lazy developers Thread

I think that lazy developers could be a problem to moddb, in other words there are people making games with minimal effort and geting away with it for example using lazy minecraft graphics or bothering to go into details. I think that could decrease standards and encourage lazy developers to make more bad games .

Not really. The same question could be asked of AAA developers. Rome Total War II, milked Assassin's Creed every year just like CoDs, etc. Would be nothing new about the world. There's still a decent amount of passionate developers of any category as well as great games to go by.

Lazy developers title is definitely going to get attention , for all the wrong reasons.
Just start making attempts at developing games and soon you will appreciate the massive work that involves even for poor quality games.
My opinion is anyone making games and releasing them are helping the community provided they are helpful to their player base .
Having played some totalwar games and a few assassins creed games im not convinced the developers were lazy , the gameplay mechanics do have only mild changes but the graphics and engine changes are Amazing to notice as you progress through each version.
Much more stable to run then say battlefield 3 or 4 and more robust.

Sorry but ubisoft murdered Desmond just to make their game shorter and easier to milk for money oops easier to develop. It's not how they add things right on the top of old already implemented things that no longer require so much extra effort, it's how they cut things out that define who "lazy" developers are.

I think I understand how "lazy" is being used here. Since Minecraft was made a lot of people started believing they could get away with very poor graphics in their games. Either they are straightaway cloning the Minecraft look or they are interpreting it cheaply and without any sense of aestetic. I call that poor developing, not lazy. It's not original either. It was fun when Minecraft did it, but I personally wish we'd have much more well designed and thought-through games then some leet "oldschool" looking game hacked together in a few months.

And it depends. If you have Unity and some money, making simple games isn't much more than exchanging assets and re-writing tables. And that's what a lot of people do. I also think it gives Unity a worse image than it deserves, because these games lead to the impression that Unity is a bad engine for polished graphics. The thing OP calls lazy is the lack of art direction or the "hey, let's make another Minecraft clone" (visuals), which I find is true, too. As soon as someone has an idea for something interesting, everybody copies that idea to make a buck. Especially, if it saves them production time like all the pixelart and minecraftish games do. Yet, we can still decide what to play. If people want to make terrible games, it's not my problem; I just don't play them. And I respect those that do well on their own account, like BroForce and Super Time Force. In those cases style matches function.

Personally, I have come to believe that the Concept Art Phase for a game is the most important of all. This is where the foundation to all the visuals are laid, but if you just say "okay everything is a block with 16x16 textures" you get around making those decisions. It's not that I hate the Minecraft style, it is (was) pretty unique. But it's like some devs are taking advantage of that style to cut down the research and development phase and avoid being even remotely original.

Edited by: SinKing

Yes, as long as understanding what OP meant goes. But it's not just the art style and visuals that are affected, SinKing. Game mechanics, plots and storylines, etc can be horribly dumbed down as well, not to mention being ripped off.

IMHO, some if not most of the older games were created having "let's make a great game and if it sells well it'll be great" thought in mind rather than "let's make a quality product that must sell well not just cover the expenses" and what product translates to is something to be made as cheaply as possible and sold as expensively as possible, no matter the exact way and means - whether you copy somebody else's art style or reuse your own assets heavily or find another way to avoid some necessary sacrifice that would actually lead to more passionate creation of digital works of art.

Even if AAA gaming industry has been "sinfull" in last years i mostly meant on the issuse of generic game design in Indie and AAA gaming industry(mostly indie) ,And i am pretty much tired of indie horror games(because they are only popular because of the youtubers PewDiePie ... etc' pretty in other words its much quick rise to the top
,AAA horror games (like sillent hill , kinda resident evil...... ) discluded ).

Since Amnesia ,Slender Man and Cry of Fear now every "indie game maker" wants to make a horror just because he knows that gamers "will choke on that shit".In some part its gamers(me included) fault that most games nowdays are badly designed "money grabing " software.

And I personaly believe thats far worst case with Indie gaming industry than with AAA, generally because they usually get away with riping off other games
,And on the other side there is AAA industry who is affraid to experiment because they care more about money than gamers ,and gamers dont mind even if seeing same graphics and design for 10 years(if aint broken dont fix it)

Edited by: Isuckatmoding

What's wrong with being lazy?

Nah but today pretty much anyone can make/publish a game, which is kinda both good AND bad for the industry. Good games can easily be drowned out by a sea of bad ones. The amount of flappy bird clones on the app store is rediculous!

I think I would complain about the situation if there were ONLY these kind of devs and games. What I care about is artistic licensing. I've seen a game on Unity that was a 1:1 conversion of Counter Strike (actually the levels looked terrible), and the characters and weapons just looked like they were ripped straight from CS 1.6
That's the kind of thing that gets me annoyed, because these developers just exploit someone else's work to make it their own and ultimately to make money from it. That's against the rules of fairness. So as long as people still make their own designs and games, albeit heavily influenced by more original games, it's fine with me. The question that pops up is just: why would you do that, besides that you wanna make money, fast. I think every developer with an ounce of creativity left wants to explore their own way to make an original game, instead of yet another clone.

As it is right now I think we have a good mix of interesting and still somewhat innovative titles like Stanley Parable, Dear Esther, Brothers, Super Time Force and the likes. Those titles can easily stand on their own and are far more interesting to some gamers than the random COD or Crysis titles that pop up every couple of years. Even with tiny budgets, innovative titles are still produced and recognized by the community! The one thing I am kinda pissed off about is that it is so hard to get a budget for a game, let alone a decent one. Nobody realizes that 50k isn't a huge Kickstarter goal for a whole development team and developers pull out an arm and a leg to stay alive and social while developing their games under significant pressure. I want more freedom from the cost of development, less financial strain before and perhaps some more after a successful launch of the title. Right now everybody gets their cut first (Amazon Payments/Bank, Kickstarter Fees, etc. ), before you actually get to spend any of the budget to develop the game.

If there was less of that pressure, perhaps we'd see people try making different games with more research and preparation. As long as making a clone and selling it is easier and more profitable than making truly inspiring games, the majority will chose that path. And most of the other developers either give up or have a rare and lucky break. I admire publishers like Devolver, who invest into people with new concepts, but who don't operate on a corporate level. No lawyers, no "owning" development teams, just a drive to see good games happen!

Edited by: SinKing

There's been dozens of crappy games to a handful of really good ones for decades. People are remembering the good/great ones. For every Doom, Keen, etc. "back in the day" there were dozens of other games that were average at best.

By saying people are making games with "minimal effort" you're devaluing the hard work of many developers just because, in your opinion, they're lazy. There are lazy ones but I'd rather focus on the good ones. That's how we get more good games.

You could blame it more on lazy players then developers. If the player weren't lazy and put more thought in to a game then "I want it now" bad games wouldn't go past the "can it work" phase. There's be no money in it.

@SinKing There is an issue that is not too deeply overviewed in your post that is an important aspect of the issue at hand here. A lot of the development we see that seems very low quality, and often visually unimpressive in the field as it sits now stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of aesthetics. For a lot of years the game industry has been heavily trending towards beefier and better graphics with more fidelity, often at the loss of visual aesthetic. Games that are very visually pleasing while not being graphically demanding have been cropping up more lately, partially from us hitting a ceiling where increasing graphical fidelity no longer has the gain it did in the past. The technology is pretty damn good and probably won't get exceedingly better for a long while.

As development falls into the hands of people who haven't been in the industry for all this time to experience this lesson, they see the wrong output from games like Minecraft and Borderlands succeeding. They see it as a simple announcement that Graphics are no longer important. Graphics still hold their place, in servitude to an aesthetic. If there is not a coherent aesthetic the game often looks awful, even if the designer and team behind it worked hard and had a grand vision.

We are seeing a culmination of many issues in the industry, including chasing the latest trend for quick cash, or truly incompetent development. I think one of the strongest issues though is a lack of understanding the importance of aesthetic, visually and mechanically.

Dead Island had fixed, fish-eyed characters with terrible lip synching. The story was generic. It missed the mark for many gamers because their expectations are based on what they have experienced in other titles that got those parts right. We all know that the most vocal gamers are harsh, cruel and ignorant critics. Yet, from my time with that game, I can say what they got right was the atmosphere. There were many times that I just didn't want to play the game. Not because I didn't like the not-so-great character models/animations, but because the stress of what I must endure was too great.

I highly doubt they were lazy. They likely worked their asses off to bring that game to market.

If developers are using "lazy" minecraft graphics, it's probably because it's what they can manage with their own artistic skill. It might be because they can't afford to pay someone to make something better and original. It may even be because they don't want to deal with artists or complicated character models that require realistic, anatomically-correct movements. Voxel games have created a huge interest in game creation.

Yes, (to agree with the OP) there are lazy developers out there who are just looking for a quick buck. I think it's fair to assume that the gamers will ultimately decide the success of their work. The difference between a AAA developer that seems lazy and an indie developer that seems lazy is the former is aiming for $100 million+, and has an armada of experienced professionals to all but ensure their success.

I think MisterBuilder and TheHappyFriar have the right of it. (I am going to be a bit lazy and not reference the posts I can't see from here) There are a couple generations of gamers out there who were unfortunate enough to be raised in a world where children are coddled, "protected" from the harshness of reality, and have smartphones from the age of 7 (example of instant gratificationization), and major game publishers need to push games that satisfy their consumers needs. Sophisticated games are scarce, because sophisticated gamers are mostly silent.

If you think the game sucks, then give it a bad rating and a detailed review as to why it sucks. Simple as that. Having good games and terrible games helps us all keep everything in perspective.

Edited by: Darth_Futuza

I missed this thread, and most of what I wanted to say has been said by others, particularly this.

TheHappyFriar wrote: There's been dozens of crappy games to a handful of really good ones for decades. People are remembering the good/great ones. For every Doom, Keen, etc. "back in the day" there were dozens of other games that were average at best.

By saying people are making games with "minimal effort" you're devaluing the hard work of many developers just because, in your opinion, they're lazy. There are lazy ones but I'd rather focus on the good ones. That's how we get more good games.

You could blame it more on lazy players then developers. If the player weren't lazy and put more thought in to a game then "I want it now" bad games wouldn't go past the "can it work" phase. There's be no money in it.

I should also point out "lazy" games doesn't work out money wise. I recently read a Gamasutra article bashing steam for the failure of an indie game that cost close to a million to make. As I read the article and the comments, it because clear that valve/steam wasn't really the issue. The issue was the devs had made a big budget knock off of Limbo and it failed.

And this is nothing new, at all. Books, music, film, and even retro gaming had the same "follow the leader" attitude. If you doubt this, look at all the mascot platformers that followed in the wake of Mario and Sonic. Look at all the fighting games that followed the success of SF2, look at any number of space shooters on atari, or all the WW2 games that followed the success of Medal of Honour.

And budgets only effect length of development, not the actual development. And I say that as a developer. Hell, all you need at the end of the day is willpower.