“Lazy” - might it make sense to repurpose this term

[Coleslaw]

We all know that the people who make games are not lazy.

But there persists in gaming a feeling that things could be so much better, were the developers not "lazy."

(We don't see that criticism much on Era thankfully, but I think you will agree that it persists)

So we have these "lazy devs."

But is it not the people (corporate, shareholders, etc.) who push for things to be shipped before they are finished, or for things to be shipped in the most mass-appealing state, who are the real cause for concern?

We shy away from using the term "lazy" because it is an insult to the many talented people who pour their work into a game, even if the final product ends up being sub-par.

But there is laziness happening there, I think.

Laziness at the level of marketing, or the number of people contracted to complete a task, or the time allotted to complete that task, and so on.

That shit is lazy. There's no other word for it. And we should call it what it is. A lazy money grab.

So, I propose that we repurpose this term, and instead of "lazy devs," we call out the lazy corporations and power structures that make the actually very hard-working game devs stay up late nights trying to make sure we have an enjoyable experience.

And that's all I have to say.

 

[Deleted member 46493]

It's almost never "lazy devs". You know what happens to truly lazy devs? They get fired, fairly quickly.

It's almost always a managent issue - aggressive launch dates and poor prioritization.

 

[TheBaldwin]

Unless it an indie game, it's almost never "lazy devs". You know what happens to truly lazy devs? They get fired, fairly quickly.

It's almost always a managent issue - aggressive launch dates and poor prioritization.

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Yep. Couple that with hours of crunch leading to exhaustion and mistakes and the whims of shareholders and upper management who want their bonus and paycheck now.

Like its almost never the devs, i cant imagine a dev being like 'ending of the game is t their, shall we put it in? ' ' nah i cba'

 

[My Blue Heaven]

i mean lazy devs rhetoric is banned here because the actual answer is lazy/incompetent management for messy AAA games, pretty simple

 

[Kr1spy]

I think of all the terms you could use to describe a mismanaged game release, 'lazy' is probably the laziest term someone could use.

Let's all crack that thesaurus open for a change.

 

[Servbot24]

So, I propose that we repurpose this term, and instead of "lazy devs," we call out the lazy corporations and power structures that make the actually very hard-working game devs stay up late nights trying to make sure we have an enjoyable experience.

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I agree with you, but this is already official policy on ERA.

 

[Lobster Roll]

I'll continue to use the words "lazy" and "uninspired" or other similar terms when talking about project management and upper management. For the individual developers, though, it's insulting to use these kinds of words for developers and it's pretty much an instant ban around here from what I understand.

 

[Mass_Pincup]

Laziness at the level of marketing, or the number of people contracted to complete a task, or the time allotted to complete that task, and so on.

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You don"t know shit about the internal workings of each teams, so throwing "marketing" under the bus when you seemingly have no idea what they're doing and under which circumstances is pathetic.

 

[astro]

The word lazy can be nice in a poetic sense, but it can be ironic in its use as it's often a pretty low effort way to describe what you want to.

It can also be very dismissive.

 

[dude]

No. I've worked in games for like 6 years now, and I've never met anyone in any part of the industry that is "lazy" - even management and executives (though, I should note that I'm recently part of management, so I'm not super objective).
Why not just say you don't like the game? Why the need to say laziness was involved?

 

[My Blue Heaven]

You don"t know shit about the internal workings of each teams, so throwing "marketing" under the bus when you seemingly have no idea what they're doing and under which circumstances is pathetic.

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you gotta love when someone passively insults marketing and then all the marketers on ERA start to come out lmao

 

[Deleted member 8468]

'Lazy devs' is already a banned phrase here. It doesn't even describe the behavior you're suggesting. Upper management cares about numbers and little else.

If you're suggesting that we get rid of toxicity and negativity..... Good luck.

 

[Dark Cloud]

I definitely never use it and I see it used for Game Freak a lot. Devs are not lazy.

 

[DanteSparda504]

Start looking at it this way. Anyone who describes any part of game development as "lazy" is actually referring to themselves and their own work ethic and life style.

The term lazy doesn't beed repurposed. People just need to learn about what they are talking about before speaking, but people are not willing to do that. They'd rather pretend they know everything and act like a bunch of dumbasses.

 

[dude]

you gotta love when someone passively insults marketing and then all the marketers on ERA start to come out lmao

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For real though, the way people here glorify devs over any other position in gaming is kinda lousy. Marketing is an important aspect of gaming because ya'll don't buy games that weren't hyped to death for a year and a half before release.

 

[My Blue Heaven]

For real though, the way people here glorify devs over any other position in gaming is kinda lousy. Marketing is an important aspect of gaming because ya'll don't buy games that weren't hyped to death for a year and a half before release.

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my job is in marketing adjacent capacity so whenever i see game marketing people get all touchy and shit it's like i'm seeing a virtual reflection of the touchy marketing people i work with everyday lol, it's entertaining.

 

[Zephy]

What I sometimes perceive as "laziness" is more a lack of willingness from the producers/managers to invest time and/or money in what could be valuable improvements/additions to a game. So it's not really anyone being lazy, therefore the term itself isn't really appropriate in any case.

 

[WrenchNinja]

Creatively bankrupt

 

[TaleSpun]

Unless it an indie game

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Indie devs aren't lazy.

 

[Coleslaw]

You don"t know shit about the internal workings of each teams, so throwing "marketing" under the bus when you seemingly have no idea what they're doing and under which circumstances is pathetic.

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Yo this is a perfect example of that ignorance (in my case). Respect the marketing team.

 

[Deleted member 51789]

Unless it an indie game, it's almost never "lazy devs". You know what happens to truly lazy devs? They get fired, fairly quickly.

It's almost always a managent issue - aggressive launch dates and poor prioritization.

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What's with the 'unless it's an indie game' nonsense? Indie devs have plenty of pressures to perform themselves - time constraints, tiny teams, in some cases second jobs, lack of funding etc - that laziness is just as dumb a critique for them as it is for AAA

 

[My Blue Heaven]

Indie devs aren't lazy.

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to be fair yandere dev is pretty lazy

 

[Budi]

 

[MrCibb]

Coleslaw stop trying to make lazy happen. It's not going to happen.

 

[Night]

If it wasn't management, creatively uninspired or creatively inept sound better.

 

[Deleted member 679]

Even in your examples I don't think "lazy" quite fits. It's not that they don't feel like doing their job, they're either incompetent, greedy, or both.

Even a case like that Uncharted 4 trailers using Assassin's Creed placeholder art that should be replaced, which is as close to "lazy" as you can probably get, I find it unlikely that they just didn't feel like changing, the people responsible most likely just forgot, and everyone else who saw that cutscene didn't recognize the art from Black Flag, so they didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

Every shitty game that wasn't even worth your time that you ever played, a ton of work went into it. I wish it was simply a matter of "someone somewhere is being lazy, replace them and the game is great and devs have a better work life balance", but it's not that simple.

At the end of the day, what's truly lazy is reducing the discussion to "lazy devs", "marketing" or whatever, instead of taking a couple of minutes to properly articulate what you thought was bad about it, and what you think could have been done differently.

 

[Pikachu]

lazy devs has always referred to fundamental problems in management / vision for game design. it has never been an attempt to slander the person whose job is making sure doors open correctly, or the day/night cycle functions.

i remember pokemon sword and shield. edit: i don't remember seeing anyone claim that dexit could be blamed on programmers or the like - in fact, i'm sure if polled, devs probably would have chosen to have a complete pokedex, given time to do it. which loops back to management. i'm sure they pre-selected the date and saw that it couldn't be done in time, so they chose the simpler route. thinking about it, the term is most likely just an admittedly/ironically lazy synonym for the problems caused by crunch.

 

[Li bur]

Can't we just say "things can be better executed"?

 

[RowdyReverb]

Rushed devs is more accurate than lazy devs. They know the areas of the game that need more work and the features that could help round out a game, but there is a limited amount of time to complete these things.

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

The reason the term exists is because A) a lot of gamers are happy to act like entitled arseholes when they don't get what they want and B) they don't understand what it takes to make a videogame.

As much as things need to change, they won't because of those two reasons.

lazy devs has always referred to fundamental problems in management / vision for game design. it has never been an attempt to slander the person whose job is making sure doors open correctly, or the day/night cycle functions.

i remember pokemon sword and shield

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This isn't true. The lazy developers argument is almost always applied to the people making the game, whether they're designers, programmers or otherwise.

And even if it were aimed at management, it still wouldn't be apt because poor or misguided management doesn't mean those responsible were lazy.

 

[Zombegoast]

It's selfishness from publishers that sets unrealistic expectations from the developers as they're the one funding the development and setting the deadline.

Activision wanted their yearly CoD title, Sledgehammer was removed from the project and Treyarch was put in charged for Cold War. To this date the game still a mess and it's obvious the game should have been delayed until early next year but no this is Activision and they want money to please their shareholders.

 

[Spork4000]

Poor production management is the term you're looking for.

 

[Deleted member 46493]

What's with the 'unless it's an indie game' nonsense? Indie devs have plenty of pressures to perform themselves - time constraints, tiny teams, in some cases second jobs, lack of funding etc - that laziness is just as dumb a critique for them as it is for AAA

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I meant that indie games rarely have the bureaucracy of AAA teams with tons of managers that slow things down. I'll reword my post in a bit though.

 

[Vilam]

lazy devs has always referred to fundamental problems in management / vision for game design. it has never been an attempt to slander the person whose job is making sure doors open correctly, or the day/night cycle functions.

i remember pokemon sword and shield

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What fantasy land do you live in? That's not how the term gets thrown around at all.

 

[Arttemis]

I'm pretty sure using the phrase "lazy devs" is grounds for a ban, and rightly so. No one has any right to say that when the industry is notorious for crunch periods that violate any kind of worker decency. People who use the term are, frankly, ignorant assholes.

 

[SlasherMcGirk]

I dont see whats wrong with lazy. Its always meant to be at management and not individual devs.

 

[Glio]

It's not lazy, it's greedy or incompetent, which is a different

 

[Dark Cloud]

lazy devs has always referred to fundamental problems in management / vision for game design. it has never been an attempt to slander the person whose job is making sure doors open correctly, or the day/night cycle functions.

i remember pokemon sword and shield

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You're lying. Straight up lying right now

 

[Pikachu]

This isn't true. The lazy developers argument is almost always applied to the people making the game, whether they're designers, programmers or otherwise.

And even if it were aimed at management, it still wouldn't be apt because poor or misguided management doesn't mean those responsible were lazy.

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What fantasy land do you live in? That's not how the term gets thrown around at all.

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You're lying. Straight up lying right now

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I have always used the term as described in my post. In the posts that I've seen here, the theme has been similar - I have not observed people criticizing regular workers, so maybe I just don't go into the right threads.

Sorry y'all.

 

[shaneo632]

Yeah I still use the lazy descriptor but it's never aimed at the devs busting their asses in crunch, but more the people at the top cutting corners or offering up a derivative vision etc.

Like The Quiet Man is a completely ramshackle game and full of things I'd describe as "lazy" (shittons of glitches, floaty combat/controls/movement), but I'm sure a lot of people worked hard to bring it together.

 

[SDBurton]

Click to shrink...

LOL

 

[Stopdoor]

For real though, the way people here glorify devs over any other position in gaming is kinda lousy. Marketing is an important aspect of gaming because ya'll don't buy games that weren't hyped to death for a year and a half before release.

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It's definitely an observation I had with the "Gotta give credit to Ubisoft" thread - people making excuses like "well, they just have tons of people" like that's a cheat - no credit given to the other departments or management. I mean, I'm actually a dev, not a manager, but I imagine a project with 1000 devs and hearing them pull it off makes it seem obvious there's definitely credit due there.

 

[Baji Boxer]

Undercooked, rushed, broken, mismanaged, creatively bankrupt, put out to die, cash grab, pandering, mismanaged...

There are a lot of words that better describe broad problems with a game. Beyond being insulting to hard working people, lazy is just a bad descriptor for pretty much every problem with a game.

 

[Glio]

It's definitely an observation I had with the "Gotta give credit to Ubisoft" thread - people making excuses like "well, they just have tons of people" like that's a cheat - no credit given to the other departments or management. I mean, I'm actually a dev, not a manager, but I imagine a project with 1000 devs and hearing them pull it off makes it seem obvious there's definitely credit due there.

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Yeah, everyone in a video game company is a gamedev. From the people in the marketing campaign, to the QA people, to the programmer who makes an AI or the artist who designs a texture.

 

[MatrixMan.exe]

Yeah, everyone in a video game company is a gamedev. From the people in the marketing campaign, to the QA people, to the programmer who makes an AI or the artist who designs a texture.

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That's a key thing to remember. There's this weird ignorance when a lot of gamers talk about development where they seem to think 'development' only encompasses design, programming and art.

It's more than that and you have a lot of key areas like release management, QA and even community management more recently which are just as important in making sure a game ships in a good state and meets the expectations of players.

 

[Feign]

Nah.

I get what you're going for but none of what your describing is laziness so much as prioritizing aspects that don't resonate with "you". (You in a general sense.) Those parts feel so barren that they come off as lazy to a player when most likely it just didn't have the focus it received in a previous game or work by the studio or genre.

 

[VariantX]

Undercooked, rushed, broken, mismanaged, creatively bankrupt, put out to die, cash grab, pandering, mismanaged...

There are a lot of words that better describe broad problems with a game. Beyond being insulting to hard working people, lazy is just a bad descriptor for pretty much every problem with a game.

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Came here to say something along these lines. It's fair game to critique execution of the end product and development vision, but just saying lazy isn't even saying shit about anything, it's just a vague and intentionally hurtful thing to say because you're upset about a product that you purchased.

 

[justiceiro]

Here a wild idea: don't show me games are nowhere near completion. Don't try to sell us something and them ask for us to be patient to get what we are paying for.

 

[JimD]

"Lazy" is a poor criticism for almost anything you aren't intimately familiar with. You have no idea how hard a person or group worked on a project. Hell, I've made the mistake myself and thought coworkers were lazy, but later found out they had far more on their plate than I knew, or were dealing with personal issues that impacted their job. And these were people who I saw working every day and could directly access their work product.

Using lazy in almost any aspect of games is a fabrication. Devs, journalists, content creator, etc. There's always a better term to critique an end product that doesn't involve creating a fantasy in your head of what their workday looks like.

 

[BelieveMeUstink]

As someone who works in the software industry I fucking loathe this term it is so off the mark.

Sidebar: I hate the term "trash" as well.