Hello, everyone! I know there are other developers here who get assets from Open Game Art, because I noticed games made with them. Let's make friends! My account there is http://opengameart.org/users/claudeb and I'd love to hear from you.

My second goal with this thread is to advertise Open Game Art a little, because it deserves to be better known. At least one of my games simply wouldn't have existed without freely reusable content. More generally, I think it's absurd to require completely original art for each and every videogame. Not every board game needs to invent its own pieces. Not every card game needs a deck drawn from scratch. You're going to talk about expectations, but expectations are cultural constructs. We can and should change them when they're damaging and limiting to creativity. And OGA can be part of that.

So can itch.io for that matter. So stand up and be counted. :)

I know some people who are looking to get into games programming. I'll shoot this website to them :)

I love Open Game Art. It's a fantastic resource to have when creating games. It has helped me out with a few prototypes, which would have taken a bit longer otherwise. It is wonderful that we have a website like it, giving people a free source of assets to pull from when they need, no strings attached. After I used assets from Open Game Art, I uploaded something of mine (an early version of a 2d character template I use) to pay it forward.

Originality is getting harder to find, and there is nothing wrong with having things that you can reference, use, and work from without fear of the possible repercussions. Things like Open Game Art are a fantastic source that need to be bigger than they are now.

As someone who can more or less competently handle programming and design and graphics and can work sound effects generators well enough to get what I want, the one thing that keeps my games from being complete solo projects is music. For a long time, I was just leaving music out of my games. Starting this year, I've released three projects with CC-0 or CC-BY-3.0  licenses for music*. It's elevated the feeling of polish on my projects a lot, I think, and contributes to a more complete experience, allowing me to make games that connect on additional levels. 

As much as I'd love to work with musicians to compose for my projects, I don't like reaching out to people to ask them to do music for my projects for free since I value the work they do. But since my games are hobbyist passion projects and literally have no budget and are all released as free (and especially since splitting ad revenue or tips can get messy, no matter how meager it can be inevitably is), I really can't afford to pay anyone. I try to feature the names of the artists I use prominently. 

I get a little nervous that the songs I use will end up being used in a lot of projects and if a player recognizes a track from another game may find that disorienting or tacky, but so many people make so much neat stuff that I find carefully selecting OGA music can really contribute to the identity and mood of my games.

I'm really grateful to the artists who make this stuff available to use freely, and I've been thinking that I'd like to develop some graphical asset packs so I can give something back to the community.

*These games are Temple of the Wumpus, Liz & Laz Episode 1: The Control Cubes, and Koi Puncher MMXVIII.

EDIT: Sorry for the old thread bump! Didn't realize how old it was. But it's a topic of perennial interest!