I have infinitely more respect for your game if the assets in it are your own, or original to the game, and not just models you downloaded online. Edits of existing models are cool too, but they gotta have their own distinct style to em, and not "I made Bonnie green and gave him a hat."

If your game uses actual FNaF characters, then sure, download existing models, or hell, we got the official models now, why wouldn't you use em? But if you want your game to stand out, and not just be another forgettable fangame that people play once and never think about again, you gotta do something different.

Not to toot my own horn, but it's just a convenient example. What I did, with the toys in my game, is its own distinct style of texturing, withering, rendering, lighting, or at least compared to other fangames. I ain't saying my style is original, or very good, but what matters is that it stands out, and once you catch a user's attention with fancy models, you can get them to follow your game and all that.

Now clearly original characters, like the POPGOES and FNaC series, are preferred, but for unimaginative people like me, you gotta remember that if the characters aren't yours, you gotta make em yours, in your own style, whatever that style may be.

When I see a fangame centered on models I saw up for download on deviantart or whatever, I don't follow. Since the bulk of the assets weren't made by the game dev, will they be able to do anything themselves, or are they going to rely on others to program, model, etc, and watch as the project slowly falls apart. And even if the game does end up released, how much of the project actually belongs to the game dev, and how much of the assets, ideas, etc, belong to other people? And above all, is the game going to actually be good, or will it be made up of a series of half-baked ideas centered around models that don't belong there.

Now of course this doesn't apply to commissions, which is paying someone to make models for the game. Obviously, those are the game's models now. Same thing with a directing a game. You aren't making much yourself, but you oversee everything, the ideas are your own, and the assets being made are for the game and not from turbosquid or deviantart. Using designs from fanart is fine too, it's always neat to see drawings turned 3D, but you should probably get permission from the original artist to use their designs in a fangame. And if you're using characters that don't belong to Scott, definitely ensure you have permission to use them, if they aren't your own.

Now, it's fine to get ideas from friends or whatever. Sometimes you need people to tell you that your idea sucks, or to help you smooth out the details of a project you're working on. The idea is still yours, just refined by others.

I'm rambling about this because I saw this idea for a FNaF 3 revamp online, and my mind latched onto it. But I had to stop myself from just yoinking that idea, then yoinking someone else's springtrap design, and then starting development. There's a gray area here when it comes to making games from the ideas and work of other people, and I'm really struggling to put it into words. I wanna make this game, but even if the basic framework is taken from twitter, the game still has to be mine. I have to ask myself, "If this game wasn't made by me, and I saw it scrolling through gamejolt, would I follow it or move on?"

Here's your daily dose of ramblings on a community about killer robots. Hopefully I made even the tiniest shred of sense, but who knows, I probably contradict myself several times.

I might re-read this in a day and feel like an idiot for posting this, but whatever, the edit button exists for a reason.