There’s one magic word that gets trotted out all the time in this hobby, a handy term used to describe all digital ills — lazy. ‘How did this bleh of a game end up on the eShop?’ ‘Who couldn’t be bothered to finish this puzzle / minigame / character’s face properly?’ ‘How much more effort would it have taken to add feature X / Y / Z?’
A new release that isn’t different enough from the last game in the series? Lazy. Reusing assets, which could be anything from handy 3D props of mundane objects to pre-existing (and expensive) motion captured animations? Lazy. QA staff — those people with the outwardly desirable job of testing games all day long — are another frequent target of this generic ire, often accused of being lazy for somehow ‘missing’ obvious bugs and other game-breaking issues. The truth is that QA staff find these issues, raise them, and then someone else — another lazy person, no doubt — decides what to address given the cost, complexity and available time.
Let’s get more specific: Nintendo Switch Online’s execution has been touted as lazy in both its original and newly expanded forms. Why aren’t there more games? Why aren’t there more of the ‘right’ sort of games? Why isn’t the emulation absolutely perfect? Why didn’t they recreate the Virtual Console again (even though a subscription-based service makes perhaps more sense), and who was too lazy to sort that out?
The developers of Monster Hunter Rise has been described as lazy for failing to include cross-play with other formats. What about Pokémon? Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are already considered lazy remakes by some for hewing so closely to their original DS releases. Brand new entries such as Sword and Shield never have enough new Pokémon thanks to the alleged apathy of their creators, or reuse too many old Pokémon, or the ‘meta’ game is off somehow. The only explanation a certain collective of fans seem capable of coming up with is ‘Because somebody either didn’t care enough or work hard enough to make this right’.
That’s simply not true.
Making a game, especially a game made available to millions of people worldwide in at least half a dozen languages, is exceptionally hard. And that’s when ‘a game’ is treated as nothing more than a completed, functioning product; a sellable collection of code. Making a good game — one that is enjoyed by those playing it, reviews consistently well, and then sells in a quantity that makes all of the effort that went into it worthwhile — is an almost impossible task, even for studios with a long history of producing great games and in possession of the staff and budget to pull it off. Honestly, it’s a minor miracle anything gets released at all.
Making a game that is enjoyed by those playing it, reviews consistently well, and then sells in a quantity that makes all of the effort that went into it worthwhile is an almost impossible task... Honestly, it’s a minor miracle anything gets released at all.
Even then, companies can still turn out something that can only be described as ‘utter rubbish’; something that was clearly rushed, bodged, or half-baked. But if this isn’t down to laziness, then what is it?
The truth is simple and familiar to most of us: Game development is a job, and like any other job sometimes talented people are given a week to do a month’s work, sometimes everything’s going smoothly until non-negotiable orders from on high force major changes at a crucial moment, and sometimes an enthusiastic newcomer is left to muddle through on their own with the support and training they were repeatedly promised at the project’s beginning never materialising. And even if none of those apply, it’s still not easy to keep dozens if not hundreds of people focused on creating one game for years on end.
But those are just a bunch of hypothetical excuses made up to protect ‘lazy’ people, aren’t they?
No, they aren’t. This is an industry where, unofficially, off the record, staff can expect to hear ‘You don’t have to stay late but if you were a really dedicated, passionate member of the team, you’d want to.’ Even when working for the most outwardly glamorous, profitable, and prestigious developers, staff can be worked to the point of physical and mental illness, underpaid relative to the number of actual hours worked, and can face various forms of harassment so sustained, systemic, and extreme US states feel the need to become legally involved, CEOs have to issue public apologies, and people are hounded from the profession.
‘Lazy’ is such an easy word to trundle out when something unexpectedly falls flat for no specific reason. I know I’ve thoughtlessly uttered it in frustration many times before now, but reaching for this term as the first, last, and only assumed cause of a game’s problems has to stop. It is factually incorrect to call the people working under gruelling conditions — just to make sure a wooden door realistically splinters when hit by gunfire, fresh pieces of armour shine in a satisfying way under torchlight, and a million other details nobody picks up on but somebody has to stay late at work for months on end to get right — lazy. It’s almost impossible to make a modern release of any size without a lot of talent and a professional attitude, and the language gaming at large uses should reflect that.
It’s almost impossible to make a modern release of any size without a lot of talent and a professional attitude, and the language gaming at large uses should reflect that.
So what’s the alternative? Bland blanket praise for fear of upsetting someone’s delicate feelings? Polite avoidance of any major bugs? Pretending everything’s fine and nice and we’re all oh-so-happy to spend our hard-earned money on a bland and tepid experience just because a team regularly worked through the night on it?
No. Dishonesty doesn’t help anyone sitting on either side of the fence and criticism — even the uncomfortably scathing sort — can be a useful, positive, tool. If something doesn’t work as intended or even if the finished game as a whole is irredeemably awful, then these flaws should be highlighted and, if appropriate, dissected down to the smallest atom so we can all understand exactly what went wrong and hopefully learn how to avoid the situation next time.
We don’t have to like or even appreciate the games developers make for us, and we should always — politely — speak up when we feel things aren’t right for whatever reason, but we all owe it to them to at least acknowledge that whatever the outcome, they’re far from lazy.
Comments 212
Do you prefer "rushed development", "inexperienced devs", "small studio" ?
under funded and under respected devs by higher ups. same as cyberpunk, bethesda games, swsh
I think a lot of people confuse “lazy” with “unambitious”
"But I'm too lazy to think of a better insult for my knee-jerk reaction!"
@Zuljaras All of those are likely more accurate assessments of why flawed games release than "lazy dev."
To be fair, this is dead on. It takes a massive amount of effort to create a bad game. I guess there are some scenarios where something is genuinely lazy but I do agree with the thrust of this piece.
But "lackadaisical curators" just sounds needlessly verbose.
So what do we call them? You didn't answer that. Lazy article.
Yeah, I don't think the developers are lazy per se but the publisher give them a way to tight development window
Lazy would imply they're scrimping on their work. When the truth of the matter, especially with the Pokemon Company, is that they are capable of far far more but just don't want to. They'll blame dev team sizes, when the budget is there to hire more people. They'll blame the software and resources, when Nintendo are on the other end of a phone (as are companies like Monolith who helped with Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing when Nintendo needed extra people). At the end of the day, there is always room for excuses and "reasons"... when also at the end of the day, there is a company capable of far far more.
I've been saying this too. First off, it's like saying lazy astronaut. Game development takes a crazy amount of effort and planning, even horrible games. Its really just money at the end of the day. Directors and producers and executives and even shareholders sometimes decide how much money is going to be spent on any given aspect of development, and it trickles down from there. there's not n64 trees in pokemon because some guy just wants to go home early. its the result of a calculation somewhere way higher up the chain. blame execs, not devs
I completely disagree. No, we cannot. But thanks for asking
If the games development process was more transparent, then it would make certain decisions that they make in their end-products more understandable. But, when 99% of us are blind to how this stuff is even made, and companies rarely explain what they are doing and why, it creates a situation where people will call a dev team lazy. I know it's not the most understanding outlook of their position, but sometimes you look at the way an aspect of a game comes out and you can't help but think that more effort would have made it better.
Laziness is a human trait, and it can manifest in any field of expertise. I'm not sure that the term needs to go away, honestly.
Sometimes there are things that pass the developers' heads and that's ok. There isn't really much of a reason for us to complain as customers. We wanted the game and we bought it.
Lazy publishers.
Hear hear. This is a great piece!
Ooh good article, good of you t share it knowing that most likely people are going to disagree too
Definitely agree, making a game is ridiculous and acting like a company was lazy (which is a word that often shouldn't even be applied to games industry) when you weren't there, you didn't make it, that's not cool.
(I will agree with what someone said with the pokemon company especially being a little unambitious and kinda stinky)
Lazy is the wrong word here. I'd suggest the word Cheapskates instead, which may apply more to the publisher than to the developers. Lack of resources is a bigger problem than laziness, which could mean a lack of time, budget, or skills.
Developers work hard, but it's business decisions that causes games to cut back on features or not have enough polish.
Also worth noting: Simply being a developer does not automatically mean you are an industrious person. It's possible to be lazy in any field/job. There are TONS of people who want to go to work and just get through the day doing the bare minimum.
But if we didn’t call them lazy we’d have to admit that we don’t understand how the business works. And then what would we yammer about?
I don't think we should retire that at all I know lazy devs I've met people who are bad at development and cut corners. Now one could argue that pressure from a publisher could make somebody more or less seem lazy that is true but they do exist.
If I was an overworked underpaid dev, only to be called lazy by an armchair game designer who’s never worked a day in their life, I’d probably go on a rampage.
@DiggleDog Criticism's a part of life you have to accept it.
Do you want us to use "Incompetent" instead?
@Jokerwolf when it’s constructive and in good faith, sure.
The problem with the phrase 'lazy devs' is it gives the real culprits for these issues, those at the top, an excuse to fall back on.
When the workers are already underpaid, overworked and pushed to meet an impossible deadline, a poor final result can be blamed on staff not trying hard enough. I've been both the lower staff and the middle management in that situation and the issue is always, always with management.
When it comes to the latest pokemon games, it's fairly obvious that the people making all the decisions are making poor decisions and both the staff and the customer will be suffering for it.
Edit: 'Poor decisions' in most cases being putting corporate greed over the quality of the end product (which is especially easy to do when a game has already made back development costs on preorders).
I will put up with a lot of things from games and even enjoy a few janky titles for what they are. Some people (mainly Pokemon fans by the comments on here) just never seem to be happy.
But.
But. But. But.
One thing I cannot stand isn’t devs who don’t take the time to put customisable controls into their games. I know this is not something that takes much effort but it goes a long way. Even games like BOTW don’t have this feature.
When Playground Games can put actual visual sign language into the latest Forza THERE IS NO EXCUSE
Thank you for this, as someone who has worked in a very similar field of animation, it often isn't up to us creators to produce the quality of work that we want to. There are frequently very tight timelines and constraints, and if we go above and beyond to deliver early we just get more work piled on with no rest. It is very easy to burn out in these fields and we really need to protect ourselves to have any hope in making it to the end of a development cycle. And once we do there may be little reward or pay off for doing so making it difficult to keep going. Especially when all we receive is criticism; that doesn't help anything.
"Lazy devs" would be a more legitimate argument to make if it weren't for a fact that 99% of people here have never written a line of code to save their lives, let alone developed a video game.
Calling a studio of video game developers lazy because you didn't like their game is kinda like calling a group of rocket scientists lazy because they haven't put a man on Jupiter yet.
All of this, the expectations of gamers and what drives them to call certain game studios lazy, it's all relative. It keeps the competition going, and things work out quite well for consumers when big game studios are competitive. With this competition, though, consumers become more and more particular about what makes them happy, and they may feel entitled to claim studios are lazy because they didn't offer something that they specifically wanted. It's not easy for some people to just say "well, looks like this one isn't for me, oh well" - they have to take it to a level where they are personally insulted for a game releasing in a manner they don't like.
Numerous games started releasing with motion controls as a sort of quality of life option, and now, when an FPS games releases and it doesn't have this optional feature, suddenly other game studios are "lazy." But they're not really lazy, they had a crazy schedule to put the game together in the first place, and motion aiming just wasn't able to make the cut unfortunately, does that mean some gamers will skip the experience just because it doesn't include something a lot of other games include? Sadly for the devs, yes.
Hmmmmmmmmmm, no
@RadioHedgeFund Nintendo is notorious for not allowing players to remap their buttons it makes 0 sense. Maybe for kids it makes more sense but for adults and people who like customization it makes 0 sense. I get that they allow you to remap the buttons in the OS now too but that's not the same and you can't specify per title which is absurd.
@westman98 @westman98
YES!!! Agreed, the standards are so high now, and yet there seem to be more complaints than ever. We have been spoiled, and you don't realize until you try to make something for yourself. You will be very humbled when you realize how overwhelming it is.
Also, since this seems tangentially related to Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, those were billed as a "faithful reimagining" of the originals from Day 1. No one is trying to mislead or obfuscate.
With most cases outside Nintendo's sphere (EA, Activision, etc) i think of greed and lack of human decency. But we do use this term too often
People don't realize that the devs have stockholders to answer to for a company and most of those stockholders don't have a clue about how long it takes to make a game. All they care about is their return on their investment. The devs are just told.X game needs to be out by X time and if they can't do it the company will find someone else.
As games get more complicated naturally its going to take devs longer time but again the stockholders don't understand this all they want is the next game to release by Christmas season for example. As a result games are rushed broken messes with things missing but stockholders feel well we can fix it later as long as it's out by Christmas.
leaving issues in so basic like having the effect come out of the wrong spot i'll call lazy
As a dev myself, I can confirm we are lazy.
Thank you Kerry Brunskill for an interesting article.
Isn’t it a bit kettle calling the pot black when those gamers won't bother to explain the games issues, research the type of game developer to understand its culture, or try to understand the development process of the game because they are too lazy to do it?
I prefer to use untalented or apathetic devs/publishers. When you release something like the ActRaiser remake, and it has incredibly stuttery scrolling in the action stages due to a 50fps camera bug. That's a problem that any competent or caring developer/publisher would have immediately noticed and ensured was fixed before launch. You don't release a broken product like that with people who care behind the wheel.
@TryToBeHopeful,
You are correct, this is more down to a lack of understanding, as to how a games developer works more than anything else.
When something bad happens someone has to take the fall, it's always been that way. Actual devs are (hopefully) gamers and know the culture's lingo well enough to understand that nobody is insinuating they're to blame for the publisher's/director's/whoever's mishandling or lack of understanding what consumers want. At the end of the day the coders and designers are just doing what they're told and hoping the higher ups give them the thumb's up, obviously they're not to blame, but how else do we the customer get our points across in a few words? Find a better phrase we all agree on and I'm on board but at the end of the day I don't think we're insulting anyone, we just want the company to know we expect better if they want our money, it's as simple as that.
Lazy isn’t the word. Incompetent, Dumb and Anti-Consumer is more fitting and telling.
One other thing I would say is that although I agree with the thrust of this article, it glaringly stops short of placing the blame where it actually belongs.
Increasingly games are being produced to lower standards to increase profit margins and keep shareholders happy. This is creating a poor environment for workers and a disappointing end product for consumers.
Over time customers have noticed the amount of content in games decreasing and they're upset about that. They want to blame someone (rightly so) but this article doesn't let them know where that blame should go.
Blaming the correct people here and taking the right actions (not pre-ordering, not purchasing a game until seeing trustworthy reviews) would really improve the industry.
We desperately need journalists to help out here and I'm disappointed this article stopped short.
How about devs stop treating us like marks first?
This is illogical. You get lazy Policepeople… lazy Doctors, lazy everything… you get people in all walks of life that don’t have pride in what they do… hide behind excuses and you have people that under ridiculous conditions deliver…..
So everyone saying “it shows a lack of how developers work”…..
You don’t understand how the human mind works and how some people do “phone it in”….
I think 9 times out of 10 it’s lazy greedy CEOs and leads for the project… if that’s at an umbrella company, the Dev or the publisher…
The gaming industry makes me laugh… if a TV show launched with glitches, and unfinished end, with issues with lighting and acting and half a script…. It would be called out…. But oh no we must gatekeep devs and defend them at all costs.
As said previously here, unambitious is the word. Where that stems from may not be on the developers themselves though who could well want to do much more but are limited by budget or time constraints imposed upon them. And sometimes those issues impacting a game are understandable, but in the case of Pokemon nowadays…nah. There’s no reason to be unambitious with these games, it’s the biggest entertainment franchise in the world last time I checked.
Sure, because the problem is more frequently based in management trying to save time and money than programmers and artists not wanting to make an effort. Projects should account for any lack of effort in the process, anyway. But we should also get rid of the term "entitled gamers" as applied freely to anyone who criticizes a game for a specific reason or reasons.
A very good article. Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I generally dislike how gamers treat the creators of their favourite past times. I love playing guitar I don’t complain on twitter that a Fender Stratocaster has had the same basic shape for the past 60 or so years. Still needs a talented luthier to put together lol As for valid criticism that’s a different thing all together. Unfortunately that’s not what people do in the echo chamber.
I prefer greedy capitalistic pig to describe the real problem of studios that expect ever increasing profits on ever diminishing budget/team size. Plus it reminds me of the comically bad movies/tv shows that overused the trope.
However there are lazy developers. I frequently deal with them and their half baked software at work. Their general opinion is that it worked for them in one specific situation, so it must work for everything else and don’t bother testing it. The MacBook Pro T2 issue on the recent update is a fine example of lazy project development and release. Another form is release and patch mentality.
Easiest way to resolve this:
“The game was rushed” or “The game wasn’t given enough time and attention”.
There. Lazy or not, either of these is bad enough.
"This ain't it chief"
Completely agree. Even if the devs are ‘only’ working 40 hour weeks, over the course of a few years that’s a lot of work these strangers are putting into our entertainment.
Not to say games that are broken or flawed shouldn’t be highlighted for them, the customer (usually) works hard for their spending money too and should be aware of potential downsides to the project. But the term lazy in this context is just ignorant and entitled.
Do not agree or like this article - spending $60+ on most of these games that are released with DAY ONE patches and held back content for "DLC".... we all have a right to a critical opinion.
In a lot of cases "lazy" works just fine. Shovelware, deadlines, quotas, cash-ins, and "marketing" based on previous entries in a series are no excuse -and why I buy either used or wait for a deep sale for the most part.... or skip buying it at all. And very rarely even consider paid DLC packs.
No, we can't. When you have enough money and a big enough team, neglecting better design choices is not a good thing. We want games to get better after each sequel, removing features that were clearly a step forward and oversimplifying things without a good reason won't cause anything but complaints.
Don't forget those products cost money.
Equating the development of Pokémon/Monster Hunter with the services offered on NSO as if somehow criticism of one is the same as criticism of the other is, well, lazy.
Issues with the stagnation in the mainline Pokémon series aside, Game Freak may not deserve to be called lazy, but in the same context Nintendo absolutely does deserve to be called both lazy and greedy. Both for how they have gone about the Expansion Pack pricing, and how they failed to let Wii and Wii U owners transfer their purchases in any meaningful way, while replacing Nintendo Network with an online service that is inferior in just about every way, and while charging a subscription fee for it when they didn’t before.
@Crockin Thank you!
It's like if you were tasked to make a dozen cupcakes from scratch by your boss, but you were only given enough flour for 8 and an hour to do it in on your own. You say you need 2-3 hours but it' too late they don't want to move the date because someone else is serving eclairs an hour after that and the cafe down the road has given your boss a big bag of money to have those cupcakes exclusively for them too. You aks for some help and, well that's not in the budget.
So you're able to make 8 at least, maybe you'll stretch it to 9 or even 10 but each cake is a little smaller than you wanted. And they might not be the most perfect looking as you had to rush some a little so some have less sprinkles or wonky frosting.
Then you go to serve them and people call you lazy....before even tasting them. They don't criticise the person that promised them the things they then did not give you the time or means to produce they call YOU lazy, or unambitious, or apathetic, or even unskilled. They don't even care to question how come you werent able to produce what someone else promised. You're lazy and thats their mind made up.
You probably wouldn't like that given you just works your butt of trying to get cupcakes out for people. It would feel quite unfair and mean spirited and more than a little misinformed. Meanwhile your boss is telling them "don't worry next time we'll have 14 cupcakes" and instructing you to go out and add extra sprinkles to each cupcake you made to 'fix' them.
TLDR: it's rarely the devs fault and more often than not the fault of the publisher/shareholder/CEO etc forcing something out because there is money riding on it.
This article was probably written by a lazy dev. Of all the possible grievances people can have about the current state of the videogame industry, this guy is concerned about an adjective. People misuse words all the time, but non-pedantic folks normally have the ability to understand what they're trying to say.
Laziness may not always be the reason behind bad games or poorly executed releases, but at the end of the day in the eyes of the public it just looks lazy.
Also you would be surprised at the amount of developers who do a halfhearted job out of laziness. They're humans too you know?
@kimimi
I agree with most of the conversation, but I like to own my stuff, so vconsole will always make more sense than me throwing money at someone over and over again for games I don't want.
I've read thousands of articles on this site, but this really seems like a 'hot takey' one to me.
"Why didn’t they recreate the Virtual Console again (even though a subscription-based service makes perhaps more sense), and who was too lazy to sort that out?"
Makes more sense to you, maybe. Makes little to no sense for me, though. But, that's a story for a different day, and this article is about lazy developers or the argument that they aren't really lazy.
I get some people over exaggerate or throw the word around, but more often than not, it really seems warranted. And maybe lazy isn't the right word all the time, but cheap could be? I dk, either way, it's bad practice at times, and they need to be called out. This is coming from someone who rarely has the loudest voice in the room, and seldomly, if ever gets into debates with people on this site.
The article is a bad take imo.
One context for the "lazy devs" accusation that particularly makes me cringe is speed running: like some really obscure glitch is found that nobody uncovered in normal gameplay, running on a machine less computationally capable than my toaster. And the patter in the commentary is ripping on those dastardly lazy devs. It's exhausting.
Though maybe we still need "lazy devs" around as one of those red flag phrases that let you know to set your expectations that bit lower? It's like Clear Blue for opinions that probably aren't worth hearing.
Now, there are certain games where developers are legitimately "lazy" but BD/SP isn't one of them. A combination of bad prioritization and bad creative decisions is the reason why. Time constraints might be a factor, but I highly doubt it's any issue if reusing assets is common among many developers.
GameFreak could've easily developed BD/SP by themselves rather than pouring all of their resources into Legends. They have the money and the capabilities to do so, but they simply chose to develop a brand new game as if the remakes didn't matter to them.
Instead, we get the outsourcing crap, which even though it's not necessarily bad (Samus Returns and Link's Awakening are great examples of amazing outsourced remakes), there's still a lot of factors at play, most importantly being that the game caters to both modern and veteran audiences.
The lack of full features is just a bad creative decision, much like Let's Go excluding the Sevii Islands. They have the budget, time, and the resources capable of doing so, but they simply chose not to in an attempt to feel 100% faithful to the original.
But I think everyone sees this now. Whenever something major is bad, people find reasons to hate the game even more than they normally would. Sw/Sh is an example, where people randomly nitpicked the graphics after learning that the game doesn't feature the full national dex. The same can be said with BD/SP; people find reasons to hate the game even more, so they say that the devs were lazy, when it reality, it's poor decision making and prioritization.
‘Lazy’ is just a shaming word because it’s hard for us to accept someone’s unwillingness or acknowledge personal limitations, especially if it’s an effort we put in ourselves. In a more constructive world the ‘lazy’ accusation meant to motivate through shame and bad feelings, or just used to make one’s self feel superior to another, could probably just be dropped from usage altogether.
I agree making games is difficult and when somebody tries to call you lazy for a lot of hard effort and hours you put into making a game, it hurts because they are trying to make a game people will enjoy and if people call the devs lazy I think it'd discourage them to continue making games.
We can retired "lazy devs" the day Bethesda takes the Creation Engine out of it's misery
It's not so much a lazy issue as it is a rushed schedule issue when a game comes out with too little content or too many reused assets or too many bugs. That's not always a bad thing but it does get grating if it happens too many times in a row and it just starts to feel like a lazy effort while in reality they should have delayed the game to give the developers more time to increase the overall game quality.
@NintendoByNature
To understand why NSO makes more sense than Virtual Console, just look at how much more money Nintendo makes from that. They decided to capitalize on subscription services like everyone else, because there's always going to be a scenario where people have to unavoidably pay for it and they have to do it periodically rather than once.
From a consumer standpoint, it's a scummy move and makes it deceptively cheaper than what we previously had, not to mention being less convenient. However, the extent of how bad it is, didn't seem to be big enough for Nintendo to say no to the NSO ideas. They get the most disliked on YouTube, but their sales say otherwise. Unless people stopped paying for it, it makes sense on a business standpoint.
Jebus christ. Have you even seen the ***** soulless "remakes" and new releases of Pokemon? You can't with a straight face claims they're decent products made by people who care about the franschise.
This whole article read like a giant Twitter thread that never ends. Just anger and nothing else.
@Gabaz09 That is one perspective, but there are hundreds.
Pretend you work for a game development team, you are tasked with projects over a period of two years, you're proud of your individual work and the work of your mates. Towards the end of the game project, your leaders make decisions far out of your control or understanding, you can't really see what the finished product will be like since you only work on specific small parts. Now the game releases, you're really passionate about the work you put into the details in the game, except based on the decisions of your leaders, it's receiving lots of criticism. You find out certain features were cut, certain features were parceled out as individual DLC, and now all your hard work looks like lazy muk from a consumer perspective.
I realize that's a very dramatic perspective, but I'm sure it's a lot more common than you think. Sure, like anyone else, devs are working for money, not for fame, but there's a chance some of them are actually passionate about this work, and it's all that motivates them to continue. I'm not defending a company for being greedy or making stupid decisions, but the actual worker bees should be spared of this criticism, it should fall on the leaders and only the leaders.
Reading Blood Sweat and Pixels really opened my eyes to how nuts game development is (I recommend it to anyone interested in the process). It's also worth noting how young the industry is and how quickly, and in how many directions, it has expanded. Creating something as complex as a 'B' level game is is lot, let alone AAA. I'm not saying some of the larger companies couldn't do more. Just that cutting people some slack is ok. If I make a mistake in my job it isn't going to be for millions of people to see, and bash on social media.
Removed - trolling/baiting
That's just life though.
99% of comments, not just in games but everywhere, are by people who have no clue, not even the faintest idea, about what they are talking about. That math checks because the reality is none of us know much about anything. We can only learn so much in a lifetime, and you compare that to all possible knowable things ... well it's basically the same as zero.
So the producers outsource something, it comes back as unusable garbage, they tell what's left of the dev team 48 hours before launch to "fix it", they all work 2 day straight and show true brilliance in their ability to take it from unusable to awful in that time period (given the original build was 2 years) and all requests for more time and money are declined.
Then when the game releases, we call the devs lazy and the predecessors are like "Thank god we'll never have to change our ways because people are more interested then being angry then informed!"
Sucks, but again ... I can rewrite that story of basically everything in the universe. The USA is currently in the process of blaming the the person who knows the most about and has studied more about viruses then anyone else on the planet for CREATING COVID, when in reality if they hadn't ignored everything he said for the last 20 years about preparedness, COVID would have lasted a week.
Most humans suck.
people using wrong adjectives , thats nothing new
It's not laziness of the devs, it tends to be more greed and mismanagement of the higher-ups that causes issues. It'd be like blaming Scarlett Johansson that Age of Ultron had a stupid characyer death. It's not her fault, she wasn't the director
I speak with my wallet. I am not lazy and earn money that am not going to give to someone for a product I find to be sub par.
The responsibility lies with the publisher big companies like Ubisoft , EA , Activision, Square Enix , Konami etc. Its the people at the top that make all the decisions
Nice to see people wh!ning considering the what the world is full of now
There are reasons to complain about things, sure. Like, why did XY's super training have no good way for lefties to play, even if Nintendo figured that out over a decade ago? Why does Animal Crossing not have a settings menu? Why is Nintendo charging 150% for an expansion pass that doesn't even work right?
@Thoughts there we go again making something political again. How is Capitalism the problem for a rushed product? People complain about NSO then any other comparable online service. I could go over every problem with each service, but people would only focus that NSO is bad. They wouldn't see their own hypocrisy. Who wants to admit to being a hypocrite hmm? Nintendo has heard the complaints, and has provided more funding to get it right. Its still not good enough for people, because its not immediately fixed. NSO isn't perfect, and needs work I certainly agree with those points. Sony and Microsoft need to up their game as well. I want see criticism on them as well. Sony stupid free rentals to Microsoft's crappy free game line up.
In the case of these Pokemon games, there's nothing wrong with criticizing a company that clearly has the resources to fund a game and go above and beyond to create a high-quality product. That's just consumers making an objectively true observation. When it comes to smaller budget studios with limited resources, I think those games need to be treated on a case by case basis.
The blame surely lies higher up the chain than the devs, but someone is responsible for the lazy production that is bdsp.
Regarding BD/SP and GameFreak as a company;
Lazy devs? Not so much. Incompetent devs? Very much so.
I genuinely cannot believe the state BD/SP is releasing in honestly. The game looks polished to a degree sure, but seeing all the leaked gameplay when in battles and it just looks…half-baked.
GameFreak themselves are so out of touch with their fanbase and target audience these days it’s unreal.
“B-But Pokemon is a kids game! It always has been!”
Maybe a decade ago it was seen solely as such. But casual people don't seem to understand that the majority of the player base for Pokemon games are those that have grown up with the franchise.
That’s not to say kids aren’t the target as well, but it’s clear that the older players are second-fiddle.
This is a multi-billion dollar company. The #1 highest-grossing media franchise in the entire world and lately they’ve done nothing but produced half-baked games that just aren’t up to standard. That is the cold truth.
GameFreak’s motto should honestly be “Doing the bare minimum” or “One step forward, 5 steps back” because god damn.
Legends Arceus is honestly the only sliver of hope and even then that is dwindling. If that doesn’t live up to expectations then Gen 8 as a whole is a write-off.
We will retire phrases like "lazy devs" when journalists retire clickbait articles. Fair? Fair. ^_^
@Hellburner918 The word "Capitalism" does not mean it is political, that word just means favor is given to businesses, and Nintendo is a business.
I understand and respect your perspective, NSO isn't perfect, and it may not warrant all the criticism it gets, and if you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it. With that said, you're still going to see people criticize it, and you likely won't see people criticizing Xbox's or Playstation's online service here because this is a Nintendo-focused site. You're going to see more criticism for Nintendo here than anywhere else, it's just the nature of the audience.
Additionally, don't throw rocks at Microsoft or Sony just because Nintendo is getting flak. Microsoft's Game Pass is far and beyond what NSO or NSO+ will ever be. Sometimes the company you love is just bad at things. And that's okay.
We, the consumers are one big part of the problem if not the biggest one. Everything needs to be mass-produced these days and of course it has to be cheap. There inevitably have to be shortcomings, you cannot put out high quality games like say Mario Odyssey every year. Yet people will scream for sequels as soon as a new game comes out.
We have to understand that we are living in the fastest times, ever. Your phone which I‘d argue plays a big role in this, gives you a social life, entertainment, shopping and basically everything you need in a few seconds. I would say that leads to you wanting more and more of the good stuff but in a shorter time. Quality however, needs time. And if we don‘t want to burn ourselves out and want to live in a healthy working environment in the future we will have to change our consumption habits at some point and get back to some form of contentment.
Some devs aren't as technically skilled or some publishers aren't as ambitions with their projects. I don't imagine these people take too many days off so calling them lazy may be a bit unfair.
Insulting people because you don't like their work is pretty awful.
If I don't think a product is of good enough quality, I just wont buy it.
If I do buy a product and it's bad, I'll give it a bad review, try to get a refund and avoid that dev/publisher in the future.
While I agree that not every game not made great isn't lazy I don't think we shouldn't call out the ones that are. No man's sky sucked at launch and the devs knew it and they worked their butts off to update and deliver the game they promised, not lazy. Aspyr ported Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy in late 2019 and you still can't even read mission briefings because there's no scroll mechanic, the HUD overlay covers up dialogue subtitles, and game saves don't display the proper information for the save file, If features like this can't be fixed in the course of over 2 years when other also small studios can and do all the time then yeah I'm gonna call them out as being lazy until they give evidence to the contrary.
Okay, how about I use the phrase “Wasted Potential”? I feel like that works just as well. For example, Pokemon could be so much better, but it’s wasted potential
Aside from some specific instances, I don't think GameFreak is lazy - I think they're vastly inexperienced with 3D games still, given a forced deadline by the other 2 parts of The Pokémon Company, & horribly understaffed for a team in charge of the world's biggest IP.
Then again in that ORAS interview they said they didn't bother to include the Battle Frontier because 'people spend more time on their phones anyways', so maybe it's a bit of everything bad.
While we're at it can we get rid of the phrase "hasn't aged well" when referring to some old games?
Pokemon Let's Go would have been better if the devs WERE lazy.
Just Yellow with Gen 7 mechanics is all I asked!
Instead we get that mess.
Not making new animations for pokemon when its kinda there job to do things like that, might fall under lazy, Bc fans of the games have done it waay before LOA. (Assuming the game has new pokemon animations)
It's a sham of an argument because over times games have gotten bigger and more complicated. At some point there's a limit of what's reasonable.
So something like Pokemon where Gamefreak creates new Pokemon every generation. Supporting all Pokemon becomes a bigger and bigger task every single generation, but there will be a breaking point where it's no longer reasonable to expect them to be able to.
Even "just hire more people" is not a panacea because the bigger the team or the more support studios, managing the teams and making sure hundreds of thousands of people are working efficiently becomes a challenge in itself. A lot of Ubisoft's buggiest games are the ones where their credits stretch into the thousands.
That said it's not impossible for someone or some people to be lazy...but it shouldn't be the instant knee jerk reaction.
Definitely agree with this soapbox. People who use the phrase are ignorant of how projects like these work, and are just resorting to insults to deal with being upset.
Removed - unconstructive
well the graphic artists on pokemon are pretty terrible
@Bluerangervegeta
I'm the last person to defend Cyberpunk 2077, but everything you just wrote about it is complete and utter nonsense.
To the surprise of (hopefully) no one, the comment section is at least 75% - 80% entitled, whiny, uninformed salt. Nice article Kerry, and good job trying Nintendo Life, but the ones who most need to hear/read and understand this article are the ones least likely to, or if they do read it, are the most likely to complain and be all "well actually..." and proceed to whinge entitled-ly. The internet is a terrible and unkind place most of the time.
Good article, for the most part. Corporations have done a fantastic job of training video game fans to target and attack individual employees and low-level developers, instead of the executives who are responsible for the issues we find in games.
Every overworked programmer and harassed designer gets their orders from higher up. Find and target those higher ups, not these people. This is like giving hell to individual employees at McDonald's thinking that'll do something about crappy practices at that restaurant.
Not that anything will ever change. Corporate defenders like the ones seen in this comment section have either built their personality around the products they consume, or they don't care who gets hurt or what happens as long as they get their shiny toy. Both groups are the ones who need this message, both groups are willfully ignorant, and both groups are completely pathetic.
https://youtu.be/lAZ02sN2O0g
I will gladly stop referring to developers as lazy the second a majority of the following stops
Full refunds across all buying formats are available for all worldwide within 24 hours of purchase so broken games can be refunded
Cure all that and I'm all in on never calling a dev lazy or shady again.
As a consumer I'll until then call them whatever the hell I want if I don't get what I paid for.
As a member of tge pokemon fandom who appreciates the games for what thay are, while still aware of their shortcomings. I appreciate this. It's so hard to have a decent dipscussion without someone touting their unchecked rage and criticism.
@SpacedDuck In the vast majority of those situations it's the publisher's fault for having strixt deadlines and no flexibility.
this article come under sponsorship of **** ?
@thejuice027 I guess it depends on your definition of laziness. Devs absolutely are lazy in the sense that the entire job revolves around finding shortcuts to avoid doing anything by hand! Let’s just only give 10/10s to games written in machine code 😛
Gamers: we're mad when developers don't work hard enough, we're mad when developers work too hard, and (most likely) we have no knowledge of game development to begin with.
Only if we introduce in a widespread fashion the far more accurate "***** management" phrase.
This article was lazy.
"Let’s get more specific: Nintendo Switch Online’s execution has been touted as lazy in both its original and newly expanded forms. Why aren’t there more games? Why aren’t there more of the ‘right’ sort of games? Why isn’t the emulation absolutely perfect? Why didn’t they recreate the Virtual Console again (even though a subscription-based service makes perhaps more sense), and who was too lazy to sort that out?"
I don't necessarily disagree with the content of this article and we should give devs more than enough credit for their hard work.
That said, the NSO N64 games are exactly the sort of laziness that actually occurs. Nintendo didn't even bother playtesting them, clearly. And the entire NSO system REEKS of laziness combined with greed. I'm not sure how anyone can claim otherwise.
And Pokemon is the most profitable brand on the planet, or in the top 5. They can afford to make Sword/Shield look far better than it did
@Yorumi If it's a large enough publisher you can bet it's on the publisher, they are very greedy for the most part.
While i do feel like the term "lazy devs" is more often than not incorrect due to how complex the situation can get within the company and there isnt usually much transparency about the development process, i still feel like there is also a lot of dismissal of criticism as "entitlement" or "whining" the NSO situation for example a lot of the criticism is because it introduced new issues absent from the wii virtual console.
in terms of people preferring the VC over the NSO, it is mainly due to people who want the option to buy and keep the games (Gamepass on xbox does something similar iirc) rather than getting rid of the current model altogether.
there also is a pretty bad issue regarding strawmaning criticism when it comes to discussions, with people often responding to said strawman rather than addressing any of the points people actually made, this causes discussion to get distorted even to the point where the original points were lost and instead people are arguing about complaints no one actually made.
this tends to be an issue with internet discussion as a whole where rather than addressing points made by people it instead becomes a case of addressing a vague generalization of multiple different takes. An example being when apparent "hypocrisy" is pointed out by comparing 2 different takes as if it were the same people making both statements (that is if the statements being quoted were actually said by anyone or are again just interpretations)
im not really that good at wording points but i do feel like a lot of issues tend to be how internet discussion makes it difficult to discuss subjects especially the larger in scope it can be and that there are often many different takes on a subject rather than it being an either/or situation.
I've not read the comments above, but what I will say is this article is accurate. I've been a professional software developer for nearly 20 years and have been writing my own software for 30 (yes, including game dev). I think the term "lazy developer" just underscores how little people know about software development in general. It can be exceptionally challenging to do something which sounds simple. In fact, often the simplest things can be the hardest. As the article says, it's often astounding that any given piece of software comes together at all. I don't know what the solution is, but more insights into the world of development can only be a good thing.
I've seen a lot of comments about games development over the years which have stimulated a range of emotions. One I always remember is from a few years ago - "Why doesn't BotW have online multiplayer? All they need to do is turn some servers on".
I wouldn't ever call an individual developer lazy. But a studio or publisher? Definitely. Many of the decisions Nintendo makes for example, I would call lazy. Or if not lazy, then sloppy.
Eh, maybe if we are talking indie developers - but when people bring up the garbage emulation Nintendo does for it's own games on Switch? Or pretty much everything else Nintendo has done for the past five years aside from BOTW? Sorry, "lazy" is the only word that is appropriate. The Nintendo Seal of Quality simply doesn't exist any more.
No, because I'm tired of developers making excuses and blaming fans when games release unfinished. If they don't want people to think they're "lazy" they should apologize and fix the problems instead of complaining about internet trolls.
Perhaps "lazy" is just internet codeword for cheap pennypinching business minded profit maximization driven minimum-required to drive initial sales focused con-job development? "Lazy" just sounds more polite.
The fans will retire the phrase lazy dev the moment games journalists retire 'toxic fans' and or 'entitled fans'.
The correct term is 'customers' and we're allowed to not worship the feet of the people who's bills we pay. They work for us.
How dare we have expectations.
How does a subscription-based service make more sense than another virtual console?
"Lazy devs" is a lazy criticism.
Not because there aren't any lazy developers. There are. The issue is running to that same tired old line any time someone finds anything to their dissatisfaction.
It's a dumbed down, cookie cutter, speculative diagnosis of why something failed to meet someone's expectations.
There are plenty of games and aspects of games I can criticize. But rarely if ever will I use the term "lazy" to describe them.
Typically I think it's lack of skill, lack of time, lack of manpower, lack of funds, or lack of ambition. But rarely is it laziness, and even when it is, you won't really be able to distinguish it as such.
@Yorumi I just know if I use a publisher I'm gonna make sure I find one that's not as terrible as the rest when I release my game. I'm gonna see if I can self publish though because that's a better way to go if you can do it.
@SpacedDuck Since you are presenting only one side of this argument, I want you to meet the other side of the argument.
Each one of your items you wish would "stop happening" can be avoided if you just stop pre-ordering games, and just wait until reviews come in before making a decision. Just a little bit of patience is all it takes.
You can't "vote" for a company to do better in the comments section, it's a waste of effort. You already voted "do this more" when you paid the company that released that poor experience.
If a company releases a poor product, shame on them, and shame on their profits. If a consumer buys a product without doing any research, shame on them, and shame on their expectations.
I don't think it's even lazy as much as it is completely tone deaf. Some of these guys need to actually sit and play the games they make. They get so caught up in the process, it doesn't occur to them that the thing is ***** until they see reviews. And then it's "Y no 1 liek my game?? ;.;"
Because.. it's not fun. Or in some cases for sequels, there's just not enough difference to justify the cost. Like Pokemon. You want accolades and rave reviews? Do something worthy of the praise. Learn some new coding techniques, come up with some different ideas... And for God's sake, quit trying to recycle the same battle system and animations and pretend they are new and exciting. Or in the case of something like Kingdom Hearts, offering slightly better graphics and like 15 minutes of new content for the price of a brand new game.
Lazy devs? More like predatory.
It is but one of the numerous words abused by cringeworthy fanspeak; the article itself is an unfortunate testament to that, with the author nonchalantly dropping other epithets like "bland and tepid experience" (something that has makes no sense outside personal and often situational resonance, holds zero analytical value and doesn't help improve the completed OR future works in any way). And if we fail to describe a fiction work as anything else than "utter rubbish", is it SO different from failing to remain civil towards the toil of the trade? Sure, we all know this stuff gets the articles clicked on, but it also contributes to degrading the quality of the articles that are meant to inform the audience about a game, not about the author's impressions of it.
But hey, baby steps, I suppose? At least this whole soapbox at hand is a step in the right direction, commendable as proof of self-reflection and of the human prevailing over the fan at least somewhere. How much impact it will cause among the readers is a different matter (and I'm bitterly inclined to bet on none - all the perverse pieces of fanship littering this very comment section in response only reinforce this bet), but I still appreciate what amount of sanity it aims to voice here, inadvertently hypocritical at times or not.
@Ghostbusterluigi why pretend to know about an industry you're not actually familiar with?
"Learn some new coding techniques" - Really? Is that all they have to do? You solved it.
Did you know developers actually work on very small pieces of a game, and they often don't know what the final product will actually look like until it is released? Did you know even if the development team (the ones coding and building the game) did everything perfectly, the game could still have a terrible release based on decisions from directors or publishers? Wouldn't it be awful if you were one of those hardworking developers and you see ignorant consumers blindly blaming you for the entire project's failure?
This would be like if a restaurant chain came under fire because the CEO said something racist and you went and blamed a single fry cook for the whole scandal. The developers of the game just build what they are told to build, they're one small piece of a giant machine, and they don't make final decisions. Blame the whole company if you want, it would be better to blame the actual directors/publishers, but the last thing you should do is blame developers specifically.
I definitely consider myself to be a lazy dev, this year.
Last year I managed to write 113 games. This year (so far) I'm only up to 59.
There's no excuse for such tardiness, Jay. You're just being lazy.
Don't give me that "oh, but I've been writing my own programming language in the background" excuse.
For shame.
Lazy Jay.
I think that this kind of phrase depends on the scenario. Often times it’s the higher ups that are responsible for lazy decisions, but not always.
Article is great and I agree, but still a bit limited in explaining why "lazy devs" is so off base.
It's encouraging to see people try to suss it out in the comments. Cheers to everyone trying to dig deeper.
Always discouraging to see some people fight to keep issues shallow and binary. Unsolicited tip: learn about dunning-kruger effect and confirmation bias.
@Yorumi Agreed - "The Devs" is a pretty general term, and that's kind of the problem. As consumers, we're more informed about gaming development than we ever have, but we're still confidently mislabeling who is responsible for the finished product. It's kind of misleading to those unfamiliar with the gaming industry, they end up blaming parties that weren't involved just based on what other people say.
For example, another commenter here mentioned the devs are not just lazy, they are actually predatory. And to confirm they were not talking about the collective term "The Devs," they actually said they should learn better coding techniques to avoid making such bad games.
I can understand how someone could come to think this way, it certainly doesn't help that it's normalized to blame "The Devs" for a bad game when it's almost always the publishers or directors. It always amazes me how many people in the comments suddenly have indie dev knowledge and know exactly who is to blame.
I'm just saying if we're concerned enough to criticize a company's failures, the least we can do is point the finger in a direction that isn't completely wrong.
Okay. I'd we're talking about game freak let's call them complacent with apparently the wrong attitude to further develop the one product they have. Game freak is probably the largest dev team that puts out work that barely pushes it's genre at all. Activision as a publisher is up there, but even cod changes eventually even if it takes a long time and like 5 yearly releases.
Pokemon just got more streamlined since gen 2 or 3 with very small improvements and literally all of them were highly just cribbing from other games in the genre that worked. Which Ubisoft does and is probably the most guilty party, bit they usually still take like 6 things and cram it in their build a game that makes money formula. It usually doesn't really work all the way like far cry 5 and Valhalla, but they at least try something. Game freak doesn't try to actually develop their formula and doesn't allocate perceively any resources to make their games at least look or run better or he more feature complete. I know this wasn't talking strictly about game freak, but the title card and they just plain suck. So game freak isn't lazy. They suck. It's much easier to use one word rather than 150. Which may be lazy, or just more effort than it's worth, which is what dev teams like game freak seem to think of their product.
@Astral-Grain Usually a buggy game comes from a lack of time or resources. Some companies lack neither and put out sub par games. Both scenarios come from an upper management position. I guess mismanaged would be the right word, but I mean, it's just a pedantic choice. What's it matter when the intent behind what's said is the same? That being that the product didn't meet expectations. Whatever the reason it's not really in the consumers bounds to fix it, it's not their job either. Lazy is as good a word as anything else. We can discuss why things didn't meet expectations, but not everyone wants to have that conversation. Sometimes people just want to voice their disappointment and that's okay. It gets less okay when talking about a person, but companies, no matter what they want you to think, aren't people. Talk ***** about them. Between that and not buying their product that's the only way to see change.
While it's true that some LAZILY throw around the word lazy as a catch-all, but it's obvious that few (if any people) actually think it's because programmers A, B and C are just tossing around paper footballs instead of working. Obviously the main issue is the higher ups in charge of making decisions are CHEAP and money hungry. Crunch conditions don't exist because it's hard to make a game. People aren't working over time daily because it's necessary for a project to succeed. It's all in relation to how much money the developer is willing to spend and they're unwilling to budge on those cost/timetable particulars so instead of hiring more staff, they work their employees more. Developers are often cheap and greedy. It's obviously not that they aren't willing to go to work and do their job.
To be honest, though, that is so obviously the case that it's confusing to imagine you actually thought everyone was under some mistaken impression that "lazy devs" really did mean people just screwing around, unwilling to work. Obviously it's a matter of money they're willing to spend.
That being said, I think you also really overstate the "near impossibility" of making a successful game. If it actually were nearly impossible, it wouldn't happen so often. I'm not saying it's easy, but.. nearly impossible? No.
Also, I think it's worth mentioning that laziness is a factor in some game development. While it maybe isn't what we're talking about here, but the post-Early Access/Kickstarter game world has played host to developers who are unwilling to work on their games much or even at all after they get paid. The reality of getting tons of money upfront and no true contractual obligation to follow through has led to serious and very real decline in productivity and desire to complete projects. It's certainly not what most people are talking about when they say "lazy devs", but laziness does still exist.
Let's be honest though: the remakes and remaster are lazy. That's why they're given to interns or inexperienced studios, because they're (in theory) easy to do. For the most part no design aside from audio-visual one is required. Maybe some little change or small amount of content here and there but the hardest parts are already done. And yet so many times the inexperienced or out of touch devs still manage to mess it up. With the Pokemon remakes apparently mandatory exp share breaks the game balance.
Also as a former QA let me tell you: a lot of devs absolutely are lazy.
@Xansies Consumers and the actual Game Development Teams do not have the same goals in mind, and that is the problem. We blame them for disappointing us, but then we contribute to the reason they disappoint us. We also expect them to listen to our words, but they only listen to what sells. They realize they can't make everyone happy, so they shoot for what the majority wants - the fans.
Your other post mentioned Gamefreak being a bad company because they do very little to innovate the develop the genre, but is that actually something they need to do? As far as any company is concerned, their job is to make money. So you may not like that the games have changed very little over the years, but the mountains of cash from the loyal Pokemon fanbase disagrees with this perspective. Money does all the talking, their ears are deaf to any other form of communication, it's a waste.
Can you honestly blame Gamefreak though? They have a safe and easy strategy for releasing these games, and until a significant majority decides to not buy their next entry, nothing changes, they keep making money and the cycle continues. If they have historically been able to make loads of money by re-purposing the same ideas and concepts, they have no reason to take a risk. It's a business to make money, not a government to win votes.
@SmaggTheSmug Right, it's super easy to port a game from one system that has one specific language and file format and engine to another system that has a completely different language and file format and engine.
And wow, they let a QA person help with the development of porting a game? That must be how you know so much about it. I'll bet you've ported hundreds of games in your day, you could do it in your sleep probably. It's really very easy, the devs are just lazy, all devs all the time. Lazy.
No.
@nessisonett I was reading and commenting on this article on the job kind of laziness.
No. No we cannot. Have a good day.
And sheesh why people writing whole essays on this topic? Devs will be lazy! Get used to it
Honestly, people need a good look at themselves before they accuse anyone of being lazy.
"Why didn’t they recreate the Virtual Console again (even though a subscription-based service makes perhaps more sense),"
care to support this statement with one point of information? makes more since for who?
care to hazard an answer to the straw man hypothetical question posed? why kill VC, indeed?
@Astral-Grain Not necessarily. Shifting opinion can change the expectation of future profit. People have been saying the same thing about game freak for years, most other companies would see the writing on the wall and change things up to avoid the loss of interest. In video games you can see this happen literally all the time with publishers that put out yearly games. Sure the sports games change very little year to year, but there is a progressive yearly change so that after 3-5 years you can actually tell the difference mechanically between the games. It's a sort of grow or die mentality. Game freak doesn't change and there's been a lot of backlash growing since sun and moon especially because of it. You'd think that'd be cause for a leap, which Arceus arguably is a rare experiment in the direction of. It's also arguably monster hunter stories. Well see how well it does once it's called Pokemon. Probably great, honestly.
It's weird that the last cool Pokemon game I can think of was conquest.
Retire “shovelware” while you’re at it too. One of the most academically inept words I’ve ever heard.
@Yorumi I was actually going to type that last part, beat me to it.
I think it has more to do with developer inability and saturation rather than laziness. A similar situation existed with Atari in the early 1980s. The result of both: a collapse in consumer confidence of video game quality (already getting sketchy of most titles).
Yeah....we can stop using 'lazy devs' when gamefreak stops being lazy. Also the whipping will continue until morale improves.
Stop apologising for bad games
When they don't think about what they're putting into their games in regard to balance or making sense, don't debug, don't polish, don't even proofread, I'm going to continue to call them lazy. Sure, there are undefended circumstances like a publisher wants a game out within a certain budget, that obviously forces a dev's hands. Doesn't mean that's the case every time.
And need I remind you, @Kimimi, the FIFA copy/paste release from a few years ago?
You're right. It's not about being lazy, it's about being mediocre and untalented. Also, can you stop shilling for a massive company that churns out phone-tier products, please? You're meant to be a journalism site not a branch of Nintendo's advertising department.
I call them as I see them. These remakes are lazy af. Mediocre maybe.
@Yorumi It's only about you if you take it personal. It costs nothing to be kind.
@Sourcecode They’re a Nintendo focused site. They gotta defend most Nintendo related things
No disrespect, sincerely, but I disagree. We're talking about one of the highest grossing franchises in the entire world. If anyone can afford to run a fine comb through their product, it's the Pokemon Company.
And if they need a bit more time? Delay it. It's been done before.
Say what you will, but someone cut corners, and while I'm not going to waste my time crying about it, like some people who don't seem to have anything else going on in life, I'm also not going to pretend like I'm happy about it.
I don't think it's that fair to call devs of a less than great game lazy, I mean we really don't know that much about what is going on behind the scenes.
@Lyricana - "To be honest, though, that is so obviously the case that it's confusing to imagine you actually thought everyone was under some mistaken impression that "lazy devs" really did mean people just screwing around, unwilling to work. Obviously it's a matter of money they're willing to spend."
This makes no sense. Why would you use the term lazy for something that has nothing to do with being lazy? Why not just say "cheap devs" instead if that's what was intended?
@Sourcecode - Take another look at the article, it's not saying there are no lazy developers, it's saying that using the phrase every single time something goes wrong is more than likely inaccurate given how complex and stressful game development is nowadays.
@TeddyBearSolid - You're missing the point. The article is saying that, more often than not, when something goes wrong in development, it's not due to 'lazy devs' it's because mistakes were made, usually with producers/management under allocating resources to a given project.
And it's not specific to Pokemon, that was just an example.
Edit: As for the article, pretty much agreed, though I'd suggest not so much retiring the phrase, as using it with a little more thought, (in other words, don't just throw it around every single time something goes wrong). Thank you for saying this though, much appreciated.
No Man’s Sky comes to mind, from how it started to where it’s at.
Also it’s funny to see these new faces here chiming in calling this shilling. Haven’t been around here that much, have they?
What do we call the devs behind fifa legacy edition then?
@FullMetalWesker Actually, you're right. Because not wanting to put the work in is essentially the same as not wanting to put the money in. Lazy means literally unwilling to do work or use energy. It has a connotation that you're unwilling to do the work because it's too bothersome, but that's not actually what it means. They are unwilling to do the work because it's too costly. Maybe not a specific programmer but the developer as a whole is unwilling to do the work to make it better because said work costs more time and money. The reasoning behind it doesn't make it not lazy. In this case, cheapness IS laziness.
Laziness suggests they can do better
At this point it reeks of actual incompetence
Thank you for this.
As a software developer myself, I can attest to many projects being simple in concept, but difficult in execution. Often times I run into roadblocks or difficulties I didn't intend to experience, and many projects that I thought would be "easy", end up becoming complex. Game development is far more complex than what I do as there are so many more moving pieces, the scope and control of the games are sometimes mindbending for me to think about managing properly. I give major respect to any game developer who is putting work hours in, I think many are underpaid for what they do, especially Japanese developers.
I've noticed that the people who are the most upset about a project, tend to be the ones who know the least about how they work. As gaming continues to become larger and more mainstream, the criticisms that are in play tend to come from people that are even less aware of the complexities of game development.
By all means express your dislikes about a game, I see flaws in plenty of aspects of even my favorite games. But harassment of developers for being "lazy" or "bad" are ignorant at best, malicious at worst. You never truly know the effort that goes into game development unless you're on the team itself, many people work hard for years and the game just doesn't turn out as envisioned. Unfortunate? Yes. Bad or lazy developer? Hardly.
@shining_nexus oh, yeah, I work really hard to pay for quality games and for Gamefreak / Nintendo / whoever did this remake under Nintendo and Gamefreak supervision deliver a half assed "remake", product of laziness and lack of polish.
This was an awesome article, Kerry! It's great to see a big publication shining light on how poor the working conditions for gaming industry employees are. Kickstarter employees recently had success creating the first union in the tech industry, and I'm hoping that momentum follows to the gaming industry with Activision since the workers there have started taking some collective action.
@Alpha008 why would anyone call FIFA switch developers lazy? It isn't there fault switch gets legacy edition..
EA the publisher made that decision. Anyone calling the developers lazy has no understanding of the business and doesn't know the difference between the publisher and the development team
I love how (reading those comments) the developer is considered a profession that consists ONLY of good people. According to many people here developers are unable to be lazy. They are perfect beings that push themselves to 1000% on every project!!!
Sorry to burst your bubble but I have worked with lazy devs and I know how bad a project can become because of that
It's ironic that Nintendo Life, which publishes hacking articles, writes articles like this.
How about 'NO' but cutely as possible.
Psh lazy article... Haha im kidding, fantastically said, more adult discussion like this needs to be the norm
This is such a good article! It actually made me think and change my mind a bit! ❤️
@sdfkj213 then it could maybe be ironic or hypocritical. But it ain't lazy! 🤔😁
life lesson, never judge something you have no experience in.
First of all, I wouldn't care about the working conditions of the developers. Nobody cares about the working conditions of shop workers when they go to buy food, nobody cares about the working conditions of flight engine designers or fridge repairers. We are the customers and we have money to pay. I'm sorry, I don't care that someone was harassed or worked overtime, that's for companies to deal with. I want to pay money for great products, that's all. Nobody cares about my feelings at work either and that's fine. Because if an employee is unhappy, they should find another job or try another company. Game developers are employees just like everyone else.
Way to just make stuff up!
Certainly there exist lazy people, so why game development would be exempt from this reality, I don't know.
I'm a developer. Around here, being lazy, is usually seen as a virtue. Non lazy devs usually create monsters of complicated and horrible code that after a year has everyone bogged down in bug fixing and untangling the mess. Lazy devs sit down, think, and prefer to write tools to do their job in stead of just hammering the keyboard like a monkey.
@Lyricana - Technically, maybe, but even so, I'd argue that it's easy to confuse the technical meaning with the connotation you described, (to the point where I'm sceptical if that's what's actually meant by the majority of those who use the phrase) so I'm still not quite sure why it's being used, when 'cheap' conveys the same meaning and isn't so easily misunderstood.
@Franklin @Zuljaras - As I said to @sourcecode, "Take another look at the article, it's not saying there are no lazy developers, it's saying that using the phrase every single time something goes wrong is more than likely inaccurate given how complex and stressful game development is nowadays."
Given the fact that almost 20 years ago people used to work in conditions we would consider nowdays to be "toxic" and still managed to deliver a game with almost no game breaking bugs I think "lazy devs" is the perfect term to use.
They aren't incopetent nor unexperienced, they are just hoping to ship a flawed product and fix it late with patches and stuff, if that isn't "lazy" then I don't know what is.
Now, in GameFreak's case being lazy just mean not shipping a product that blows up fans expectation. They just recycle assets from 10 years ago and make a new game. Recycling assets is fine but it has been almost 10 years since the franchise entered the 3D realm and Pokemons still don't have decent idle animation, pokemons are just a blank slate in battle. Compare that to Mario, Kirby, Zelda and other games Nintendo put out, you'll see Pokemon is dead last in terms of polishing and innovation despite being released almost yearly.
I don't agree with the sentiment of this article at all. I appreciate nobody deserves hateful back lashes it unjustified criticism...... gaming is an art form that can be put out or received in a subjective manner by anyone. If songwriting can be lazy, art can be basic or design can be too simplistic..... gaming can judged the same in my opinion.
Saying you can't be critical is the same as saying you can't be complimentary remember. If you heap praise on a studio is there not a lazy worker in their office that is the recipient of undue praise they don't deserve. Should we stop giving people praise too to be truly fair and equal?
@sdfkj213 i wouldn't be surprised if they publish hacking articles to get the hacks taken down
Cry Cry Cry for the hero game developers that deserve this article for the hard work. This pathetic cry for attention is often used by an industry to push more sympathy / money to come there way.
There is no need for this article as we all deserve better/more for the work we do, but you don't get it people, sorry but it doesn't happen.
@Fulgor_Astral Right, a product of laziness. So the solution is to work harder. We just figured out the secret to making good quality games people. Better call these companies up and let them know that lazy equals bad games. Apparently they don’t know this because there’s a lot of lazy games out there.
I'll call lazy whatever I think is lazy. Pokemon Diamond & Pearl were held back by the DS hardware back in the day, but they turned out to be fantastic games nontheless, but going by the excuse of a "fAitHful 1:1 RecREaTion" just isn't it, it's taking shortcuts for a quick buck, the game doesn't even look pretty, it's your run of the mill mobile looking game. Devs should do better, and Pokemon shouldn't be regressing like that, just look at Xenoblade 2 and imagine if Monolith was in charge of a new Pokemon, instead it's still going to be held back by Gamefreak for years and years to come, take a look at Arceus and tell me that looks like a finished product.
@ULTRA-64 Who said you can't be critical? You can still not a like a game and think mechanics need more work while simultaneously not using phrases like lazy devs.
That phrase ignores other pressures development teams have to face when working on a game, like poor project management and timeline planning, along with pressure from publishers or higher ups to implement things that weren't originally intended, change elements to fit market research or maintain a release date in order to meet a company's financial goals for the year.
Not only that, but using the phrase so liberally means it becomes useless when talking about actual lazy developers (those who want funding for a game but don't really want to to the work, the people behind basic asset flips with misleading descriptions).
I know the internet is the place where discussion goes to die, but that is what's needed when talking about reasons for a product not being entirely up to an individual's standards. The way the phrase is used it lazy in itself.
There is a video I once watched which helped me understand the game dev's side a little more, whether or not that constitutes as an excuse is irrelevant. Anyway, because of the enormous success Pokemon had early on, spawning an explosively popular trading card game, anime, toys and the games it's become a bit of a race for the way TPC runs. To sum up that video, It's a business model that Gamefreak have been struggling to keep up with to release products matching up with the continuation of the TCG and Anime etc. In the same way Assassin's creed and COD began to release yearly, something is sacrificed and that's usually the quality of the product. This machine that churns out Pokemon products has done well to keep going but it seems the gaming side has started to slip behind...yet sales have been ever abundant so I'm not so sure it's a huge issue for TPC to address yet. That's my take, based on that video for the life of me I can't recall the name of.
It depends on the context. The lack of DLC in Super Mario Odyssey, given the ambitious take on the 3D formula, is hardly summarized as "lazy". If anything, it cemented in stone how Koizumi is inevitably destined to be Miyamoto's successor.
The following, however? In light of everything that "justified" (quotation marks necessary) the cut Pokédex?
<iframe src='https://gfycat.com/ifr/SmallIncompatibleDuiker' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' allowfullscreen width='640' height='404'></iframe><p> <a href="https://gfycat.com/smallincompatibleduiker">via Gfycat</a></p>
... eh.
@AlexSora89 There's no denying that these are low quality animations, but the reasons for it can be more than just laziness.
It's possible for sure that it's because someone was too lazy to animate them properly. It's also just as possible that this was a placeholder added with the intention for it to be changed later on in development but they then ran out of time to do so as other elements may have had a higher priority to fix.
This isn't a slight on you personally but more of a general musing but I find it interesting that lazy developers is the idea that has stuck with people rather than poor project management, or publisher/management interference or even laziness on the part of the people at the very top. It seems to be that the rank and file employees bear the brunt of the criticism rather than those who actually make the decisions.
Some here have mentioned that the term 'developer' refers to the collective rather than individuals whenever they use the phrase, but as we've seen in this comment thread there are certainly those that think it is down to those individuals, and it's certainly something that is taken to heart by some individual developers - imagine working really hard in your role only for the game itself to receive poor ratings and then see the world and their dog talking about how lazy the devs were when you know you worked hard on it. The way we talk about these kinds of things does need to change.
Devs are entitled to your money!
I hear this, but my issue (specifically with Nintendo) is they have already shown on Numerous occasions what they’re capable of doing. You could feel the ambition put into their games, you could see the bold attempts for innovation. It seems like when they got to the switch, the perfect system to handle everything they’ve wanted to do years prior, they backed off. Yes they have some cool features, but you can see they’ve clearly chosen the “safe” route this time around.
Let talk about entitled cry b@bies
How about stop being a complete shill for Pokemon
Lazy.... Entitled.... Gamers
Yeah, I said it.
No.
(to answer the title question)
No. "Lazy Devs" include the people who puts the money and deadlines.
I would definitely be inclined to agree in quite a few instances. A good portion of these developers listen to negative feedback on their hard work, work long hours, and some get little compensation compared to other industries. I don't think it is fair to use that term all of the time anymore. It seems like just a catch phrase to me these days.
Any devs involved in those “cloud ports” are exceptionally lazy.
@StifledSilence I don't think so. Someone determined that it was the cheaper option and more likely to make the money back than a full port. That's definitely not lazy, it's just a business decision. The switch is inherently weak hardware, to get something to actually run on the thing thats literally a generation or now two ahead of it takes a lot of investment of time money and people. I side with the publishers andnl higher ups on this one. Chances are it's not worth it to port some of these things except with cloud gaming.
@Xansies I don’t think the Switch is too weak to run games that have been put on the cloud. It certainly isn’t too weak to run decades old Kingdom Hearts games that Squeenix wants to put on the cloud. Decisions like that are pure laziness. If a studio is talented enough to get something like Doom Eternal not just running on the Switch, but running well, then other studios need to get on their level.
@StifledSilence Doom eternal is a corridor shooter. It's easier to cheat things when you're only needing to load things in a small area just in front of you. And yeah, they probably could get the PS4 versions of kingdom hearts one and 2+ running on the switch, because that's what they are, no the decades old versions. probably not 3 because of how much ***** goes on constantly. It's not like Witcher, it's like Bayonetta with larger levels that need to be rendered constantly and with just a stupid amount of partial effects that I guess could be turned off, but still
It's still not lazy. Someone decided it's not worth the money, which it might not have been. I don't know how much it would have cost to have a team port over those games compared to the cloud, but the cloud is certainly cheaper. You'd also have to have people not work on something else and instead work on the port, which may not be a good allocation of manpower. It's not pure laziness, it's pure cost analysis. Things cost money. Bethesda decided that it was worth the money, square enix working with a different product decided differently and that's okay, at least it's on the switch.
I absolutely think people should stop saying that. It’s so harmful and incorrect. I am a software engineer/developer and I will never work in the gaming Industry because of comments like this and what Im reading. Almost every game decision that gamers complain about are not the result of the devs themselves… they don’t have that choice nor the jurisdiction. I’ve worked with software devs that left their jobs because crappy decisions were forced onto us. Developers work on these games longer than you end up playing them (about 50-65 hours a week). Yet Gamers insist on blaming the developers for being lazy and not the executive ‘hire ups’ who actually make these bad decisions. It’s not only unfair it’s disheartening to go to work knowing your in this situation. I have a few close friends who left the game industry and for this very reason. Im glad they got out because they are much happier doing other software dev than games.
I don’t think these cloud ports are as cost effective as you think. They still need time and employees to work on them because they are still being customized/optimized to work on Switch hardware (barely if you’re the new Guardians game). And they need servers to constantly have the game available for streaming instead of uploading a file to the eshop for Nintendo’s servers to hold. The only saved cost is manufacturing cartridges, but that problem is solved by just doing eshop only.
And anyway, Doom Eternal definitely has a lot more going on than corridors. Outdoor sequences, platforming, huge buildings with enemies everywhere, etc. Definitely wasn’t an easy port.
Being called "lazy" by a GAMER of all people is just...hilarious to me. We probably have the laziest hobby of all the hobbies, but we wanna call someone else lazy?
umm don't complain to us, complain to your producer and... hmmm... maybe to the pirates that force producers to make more free-to-play crap as the only way to fight piracy?
Lazy Devs is just a way to say.. Do they even play their game? Cuz if they did, such and such wouldn't ever have been released like this.;.
@Rainbowfire we work to get money and pay for these games. Your "point" (if you are trying to make one) is absurd.
Maybe you live with your parents and gifted with these games while you do absolutely nothing else? I would understand you if that were the case, otherwise... Yeah, your point is terrible.
I'm not surprised this is coming from a writer for a Nintendo-centric blog. I strongly disagree, although I'm more apt to say lazy publishers than lazy developers. After all, it's usually the publisher's fault if a game ends up rushed or sees a delay that's more about timing the release around other games rather than the sake of extra polish.
That being said, there are lazy and overly sensitive developers who feel like they should be immune to criticism just like any other field and we shouldn't pretend like it isn't true. I actually had a indie dev get really upset with me on Twitter over me calling Sonic Colors Ultimate "lazy" (note- I called the game lazy. Not the people behind it or even Sega.) when he didn't even have any involvement in the damn thing. There are also some who launch their games in Early Access and then never finish the game- they just take the money and run. Same deal with Kickstarters...Paprium is a fine example of the devs being lazy/greedy/not communicating. I'm not saying this is common, because more often than not the people making games have good intentions, but it does happen.
@Rainbowfire as Fulgor_Astral said, that's a truly weak point. Many of us work regular 9 to 5s and have to subject ourselves to ***** that isn't healthy in order to keep a roof over our heads and buy these games. If you spend $60 of your hard earned money on something and it turns out to be of poor quality/craftsmanship, you should be allowed to complain regardless of if it's a piece of clothing or a video game. Plain and simple.
@Gauchorino The sad thing is that we're approaching a timeline where people will be saying that unironically. The amount of sucking up people do to companies big and small is pretty ridiculous these days. Do these people not understand that companies and devs are not their friends regardless of the PR they put out? Yes, some are passionate and truly do want to deliver good products...but at the end of the day they're here for a paycheck. Like everyone else, they should have to earn it.
That's why I almost never buy AAA games anymore and will sometimes buy more than one copy of an indie game if I feel like it's good enough to have across multiple platforms. Dusk, Sonic Mania and Freedom Planet come to mind.
...Eh, why not leave a comment. Even though this IS a topic that's really complicated, bound up in a whole host of little things that make up the whole picture.
I could go on forever, really, but i think I'll make my statement on the matter simple and to the point; I Think every piece of entertainment ever made has had it's own unique road to being made. Everything has had hard work put into it. Even if it doesn't seem like it. It's just that it seems it's only the horror stories we get to hear about, either immediately after the product becomes the new catchphrase for "Horrible" Or years after the fact after the game is a classic and no one bothers to think about how hard it must have been. Why do i think that way? Because i keep seeing all the similarities in the development stories toward something that wound up being amazing and something that wound up being horrible; Someone's always believing in the concept, there's always fighting to get something made, and there's always a point where it looks like the thing won't be done. It's important, mind you, to figure out why one thing works and why another doesn't, as it's the only way we'll improve and i highly doubt everyone criticizing something means it as an attack (I'm sure you could name some who cover games who still have a career despite everything as a result), and I'll certainly chat your ear off about how certain games are just downright horrible, but slamming the work put into something bad is almost as bad as slamming the work put into something amazing. All you can do is hope that someone out there can learn lessons from the whole horror show.
There's always an opinion when something works out or it doesn't. I Don't think i can win anyone over when it comes to arguing everything has a fight to getting made, even if those articles you see online make it apparent that the failures had just as much work go into them, perhaps even more so, then the work that winds up making you feel good inside. I guess what i want to say is "Are you going to go on swearing every time someone tries to explain why something is the way it is, or are you going to be thankful that something you like is as good as it is? Because the road there certainly can't have been simple. Maybe instead of condemning those responsible, we should try engaging in realistic, serious conversations where we give the suspect the benefit of a doubt that they've been through hell and back to get here. And heck, maybe even being open to hearing other's points of view, even if they are as stupid and corporate as they are, could help us all feel better too."
@RetroOutcast What's even worse is that some commenters in this thread, when appropriately called out, have gone beyond spitting on the filthy, scrap plebs' words of criticism and have effectively said that these "dumb" and "mean" little people shouldn't be able to freely make purchase decisions of their own in the market, at all. When you start to advocate against unpleasant words and respond to them with pretentiousness and threats of demagoguery, you're beginning to prove the point of the very people who make you so angry.
@Yorumi This whole "stan" thing is disgusting and has gotten way the ***** out of hand imho. I can respect the devs and companies behind the games I enjoy, but I'll never see the point in looking at them like they're gods/goddesses/whatever. I can appreciate what they pump out but at the end of the day they're here to turn a profit and I think a lot of people have forgotten that.
@Meteoroid weak argument
Some bad timing on this article release. Only a few days before GTA Trilogy got released, which is probably the epitome of a game made by lazy devs.
@DoomTurtle Something tells me that was more rushed than anything else. Lazy Developers? No. Lazy Executives? Yes.
@Astral-Grain I'm sorry but I disagree with your stance about this. Saying I shouldn't buy the product without checking reviews is just another get out of jail free card for how lazy developers have become.
Here are some examples of other businesses who sell products and media
Imagine going to a movie where the audio didn't work or scenes were put in the wrong order
Buying an album where the tracks slipped
Buying a magazine where some pages were blank or poor with image quality.
People but all of those things with the assumption that the product will have some level of quality put into them.
Then we get to gaming and for some reason bugs that were obvious after ten minutes of starting the game are fully overlooked and ignored.
So why again do games get a free pass for this absolutely insane laziness and cost cutting?
Don't give me the BS that making games is hard either. So are the jobs movie makers have and magazine writers and music producers.
We have just hit a point where there's no punishment for these lazy devs.
@SpacedDuck All the examples you mentioned have user reviews, and all you would have to do is glance through one or two to know the product is bad.
When you buy a car, house, TV, or whatever, you should also test these products out first or at the very least you should look at user reviews. If you just walked into a store and bought the first TV you saw without doing any research, you have yourself to blame when you don't like the features it has or the image quality because user reviews and testing the product yourself would have told you all this.
If you ate toxic berries without first asking around if the berries are edible and tasty, then you can't place all the blame on the toxic berries for existing, you have to take some blame too for being so careless.
@Astral-Grain toxic berries aren't sold in stores so stop saying stupid stuff.
Your logic also doesn't make sense about all the stuff I listed having user reviews because guess what everything I listed if fully broken or faulty would be eligible for a full no questions asked refund if in that state.
That's all I'm saying is all games regardless of where it is purchased should be eligible for a full refund within 48 hours.
Digital, physical doesn't matter.
You'd see a big change in Devs efforts if 70% of their sales got refunded within that timeframe from crappy work practices.
Making games is for sure hard.
Playing them to confirm they work properly before you take people's money isn't hard.
@SpacedDuck refunds are an entirely different matter, I'm not talking about refunds, I'm talking about the basic logic of "look before you leap."
If you don't do any research before making a purchase you don't like and if doing research would have prevented you from buying this product you don't like, you must take blame. That is all.
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