Using Assets Or Making Your Own

Asset store is a huge reason for developers to choose Unity game engine over other engines, ofcours they have their own stores and by no means this is a comparison between stores, however having a huge asset store indicates that there are people who are selling assets.

There are many free assets published by various developers and even by Unity itself which makes it a very competitive space, never the less there are bad or not up to standards assets especially with Unity's business model there are bound to be bad assets and bad games, its a popularity tax Unity had to pay, not by any means I am suggesting they are unaware of this and that they are not trying to fix this, As an example one of my assets ware rejected due to the store having too many similar assets.

After downloading free and payed assets and integrating few of them to my games I have made a strong opinions on when or what should I buy or integrate into my projects.

To help me explain my approach I would like to categorize people who want to use those assets into categories based on developer experience and knowledge of Unity development as I see this as the biggest factor in determining the purchase, develop or buy decision.

New Unity Developers

This stage is from the first day a developer downloads the game engine to the point where he/she can move objects, implement game physics and build demo scenes.

• Make sure you understand the basics before deciding to use Assets!

No one starts unity with full knowledge of its capabilities and limitations, so as a new user you have to start and go threw at least the basics before you download an asset and face an error or start browsing asset details, which have intimated few people I know and stopped them from going threw the learning process, be patient, you will understand everything with time.

• Use free assets

Since many people get started but never finish their first project I recommend new users to spend time and get what they want for free and only if they cant find it for free to go for payed assets.

Starting Level To Intermediate Developers

At this stage the main goal should be implementing your limited knowledge to make a fully functional game/product to gain better understanding of the development process from start to finish.

• Buying is recommended if your planning to finish the project.

when you are making full projects that are at least worthy of being called demo, then I highly recommend utilizing the asset store and going for well maintained payed assets that are of good quality.

• Free or payed, just get what you think you need!

At this stage I highly recommend shortcutting the development process using assets and preferably assets that are well maintained, this will save you so much time its a no brainer to spend upwards of 200$ UDS on assets provided you have the money.

• Most people are not too risky in their first games!

This means most people create a popular genre game like a platformer, puzzle or racing game with their own twist, rarely someone creates something too creative they wont find the relative asset which shortcuts their development time and this is by no means a negative thing! they will find something similar that will kickstart their work which is AWESOME!

• Learning from pre-existing assets

Its another great way for learning and I can not praise this method enough, downloading an asset for free or buying an asset similar to what the game/product needs then learning from that asset and making your own custom asset is one of the best ways to learn and making a professional game/product which comply with advanced creative needs.

Intermediate Developers

There are number of reasons that justify using assets from asset store for any developer at any stage of his career, that said its not recommended for bigger teams and well verse developers.

• Using assets can be well justified to reduce development time. Especially if a good asset to be fused with the project is found. The fastest way to finish a demo or working prototype is starting from an asset, which makes using an asset a great starting point.

• Assets can make a good backbone for most common game categories such as FPS, RPG, arcade and others.

• Go for the payed assets at this stage

• You may have to spend few dollars but the overall asset will be well rounded and you can contact the developer.

• Professionals

• As I have been following number of professional companies and developers over the internet I noticed most of them don't use assets from the store instead they have their own solutions. at the same time some of them actually use assets.

• Using assets for prototyping phase acceleration

• To show their client a demo as fast as possible, not all companies make full products.

• Usually bigger teams don't use assets

• But professional indie game developers can use assets either because of lack of cretin skill or to speed up the development process.

Conclusion

Asset store has huge range of assets whether its the diversity or quality that attracts developers, a good asset can save developers time and money if its used properly or increase development time if use improperly, that said few variables to the specific case must be taken into consideration before opting out for an asset especially if time or budget is tight, these variables are number of developers, team skill level, development time frame and the price to quality ratio of the asset, there is no one size fits all so choose wisely.

My recommendation might not fit everybody and that's ok everybody is special, every project is special, every idea is unique in its own way and if your gut tells you something go with it!