What does Asset Serialization manage in Unity?

Asset Serialization in Unity is primarily responsible for managing how changes to assets are saved and persisted. This process ensures that any modifications made to assets, such as textures, models, or scripts, are consistently stored in a format that Unity can understand and retrieve at a later time. When you modify an asset, serialization captures the state of that asset and writes it into a persistent data format, allowing it to maintain its properties and behaviors across sessions.

Serialization is crucial for game development, as it facilitates collaboration between team members by ensuring that everyone has access to the same asset versions and that assets remain intact after changes. It also plays a role in exporting projects for different platforms, as the serialized assets need to be recognized by the Unity engine during the build process. Overall, effective asset serialization enhances the workflow and guarantees that changes are reliably handled within Unity's ecosystem.