We’re seeking out Asset-Flips large and small to host on our website TheGameDevStore.com. We’re on a mission to become the #1 headquarters for Asset-Flip Games.
We believe Asset-Flips get a bad rep and should have their own game genre & marketplace. The “quality” metric should be in how clever the assets are used, not by the fact they are used. We also believe that with a little creativity, assets can be modified unrecognizable from the game dev stores they’re purchased from. This creates a Find-the-Flip Hidden Object Meta Game.
The Find-the-Flip Hidden Object Meta Game is inherent to the Asset Flip Genre. As a Genre, Player’s know upfront that Assets are from Marketplaces, with a auxiliary challenge of finding and identifying what asset and marketplace they’re from. This hide n seek feature could even translated into a game mechanic.
We’re Game Developers who love and use Asset Marketplaces. We know that Marketplaces help game development dreams come true. There should be no shame in publishing games that make use of Marketplace Assets. We’re on a campaign to support and promote Asset Flips as their own Game Genre of Hidden Object Meta Game.
Kit bashing is not the same as Asset-Flips as far as I’m concerned. Kit bashing is where you use existing things and put them together in a unique way, while Asset-Flips make little or no effort to put things together in a unique way and just change the Title of the game basically and call it a day.
Almost every open world game uses kit bashing especially AAA games with great results and performance.
However, we believe that games developed with 70% or more store-bought Assets without any modifications, would be accused of being an Asset-Flip, even if the mechanics are custom. This is why we believe the “quality” metric should be in how clever the assets are used, not by the fact they are used.
I am not sure I can see a need for a store like this. Steam is already full of asset flips.
Pure asset flips, which in my eyes are if you purchase a template (or similar), don’t change a thing, slap a new logo on it and then release with claims of the game being developed by you, should not be encouraged at all. It’s just a lazy way to scam gamers, and it hurts the indie scene.
Games that use marketplace assets, modified or not, is not an asset flip. Instead of hiring someone to make custom assets, you buy them from the store. It doesn’t equal to laziness or a plan to do minimum effort for some sort of profit.
Of course it might look less unique, but it could still be a fantastic game. It might be counterproductive to label games as asset flips, just because they might contain unmodified assets.
Thanks for the response [USER=“1590”]Joakim Olsson[/USER],
We agree that Steam has Asset-flip games, but they are not classified as such or have their own genre. Slapping a new logo on any product and then releasing with claims of it being developed by you is FRAUD and THEFT. Thats poor security on Steams part and they did not protect the template content creator. We propose a new context, definition and genre for games that would be accused of being Asset-Flips.
We’ve internally dealt with scrutiny of using Store-bought assets in our previous game development. Our Developers simply would not use them in fear not being considered unique. This resulted in many of our 3D Artists re-creating assets from scratch, spending massive amounts of time in the process. In some cases, assets re-created were duplicate and much lower quality then what we already possessed from the marketplace.
This ordeal inspired us to build a Asset Marketplace to solve the problem of uniqueness. As Asset Marketplace, supporting and promoting games develop with store-bought assets would benefit our Content Creators and Game Developers.
For Content Creators benefits would be in both generating more sales and security, because these assets would already exist in the same Marketplace. For Game Developers benefits is having platform supporting games using these assets to create unique content.
We believe that if the quality and stronger support for Asset-Flips, the negative connotation with the term can be reversed. Perhaps we should consider a new name for the new genre. We’re opened to suggestions
What’s up with this “asset-flips” nonsense thing ? Anything bought from any marketplace that has a royalty free license can be re-used by any developer on as many projects as needed. Period. It is up to the developer to use the assets wisely. Many objects as well as buildings are far from unique in the real world so why should they be in any game? Then with modular parts and ability to either change materials inside UE4 or repaint completely it is high unlikely that players/customers could notice some meshes being the same on games from various developers. Same goes for NPC characters although it would depend on the game type more. What matters the most are that main characters/objects/tools used by the players should be unique indeed because that is what they would remember the most and notice if two games used the same ones.
A relative large group of nitwits use and abuse a certain one thing that is meant not to be abused (but faith in humanity hangs on an everlasting thin string it seems) = they create a bubble of s**t so much so that it is not only a counterproductive, lazy and borderline scam-like behavior, it also ends up over saturating a marketplace meant to help the hardworking indie all the while shouting I own you all b*tches through the shortcuts of capitalism.
In the process creating so much backlash that it deserved its own category of entitlement “Asset flippers or flipping” and so anything remotely associated with that category is now subconsciously labeled as such in part rightfully so and in part unfortunately so, since yes you can modify the assets to a degree for secondary or background use and save some time or even create something unique with it.
We’re still seeking out Games of various size developed with 70% to 100% of Marketplace Assets to host and distribute on our platform TheGameDevStore.com. We truly believe high quality Games can be produced with just using Marketplace Assets and we want to provide the platform to buy/sell them without shame. However, there is simply too much negative press associated with the term ‘asset-flip’, so were going to use a new one. We favor the term ‘kit-bash’ but are open to ideas.
