late and is much better off for it, i also like the celeste music
"Baang BangBang!", Game director, ludio design and content creator of the year award 2024! Make it a about a small child and get game of the year too.
This is my favourite series at the moment, love it!
I'm surprised at how many surprisingly good (or at least okay) assets were free. Like, I can totally see a newbie dev making their very first game just slamming together a million free assets just to have stuff to work with. Especially when people tend to imagine like, mechanics or gameplay and not the assets involved when they're imagining their ideal game.
Ludo channelling the energy of "I don't care, ship it! I have a powerful need to eat sometime this month".
Man it's impressive what nick Calandra and the gang cobbled together here!
Over at the place that shall not be named, but we all luckily *escaped* from, I hated most shows, just clogging up my inbox.
But here, I love it! Banger after banger.
Second wind quickly became one of my main channels on YT!
A lot of the shows you’re watching already existed! Was probably more likely the livestreams clogging up the box.
If you can't immediately tell what is unique artwork and what is bought from the store, you've got a good start.
I remember an Elden Ring speculation thread where they were trying to glean more information from the decorative motifs on the buildings. They were getting pretty far until someone pointed out that at least three of the pieces he was examining were unlikely to have lore significance since they were assets you could buy right now on the Unreal Marketplace
Great idea for a video, excited to see the next one!
This is REALLY engaging, as a satire and instructional! It takes the lid off the "black box of game making" and makes the process seem a lot more approachable! Of course we want to use all the bad examples here and do the opposite... hopefully the fact that it's satire is clear to everyone... XD
Gotta love the very subtle jab at Unity.
There was this old abandoned game called GRAV that, in spite of its somewhat aggressive asset flipping, had a fun game at its core. It was a survival shooter, yes, but instead of zombies it was dinosaurs and a lot of giantic creatures using some pretty stock animations. And what the game mostly did was play out like Remnant and ARK: a souls-like, with guns and base management/upkeep. There were three special things about it:
-Random friendly NPCs spawning in to greet hostile mobs before getting massacred; you'd just hear a "AAAOUGH" in the distance. It was funny to go 'rescue' or watch them.
-You would pay taxes to players. This meant that grinding resources was beneficial to the late-game players who'd been there before you. You'd hope to get to that point, too.
-Invasions would just happen, sometimes spawning mobs of rare enemies that dropped what you needed.
Like I said though, it's abandoned. I'm not sure the servers are even still up. I know my base's decayed for sure, though.
the god damn "*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*" bit made me almost spit out my dinner. Ludo is clearly a master game designer.
"A dog is not a mechanic". Wrong. Being able to pet the goodest of boys in a game is one of the most important mechanics there is.
This was a fascinating look into the asset flip parts of making games. I was not aware of any of this existing, however, with the little bit of video editing that I've done, it shouldn't surprise me that there are so many assets available to just use in whatever.
It certainly gives some insight into how a game can look so good yet be so terrible, or at least that it has the potential to look good yet be terrible.
I think the problem with asset flip games often starts before development even begins. The reason we view them with such derision is they often lack creative vision. The effort using assets saves can be felt by the audience in the lack of cohesion. You need a strong creative idea and the ability to clearly communicate it to get past that, a enthralling unique mechanic, a really well told story, etc. Something slammed out quickly to make money lacks creative vision to hold it together, and the other kind you see is individual’s with an inflated ego who think they’re gifting their vision to the masses, but that vision is either basic or completely inscutable (Gilson B Pontis).
Stephanie Sterling did a little audience contest aaages back to take a really overused asset from the asset flip drek and make something innovative using just itself. Someone made a *font* out of it’s pieces, someone made a game using this creatures model as the surface you move around. That’s creative vision
As a Brazilian, I can say: I support changing our national flag for ludo's art IRL
The fact that character implementation somehow removed the built in steep/climb on the Z axis that unreal has by default on a Character, hell even in general Pawn, class