What is the difference between assets and resources?

Question

I just asked a question about resources management, but on the tagging part, I got stuck on a point: should I tag it assets or resources?

The tags description are the follwing:

Assets

Game resources separate from the software (code) and hardware (platform). The most common assets are graphics and audio.

Questions under the purview of this tag tend to focus on the management and handling of assets in the game. It can also cover other aspects of less common assets, such as reference files or external map data.

Resources

Term 'resource' represents a game content item: an audio file, video clip, sprite animation image, etc.

So how to choose which one to tag? Does resources focus more on precise files and assets more about global management?

Answer 1

I don't think there is a meaningful differences within the context of this site, I would think resources should be a synonym of assets.

Answer 2

I would like to offer an addition answer to this question as it seems that these two words are often confused. An asset is really a sub-category of resource. And this is really contextual.

For example, a REST endpoint is often termed as a remote 'resource'. However, we don't deem it an asset, because the remote gateway is dynamic, and may return a plethora of data from an immense result-space. (these data may be referred to as assets however.)

An image, swf, sound, or a CSS file, or a JavaScript document which are generally stored statically on your web server or your content data network, to be loaded statically by the client is usually referred to as a specific type of resource: an "Asset" Resource.

Did you know, that you also have "Human Resources" working at your company. They hire "Human Resources", not "Human Assets" :).

This is just a take from a Distributed Applications perspective, where we definitely differentiate between the two.

Sometimes on contained projects which use a small variety of 'resources', these two words cannot be differentiated. Every asset is a resource, and every resource is an asset.

Thoughts?

Answer 3

IMO, "things" called "resource" until you build your game, and when you build, they become "assets". Because resource is something that you need to make another thing. But an asset is a thing that belongs to another thing. (so many "thing"s here)