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Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

For those needing context, The Day Before is a survival style game. (shooters usually, limited supplies, always hostile zones with NPC enemies and player enemies (usually)

The genre is fair well established so there were many comparisons during development to existing games in the genre and some hiccups during development [0] and some ethical concerns [0].

Prior to the release, the Dev Team for the game released a statement preparing players that the game has issues, and trying to quash claims of the game being a scam [1]

I have not followed this game's development personally, but when I first read about it on another forum this is the context I wish I had.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_(video_game)#De...

1 - https://twitter.com/FntasticHQ/status/1731680871856369689#m

edit: fixed formatting on citations.

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Two additional specifics: it was the second-most wishlisted game on Steam prior to release and upon release customers discovered that it was essentially a different genre of game than was marketed, along with being buggy and much smaller in scope.

This led to mass negative reviews and refunds and calls of it being a scam, which the company denied.

Also, supposedly large amounts of the game are basically just assets off the Unreal Marketplace, eg: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/ameri...

That in itself doesn't seem particularly damning; what is the purpose of a marketplace except to save game designers from having to reinvent the wheel?

Surely there's more to the accusation, but I don't see how "paying someone else to design part of your video game and then selling a game with those parts in it" would be in any way shocking.

Seems like a smart way to get the important parts of game play down and some traction and then have the money and capacity to focus on bespoke DLC.

On one hand, yes. Video games use stock assets. That part isn't surprising; other forms of media do the same (stock photos, sound effects, video, etc) and it's hardly remarkable when they do.

On the other hand, it's also expected that the developer of a new video game bring some amount of new material to the table. A video game is meant to be a creative work with a distinctive flavor of its own, not simply a collection of assets -- and, from the sound of it, the latter is essentially what The Day Before is.

You can make a fun game with minimal own assets. However, making a game that way shouldn't result in insolvency.

do we expect a chef to grow all of his own wheat, grind all the flour, sift it, and then make all of the bread?

nah, unless it's a main push they'll buy from a B2B bakery down the street.

even restaurants where most stuff is bought from Sysco can be pretty dang amazing, because the magic is the cooking and blending of elements.

The Day Before is just hype and BS. the gaming industry is now bigger than movies and there is just as much graft and hustle as anywhere.

> do we expect a chef to grow all of his own wheat, grind all the flour, sift it, and then make all of the bread?

No. But -- to continue with the metaphor -- we don't expect them to be reheating TV dinners in the kitchen and calling them gourmet meals either.

It really comes down to the “large amounts”.

If you’re using the asset store for some things, that’s fine, that’s the point.

If 100% of your game is asset store assets that’s a problem.

So, it really comes down to how much you lean on the asset store, and how much you do internally.

Ae a gamer, it doesn’t bother me one bit where the assets are from. Just make it fun and engaging.

Edit: stolen assets bother me, legally obtained ones don’t.

I think “asset flip” tends to be associated with totally derivative, lifeless gameplay.

I haven’t seen a lot of games called “asset flips” that are described as “fun engaging gameplay”.

I'd agree. This sounds like a terrible game. It doesn't sound terrible because they used large amounts of assets from the unreal marketplace though. They just made a game that wasn't very good.

I agree - no different to pulling together open source libraries in a codebase generally.

The concern is that they are doing an "asset flip", pulling together assets into a playable game and selling that off with no huge real work involved - especially given that their marketing and trailers had promised a 'game changing' experience. It's more about the mismatch of the advertising and positioning with that, and all of the aspects combined (different genre to announcement trailers, missing key features they'd talked about, large amounts of assets from the marketplace, buggy gameplay, etc).

That said, their use of marketplace assets seems... significant: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDayBefore/comments/18ee3t9/i_pre...

It's hilariously buggy too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRS-ilp_Sf4

What is an asset flip?

It's basically this - purchase a bunch of "assets" (3d models, plugins, etc) off unreal marketplace, cobble them together with duct tape and superglue, and release it , hoping to at least recover the cost of the assets you purchased + profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip

> An asset flip is a type of shovelware in which a video game developer legally purchases pre-made assets and uses them to create numerous permutations of generic games and sell them at low prices.

In this case, maybe not "numerous permutations", but throwing together the (presumably purchased) assets with the bare minimum components of a video game.

Assets Flip is when you replace the assets in a game with other assets and sell it under a different name. Usually from a demo project or even from a complete game that was "stole".

This game simply used a bunch of assets that were bought on the unreal asset store which is different and tbh completely fair especially with a small dev team.

As an aside, the studio's previous game, "Propnight", was a pretty blatant asset flip as well. The only difference was that it was an unambitious $10 hide-and-seek game; no one expected much from it.

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