User Stories: Ste - 4 Ways to Obtain Custom Resources for your Game

How can you make a unique and professional game?
First of all you should ask yourself: what makes a game professional?
Why is my game different with respect to the others in sale?
Why I cannot give value to what I do?
Are these question ever asked to yourself?

One thing is for sure: originality is what create value.

It does not have to be necessary something new: you can take something which already exists and propose it in a new different way (your way).

You can merge and mix existing things and add to your knowledge: in that way can make new things.  

The other way is to give free reign to your imagination.

We know the videogames are a wonderful alchemy of different arts, such as graphics, drawing, music, scripting, storytelling.

Having these winning elements can make your game professional: in order to have all of these elements you need to customize resources in the way you imagine.

Professional doesn’t mean have a wonderful story to tell and do it with common graphic assets available by anyone; professional doesn’t mean neither have a breathtakingly design style but use standard musics that don’t reflect my game’s themes. 

 The perfect way would be take care yourself of all the elements that make a videogame.

Be a good illustrator, a good composer, and master with scripting. Otherwise let others help you.

So what are the possibilities that a game developer has to make a game with exclusive resources for your own game? 

Let’s see together. 

1. Reassemble existing resources.
   Not a bad way, especially to begin. If you don’t want make use of standard packages resource provided by engine or you don’t want to use the usual materials available from anyone on the web, a good idea is to found the best resources that interest us and learn to edit or reassemble these as we like. For example, we can take a sprite of a stone and merge it with a tuft of grass and a flower, change it the colors a bit and we have made a semi-new resource. What’s important is don’t use copyrighted material in your own project (from other games). Steal resources from the others does not make your game professional. This method also can be used for music: there are a lot of royalty free musics on the web, available for free use in any project. It’s important to be patience in seeking and listening a lot until you find the song that fits for your game.


2. Learn to do self-made resources.
   It’s true that we live in a “specialized” world. In reality the most important thing is the knowledge and the learning with no endings the most dissimilar things. Why became a “programmer” or a “composer” if I can be good enough in everything? Sure, it will take a little more bravery and endurance to grow more passions at the same time, but in the long term we’ll be rewarded. That is the way we make us different and unique with respect to the others. If we want to make something unique, we need to have some other skills more than the competitors. Or…


3. Find people who will work with us.
   It’s not always easy find people who follow us, who take care as much as we do in a project. If you find someone willing to give you an aid, remeber: you have found a treasure. People always wonder: “Why should I join this game?”. Afterall it’s not their project but yours. We need clear ideas, a bit of experience and things to show (to show them we’re serious). Sometimes we might find enough people to form a development team, or else (if we fail or if a team is too much challenging for us) we still have one last option.







An Art made by Elf Games about Our Hero made by Ste with the 





4. Get original resources from assets store.
   The different engines (eg Unity) often have stores dedicated to the sale of assets by competent person in a certain field. These could not be resources for your game, but we can still be tranquil since the price is a limit in accessibility and diffusion. However we might need of unique and exclusive resources (at the same price) customized for us: Making Core has born for that, to create an interchange of skills and make collaboration between developers, to obtain only custom resources for our projects: a customized sprite, an exclusive soundtrack, a personal script.

And you? Which method you use to make unique your own game?

- Ste