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[Always-honest]

Lazy devs is generally shorthand for "the publisher did not put the time/money/both into this project necessary for it to reach to a satisfactory conclusion"

Exactly. Most artists i know are perfectionists and frustrated by external factores that ruin their ambitions.

 

[LostOne428]

Lazy devs - no

Lazy decisions.....

This nails it! I don't think any dev is actually lazy. But when they chose not to optimize, or make textures, or do a bad port, Not finish a game (cough BF4*) is clearly seen by most.
Maybe they did this to meet a deadline, or just did it that way because they didn't have the money.

So to sum it all up there are too many factors that go into a game that can be misconstrued as lazy, but i doubt that is the story most of the time.

 

[Sephzilla]

Go play some of the recent WWE games. Lazy devs totally exist.

But I don't think they should be held accountable for system limitations.

 

[Vinterbird]

Even when there is evidence people still defend shitty decisions be it devs or publishers. To me devs seem like cowards when I hear some of these arguments. I see them as cowards cause ultimately crap decisions made by management will cost them jobs they had no real fault in causing the situation yet they won't stick up for themselves. I'd use other phrases but those are probably even more insulting but that's the point.

Also considering how the industry works and likes to keep things hush hush we can't really judge based on your standards. If we find any info out it's because of leaks or because certain people were given permission to speak out in some. Don't forget about ndas and tons of other things that keep people from speaking.

What industry do you work in for a living?

Have you never been in a situation where money and time determined that a project couldn't be done to its utmost potential? And instead you had to cut corners and work overtime otherwise the would pass and all hell would break loose?

The circumstances that lead to an inferior product are irrelevant to me when you are trying to convince me to give you money for that inferior product. I'm speaking here of technical issues, not the more subjective things like "amount of content."

Not buying a product because it doesn't like up to your standard is totally fair, but then going to the Internet and calling the developers lazy is bullshit.

You can't say they were lazy unless you actually was there. Otherwise it's you making a decision based on nothing but your subjective standard.

 

[UnluckyKate]

I think there is a lot of confusing and misunderstanding about how a game developpement goes. Naughty Dog for example is not the standart. It's the exception. They have the most talented people, lot of time and tons of funding to let them explore, try new things and push systems as far as possible.

Not every dev has that many talents within their teams and if they do, they don't always have the time and / or budget to push their product on a technical level as ND can do.

I don't think dev are the first problem. I blame editors, managers and marketers.

 

[-COOLIO-]

Some devs and publishers are lazy (See the MMO industry those un imaginative delusional folk) but it's mainly put forward in that people want the best out of a developers when a developer takes a path with least resistance, not for laziness for some times but for time or misunderstanding or shit code.

I think the real issue is there needs to be some standards in development some things should be standardize to help cut down on work on some trivial things that when added up will help make development smoother and more efficient so some of the quibbles will have more time to be worked on.

when a game is generic and uninspired, users on this forum will call it such (generic and uninspired). when a game is missing SSAO or HBAO, or uses FXAA over MSAA, or isn't 1080p/60fps youll hear the lazy devs shit. which is hilariously stupid because that boils down to performance/cost preferences.

 

[atr0cious]

Go play some of the recent WWE games.

Lazy devs totally exist.

Also any EA Nintendo port. Also any EA sequel.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

There are lazy devs but you don't hear about them because they never finish their game.

If you see a finished game with issues, that's not a result of these so-called lazy devs. That's typically a result of either:

Poor management
Inexperience
Lack of money
Lack of time

Or all of the above.

 

[Cosmozone]

Good idea with using "cheap" instead. I'd go with that. "pubs" sounds strange, though...

 

[-COOLIO-]

Lazy devs is generally shorthand for "the publisher did not put the time/money/both into this project necessary for it to reach to a satisfactory conclusion"

if 'lazy devs' was switched to 'greedy pubs' it would be a step in the right direction. but probably still stupid in a lot of cases.

 

[ultratruman]

The whole argument is obfuscatory.

All good videogame developers are lazy, just as all good engineers and producers are lazy. 'Lazy' doesn't mean the same as slothful, it means you do things as efficiently as possible with as few mistakes as possible.

The fact that the Xbone doesn't provide that painless ease of use for developers looking to achieve native full HD graphics is a failure of the console's design, just as it was for the PS3 last generation. As Gabe Newell said in 2007, a complex console architecture is 'a waste of everybody's time'.

 

[atr0cious]

if 'lazy devs' was switched to 'greedy pubs' it would be a step in the right direction. but probably still stupid in a lot of cases.

I think Deadpool is a good example of the greedy pub thing. But where is that line defined?

 

[Talon]

if 'lazy devs' was switched to 'greedy pubs' it would be a step in the right direction. but probably still stupid in a lot of cases.

Project management is really fucking hard, and it's so much more difficult to properly allocate resources when the platforms you're working on are unknown quantities - as we find with these new generation games.

Anyways, this isn't in any way unique to this industry. You have people acting like iPhones and Nexus devices are shit out of a giraffe instead of taking extensive designing, iteration, and feature cutting to fit budgets, manufacturing demands, and scaling.

 

[BruiserBear]

If anything there are more devs who don't bother to take advantage of the extra power the PS4 affords. Not the other way around.

No amount of work will make a wii u perform like an xbox one, no amount of work will make an xbox one perform like a ps4, no amount of work will make a ps4 perform like a half decent pc. The amount of work required to overcome any power defecits to make a better experience (ie "optimizing" per platform) equates to the amount of money and manhours spent. That doesn't mean you can overcome the defecits that exist, but that better results cost money that many publishers deem not-so-well-spent. Especially when taking into account any non-exclusives. A shoestring budget and tiny team means Arkham Origins on wii u controlled, looked and performed worse than Arkham City on the same console. Not because the console became less capable, but because the amount of time, effort and money spent were much lower. Why? Not lazy devs. Not even the fact that it was a different port team (though that can play a small part). It was opportunity cost.

or it was just a power discrepancy, which is the entire point of the OP.

 

[Persona7]

There are some cases where I do feel like developers had dropped the ball on things [30 fps caps on PC versions, game-breaking bugs, whatever the hell Infinity Ward did to Ghosts, and whatever the hell Dice or EA's QA? did to BF4]

But it's never "lazy" so much as likely mistakes or lack of time/quality control in these cases

What solution do you propose for games that were originally developed for consoles solely at 30FPS?

Jet Set Radio for example, the entire game is based around the framerate. If it runs at 60FPS then the entire game runs twice as fast and everything is pretty much broken.

 

[Leatherworkstation]

Lazy devs is generally shorthand for "the publisher did not put the time/money/both into this project necessary for it to reach to a satisfactory conclusion"

I can see that, maybe it should be "stifled devs" not "lazy devs", or "curtailed devs".

I think that in regard to the Xbox One and it's multiplatform inferiority the term doesn't really apply, for a company like Ubisoft I imagine they have a different team for each platform who all get the same resources and amount of time, it's not like they make the PS4 version and the same people then have a fortnight to get it working on the Xbox before they have to get it out of the door.

Also, they can only work with what they've got, and the Xbox has got less. Given more time maybe they could increase performance, like Respawn said they will for Titanfall Xbox One, but I honestly don't think we'll see any huge boost, maybe they can fix the tearing but I very much doubt it'll ever be 1080p and a solid 60FPS.

 

[Deified Data]

Obviously in the history of gaming I'm sure you could trace some fault or another with any given game to outright laziness on a developer's part, but I don't think those instances are common enough for "lazy design" to be batted around as much as it is. Games like Dragon Age 2 come about from a confluence of tight deadlines, dwindling budgets, misaimed priorities, and poor management...not necessarily laziness.

 

[polyh3dron]

The Lazy Devs argument is definitely valid in some situations, but some of the more passionate evangelists of the Xbox One are trying to use it as the latest fallacious argument to convince themselves and hopefully some others that the Xbox One is not significantly less powerful than the PS4.

The semi-recent Dark Souls PC release was definitely an example of lazy devs.

 

[Biker19]

The Lazy Devs argument is definitely valid in some situations, but some of the more passionate evangelists of the Xbox One are trying to use it as the latest fallacious argument to convince themselves and hopefully some others that the Xbox One is not significantly less powerful than the PS4.

Well, they're gonna most likely be saying it all gen long until they wake up & realize that Xbox One isn't exactly all that it's cracked up to be.

 

[LCGeek]

Bugs don't exist because developers aren't capable or motivated. Unfortunately it's just one of those things that's really fucking complicated, and it's very difficult to understand it from the outside.

Seems people seem to want make it difficult.

I don't blame devs for that. I blame shitty incompetent devs for not having priorities or perspective on various situation. Unfinished products are one reason I avoid spending so much money in an industry I use to waste easily 5-8 grand a generation.

 

[-COOLIO-]

Project management is really fucking hard, and it's so much more difficult to properly allocate resources when the platforms you're working on are unknown quantities - as we find with these new generation games.

Anyways, this isn't in any way unique to this industry. You have people acting like iPhones and Nexus devices are shit out of a giraffe instead of taking extensive designing, iteration, and feature cutting to fit budgets, manufacturing demands, and scaling.

you're exactly right, blanket one-liners generally suck i guess. i was thinking of EA, zynga, and king when i thought about the 'greedy pubs' thing but no other pubs in the industry strike me as greedy per se.

 

[nynt9]

What solution do you propose for games that were originally developed for consoles solely at 30FPS?

Jet Set Radio for example, the entire game is based around the framerate. If it runs at 60FPS then the entire game runs twice as fast and everything is pretty much broken.

This argument breaks down when devs say "the game can't run in 60fps!" and then a quick fix by a modder makes it run at 60fps. Unless the devs did something really bad like tie the game update rate to the framerate (never do this btw, it causes weird issues when the framerate drops, amateur mistake), in which case they are bad devs.

 

[weeeeezy]

As a developer I can say that the "Lazy Dev" argument is very true, even when time and prioritzation is placed on a project. It's all about the developer, project management and the lead of the group. I've seen developers take plenty of short cuts which can cause inefficiencies all over the place.

 

[methane47]

Time and money.

Calling developers lazy is a terrible thing. They work their ass off for far less then comparable positions in other industries and have to face stuff like "lazy devs" and whatever else internet harassment is out there.

It must suck trying to do what you love and then getting called lazy afterwards.

What about PC Ports that come out that still have Xbox button layouts
or "Press "Start" to begin

Is that not just pure laziness?

 

[StevieP]

If anything there are more devs who don't bother to take advantage of the extra power the PS4 affords. Not the other way around.



or it was just a power discrepancy, which is the entire point of the OP.

The PS4 is easier (and hence cheaper) to take advantage of than the xbox. So no, not the other way around in most cases. The power discrepancy can never and will never be made up, however. With more time and money (manpower) the xbox could be taken advantage of better and produce slightly better results if the developer takes advantage of its slightly more esoteric nature - but then the publisher runs into opportunity cost, which almost always prevails.

 

[verdures]

A historical example- RE2 on the 64:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131556/postmortem_angel_studios_.php

The original Resident Evil 2 for the Playstation spanned two CDs. We had to get it on a single cartridge. But it's just a port, right?

Audio and video received most of the attention and were pushed and squeezed until they fit. Our focus on these assets, however, caused us to neglect other areas such as the animation data. We did manage to cage these beasts, too, but on our final burn we had to shave another megabyte off the video. This last megabyte took us under the critical point where the video suddenly went from very pretty to just a bit too obviously compressed."

...it was a lot of hard work due to the myriad magic numbers and hard-coded values in the RE2 code. We literally had to understand and reparse every single bit of data in the RE2 library. And we did, much to the credit of every programmer on the team. This created quite a few bugs but we sacked them all.

Though the original RE2 code was written in C, it resembled Assembly language more closely than it did structured code. Given that most of us are flat out reading English, the Japanese comments weren't particularly helpful, either.

That was 15 years ago, and it doesn't seem to have become magically easier... unless you're a know-it-all drip on an internet forum who kicks back to complain about "lazy devs".

 

[element]

No lazy devs, just opportunity cost. They'll never perform identically but the cost of making ports perform better to take advantage of the slightly more customized hardware usually outweighs the benefits.

answered in the first post. well done.

 

[ArcaneFreeze]

They're not lazy, but they definitely dont take full advantage of whats given to them simply because of time and money.

Shin'en made a great point about developing for the WiiU that shows that sometimes more effort is just needed to fully take advantage of a console, but its a different scenarios when making a port and a game specifically for said console.

"If you develop for Wii U you have to take advantage of the possibilities, otherwise your performance is of course limited. Also your engine layout needs to be different. You need to take advantage of the large shared memory of the Wii U, the huge and very fast EDRAM section and the big CPU caches in the cores. Especially the workings of the CPU caches are very important to master. Otherwise you can lose a magnitude of power for cache relevant parts of your code. In the end the Wii U specs fit perfectly together and make a very efficient console when used right."

The bolded is what makes the difference. When making ports devs aren't going to go through all the trouble of making the game utilize everything available in the system and tinker with every thing to get the most out of it, they have base structure given out to them and they need to configure that to the structure of the system so of course they wont be able to get everything running exactly the way they want it to compared to had the game been built specifically for the system.

 

[knerlington]

No one is asking for parity. Most who know how to make the argument especially in the case of X1 are going to expect the dev to evaluate the system and make certain right choices. Like for me shitty unstable below 30fps is not an excuse anymore especially if the game is not a pusher. PS4 is not a factor at all at times and your situation is about multiplatforms what about xbla titles or exclusives that will perform like crap on X1?

I see your point and I agree. Although have anyone been called a lazy dev by releasing an exclusive? I think I've only seen it thrown around in conjunction with multiplats.

 

[LCGeek]

What industry do you work in for a living?

Various ones

I color calibrate or proof, build custom pc and do a variety food service industry jobs including part time management. After that I work on boats and do inventory for various companies. I'm a seasonal and regional worker in various states for the US.

I'm taking certification courses so in about a year I will also be a network engineer.

Have you never been in a situation where money and time determined that a project couldn't be done to its utmost potential? And instead you had to cut corners and work overtime otherwise the would pass and all hell would break loose?

Plenty but I've learned to avoid or lessen them. Most people I work tend to respect my opinion so I tend not to get in these situations cause I'm honest about time or cost. Rather for me if someone is interested in cutting corners, say my bosses and the like and it becomes common occurence which has only happened about 4 times in the last 10 years of my life I've left the situation afterwards. These are shitty and I've said as much already. What I will not condone is basically what ea did during the 90's and the last decade where they themselves are their own publishers and devs and plenty of multiplatform crap situations came out for a variety of platforms, didn't matter the power. I've said in other posts the phrase is used too much and often against the wrong people. Publishers have far more power so I would be interested in seeing gamers finally turn the ire or anger towards them as they are at fault for a lot of the industry problems they continue to ignore or fester for the sake of shrinking profits.

knerlington yes I've seen it done for exclusives which is why I'm starting to hate the phrase.

 

[lordchompy]

It's not really about the developers so much as it is about the publishers who don't want to invest more money just to have higher resolution and crisper shadows, and so forth.

If the average person can't spot the differences, or doesn't care about the differences, the publishers will continue this status quo, and, from a business perspective, why shouldn't they?

 

[knerlington]

They're not lazy, but they definitely dont take full advantage of whats given to them simply because of time and money.

In terms of multiplats they often do this time around. A bottleneck is always a bottleneck.
No matter what you do a bottleneck will hinder a game to look or perform the same as on another system without that particular bottleneck. You just can't work around some things.

 

[AlphaTwo00]

What about PC Ports that come out that still have Xbox button layouts
or "Press "Start" to begin

Is that not just pure laziness?

It depends on what the budget the management allocated. It's entirely possible someone, somewhere decided that the port was "essentially free" to PC, and didn't even budget a UI artists to clean that up.

 

[genjiZERO]

PS3 Skyrim is the epitome of lazy development.

 

[UberTag]

Lazy devs = not a valid excuse

The reason everything in games sucks is risk-averse publishers.
Which is why we must punish Electronic Arts, Activision and others at every opportunity.
Because the masses sure as hell won't.

 

[JinjoUnchained]

I think a better phrase would be lazy design, rather than lazy devs. Take a common GAF target, Assassin's Creed 3. It's clear that a lot of tireless hours went into creating a playable version of the American frontier. It's technically impressive and you can see the work. The issue is that they wasted all of that hard work and should have spent it on something more meaningful. Like a decent combat system. Collectibles that actually have a bloody point. A much better paced, and coherent campaign. So when I see a flawed game with a lot polish, that's a problem with design, not effort. Probably budget and deadline, too, but mostly a design problem.

 

[methane47]

It depends on what the budget the management allocated. It's entirely possible someone, somewhere decided that the port was "essentially free" to PC, and didn't even budget a UI artists to clean that up.

Not enough time to edit the button prompts in the UI.
But more than enough time and money to hack together a terrible DRM system to make my life difficult.

 

[Disaster Nebraska]

Even something like that isn't an issue with them being "lazy", it's them developing 5 different versions of the game at the same time (two of which wouldn't have had their specs nailed down until about 8-10 months before release) and not being given enough QA time to test and/or fix all the bugs.

The vast, vast, vast majority of the time, things that people blame on lazy devs is just the publisher not giving the developer enough time/money/resources to do what needs to be done.

And that's a perfectly fair counter-point.

Maybe I could rephrase: If I'm going to call devs lazy for ANYthing, it would be for broken games, not for disparity between versions. Emphasis on 'if'

 

[vcc]

You can call Notch lazy (although more accurately I think he's terrified of making a new game)

Sophomore jitters have sunk many studios. Duke Nukem forever was delayed due to Sophomore jitter and the need by George Broussard to be the best again. Same thing happened with John Romero and daikatana. Heck ravio and the angry bird franchise just kind of gave up and rolled with the idea that they would be one hit wonders and milked it for all they could. The need to recapture past success can give the creator crippling indecision and push them too much to try to equal whats out there and then never catch up.

I don't blame notch for being terrified.

 

[GameAddict411]

I think its more related to budget and lack of time, laziness will only get you fired in the gaming industry, in fact you won't last long.

 

[ttech10]

Nope. You've totally missed why those bugs exist. I can assure that the team and the QA staff have logged it, it was debated, evaluated, and was eventually told that they weren't allowed to fix it because of time/budget/resource. I would even be willing to bet that the fix was ready and just wasn't greenlighted for testing/publishing.

Is that really the excuse though for bugs that were known about for two years?

The ones that still exist are exactly the same as those they have already fixed, ones that remove the quest item tag once the quest is finished or makes an item recognizable if it's been collected before the quest. They don't require a lot to fix.

If you look at the stuff they fixed early on, I just can't believe they would tell the team that a minor audio issue of a sound playing a little louder than intended would be more important that than some of the issues that got fixed with 1.9 or not at all. Ones where the fix would take just as long to apply and test.

It feels more like they got tired of fixing the same bugs over and over. There are too many basic, quest-breaking bugs that shouldn't exist.

 

[Cess007]

This nails it! I don't think any dev is actually lazy. But when they chose not to optimize, or make textures, or do a bad port, Not finish a game (cough BF4*) is clearly seen by most.
Maybe they did this to meet a deadline, or just did it that way because they didn't have the money.

So to sum it all up there are too many factors that go into a game that can be misconstrued as lazy, but i doubt that is the story most of the time.

Yet, none of those are dev decisions; they are producers and publishers decisions. Calling them lazy for those decisions they've no control over, makes no sense.

 

[TechnicPuppet]

We will see if XB1 games continue to have p2p when MS are paying for dedis. No excuses for it, not when MS are footing the bill.

 

[Kiote]

Lazy devs at professional studios likely don't exist

You are most certainly incorrect. Having worked at multiple developers, I can assure you there is most certainly a high percentage of "Lazy" developers. I'm sad to say, in my experience, it pushes seven in ten. To be fair though, most of these people are disenfranchised more so than actually lazy, but lazy for a reason is still lazy. It is all too common for Developers to take the approach, they won't let me do it right so why try.

 

[AlphaTwo00]

Not enough time to edit the button prompts in the UI.
But more than enough time and money to hack together a terrible DRM system to make my life difficult.

Not time. Resource allocation. Someone high up might have said, "to make this PC port, we need 2 programmers to handle PC porting (DX integration, security), 1 designer for the new networking flow", while totally forgetting all the customized UI that was needed to be budgeted. It might have even been caught halfway through the development of the port, then what? If management doesn't budge on the cost/add resource, do you REALLY want the designer or the programmer to be adding that stuff in? Would they even know where to start? Would they be considered lazy then?

 

[sublimit]

Lazy? No.

Inneficient? Yes.

 

[antitrop]

whatever the hell Infinity Ward did to Ghosts

Broken SLI support and the worst implementation of Depth of Field known to humans.

 

[Dragonborn]

No. Last gen the PS3 architecture was difficult to work with and so it took devs a whole to get the most of it. Hence the bad ports. This Gen the X1 is simply bad hardware, but that's on MS, not "lazy devs" . Lazy devs is just a silly and, ironically, lazy excuse meant to ignore the actual issue

 

[StevieP]

No. Last gen the PS3 architecture was difficult to work with and so it took devs a whole to get the most of it. Hence the bad ports. This Gen the X1 is simply bad hardware, but that's on MS, not "lazy devs" . Lazy devs is just a silly and, ironically, lazy excuse meant to ignore the actual issue

The ps3 is bad hardware as well by your twisted metrics. "It's on Sony".

 

[Kriken]

Also any EA Nintendo port. Also any EA sequel.

I disagree with this particular statement, remember this? http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=781046

In terms of lazy devs? IDK, developers spend many more hours than people give them credit for, but there should be a line where you figure corners were cut. I don't see many game ports as lazy since the consoles don't share the exact same specs and the easier one was probably given more funds