Agreed. Idk how they reuse specifically, but it is fine for sure - to a point. As long as your game doesn’t have 3 enemy types that are recollored across it or all environments are the same everywhere (hello, Dragon Age 2)… use what you have effectively.
I was gonna say.
For a game like Fortnite for example reuse of assets is vital to make the constant updates possible - without that steady flow of changes the user base pretty sure would dwindle fast (as already regularly is the case at the end of their “chapters” and “seasons”). They have to balance old and new parameters a lot to not alienate any/or bore their customers - not the easiest thing to do according to their fan forums… :D
This feels like complaints over asset flips bleeding over into first-party asset reuse, because the people complaining don’t understand why the former is objectionable. It’s not that seeing existing art get repurposed is inherently bad (especially environmental art… nobody needs to be remaking every rock and bush for every game) but asset flips tend to be low effort, lightly-reskinned game templates with no original content. Gamers just started taking the term at face value and assumed the use of asset packs was the problem, rather than just a symptom of a complete lack of effort or care on the developers’ part
Do asset flips even happen anymore? I feel like they were a problem that Stephanie Sterling brought to light a decade ago when Steam opened its floodgates to anyone who wanted to sell a game, but it seems to me as though standard market forces made them nonviable in just a few years’ time.
They are all over the place, they just don’t get promoted much and get buried in steam releases.
That’s standard procedure. Elden Ring’s animations and enemy moves are mostly reused assets from previous games and it shows when the models morph here and there because the rig is recycled. Don’t remember anyone complaining about it even though it actually is noticeable.
I remember it being a big deal, well, some deal for a brief while, that God of War Ragnarok had reused boat animations from the previous game. Similarly for Horizon Forbidden West I think.
Anyway, sports games come annually and literally feel like the same game with some adjustments here and there and they’re usually the best sellers lol, so this issue feels like a very “online thing”, or perhaps the title makes it seem like there’s a big inexcusable issue that needs a “defence”.
Agreed. Especially if they’re creative like the halo devs and only use one rock.
That kinda reminds of something. Earlier this summer I had to go out of town and stay in a hotel for work. The hotel lobby had this decorative box with lights in it, but it also had these fake river stones or whatever to look like pieces of colored glass. But they all had the same shape, which was unique enough that at first glance every piece looked totally different.
Yeah, Capcom figured that out ages ago with Monster Hunter.
They tweak some movesets on the skeletons, they improve the ai a bit. They create new textures, and spend their time making endgame bosses a more unique.
My favorite example is Kushala Daora. I don’t exactly know how many times his skeleton has been reused, but I know Monster Hunter World had at least three reuses of it.
But they always have unique fights for final bosses, even if the Elder Dragon reused assets.
Programming is all about reuse in general. Reuse is part of good applications.
Cough cough Yakuza
When unreal 3 was prominent you could pick out geometry from several different games. Things looked vaguely similar.
Not inherently an issue will see how the game is. These games have been the definition of sale in the past. Good dumb fun occasionally
Cause the game is still sold for full price.
Every game reuses assets. Some are just more clever about it than others.
So only games that are made from scratch can charge full price? What about reusing code? Engine? Animations? Textures? Lighting system? Rendering backend?.. Games are made of everything that came before, being angry about a game using assets that were originally developed for an older game is like being angry about a movie reusing props made for an older movie, should they burn all of the Christmas decorations between one movie and the next? Or can the studio hang the same glass ball on two different movies? Does that detract from the movie? Will you really only consider it’s worth the full price if all props were made exclusively for that movie?..
