Are game studios and video game developers getting lazy?

nascar21.jpg
In recent years there have been a number of games that have launched that have been broken on day one, that simply weren’t fit for purpose.

Nascar21: Ignition is a great example of this. Launched October 2021, Nascar21: Ignition was so full of bugs that it was unplayable. There are/were countless missing features, bugs, and crashes that made this launch a complete disaster.

But Nascar21 isn’t an enigma, there are many examples of games launching where they’ve been riddled with bugs. For instance I have been unable to play Forza Horizon 5 since launch, unless I want to play on Xbox. The PC version crashes constantly, fails to render properly with Nvidia graphics cards, and fails to save any custom wheel configurations. On launch, though listed as a supported wheelbase, it failed to recognise the Fanatec dd2.

This issue isn’t present in just racing games either, Cyberpunk 2077 was possibly the most hyped game of 2020 and it’s launch was almost a complete failure. PlayStation 4 and Xbox owners complained of ridiculously low frame rates; there were bugs, glitches, and all kinds of crashes.

This wouldn’t stand in any other industry.​

Imagine going to the cinema to see the latest Marvel movie and the effects were half done “don’t worry” say Disney “we’ll fix it for the streaming release”.

Or imagine buying a new car, only to find when you turn up to the showroom to collect it that the engine is missing.

There have been issues with video games since the launch of video games.​

Pretty much any piece of software ever written has an error in it somewhere, with games sometimes this can be very obvious. In the days before games could get patches and hotfixes, if a game launched with a bug or error, then it was something that you had to live with.

Eventually when patches and hotfixes could be implemented, we would often see day 1 fixes, which could be annoying. I remember buying Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007, rushing home to play it on my PS3 with eager anticipation only to find a download - which took over 8 hrs!!

Whether it was at this point that game studios realized they could launch unfinished games and push out updates and features after launch, I don’t know. I hope it isn’t as sinister as that.

Perhaps these cases of unfinished games are the result of sticking to launch dates (though Cyberpunk 2077 was pushed back), or a result of funding, or lack of resources. It could be that so many game studios are owned by larger companies and publishers, who have control over when games launch.

The latter could be more true than we might realize. Sea of Thieves launched in 2018, made by developers Rare. It was an OK game, where you and a few friends sailed around finding treasure and fighting other pirates. Almost two years after launch the game is almost unrecognizable and ex-employees of Rare have openly admitted that there was a great deal of pressure from Microsoft to release the game.

What do you think are the reasons why some of these games are launched in the states that they are?
About author
Damian Reed
PC geek, gamer, content creator, and passionate sim racer.
I live life a 1/4 mile at a time, it takes me ages to get anywhere!

Comments

i dont think its laziness. (although things like steam and unreal engine allow for low effort garbage to actually see the public) i think its mainly a symptom of the fact that games CAN be so detailed these days. 20 years ago, a small team of people could 3d model every asset for a game from scratch in a few months because the poly count just wasnt as high. now game worlds are WAY bigger, AND are so much more detailed, that it would take the same team of people 100 times longer to do the same job.

so you have three options: 1. the game takes 100 times longer to complete, 2. you need 100 times the staff to complete it, 3. you need to employ some sort of procedural asset generation to fill your game world without having to do it all by hand.

option 1 and 2 both sound ridiculous but you see it in gta. 5 and 6 are set to be about a decade apart AND it took a THOUSAND people to make 5, who knows how many more are working on 6. the other option you see a lot in space games. no mans sky was made by like 15 people but literally everything in it is procedurally generated from a reasonable handful of handmade assets. luckily the tools are getting better as well allowing devs to hand place assets but also have some fancy algorithms figuring out the details. star citizen has stuff like that were they can say "place a X type base Y size at this exact location on this procedurally generated planet" and the tools figure out where to place everything and make it fit the terrain and blah blah. it takes like 10 seconds. a bit of procedural tech with handcrafted care so the world doesn't feel infinitely repetitive.
 
The "company-friend" guys talking their habitual s**t here is your answer. Games don't need to be good nowadays, those people will pre-order, buy every DLC and defend it anyways, so why make something good if you can make the money by the fast lane?

blah, blah, blah, games are too complex, costs, license, too demanding players, social media.. bulls**t..

Video-games, in the sports genre specially, hit their peak at the 6th generation.. I challenge any of these "complacent guys" to play any game back then and find at least 10% of the bugs present in this desgrace called Nascar21.. You choice, can be any Thunder, Dirt to Daytona, Nascar Racing, all great franchises, with license cost, complex engine and everything. I have a lot of good time playing those old games nowadays and still found none to zero bugs, so, this argument of we being too kind with old games, is bulls**t of generation Z that never played those games or just look for graphics.

With the 7th generation the companies discovered how they could launch broken games, drop some fixes and call the day, and the wheel is just spinning' since.

But, as we see here and in other topics, people is fine in buy broken games, what I can do? :whistling:

(ps: yes, the companies are to be blame, not the workers behind it - in 95% of the cases)
 
Last edited:
I still think the issue lays with the players themselves. They have incredibly high expectations, make unreasonable comparisons (especially when you consider "X game does Y why can't you" but doesn't consider the entirety of what any of the games they're comparing. So at the end of the day, we get a tone deaf article discussing developers getting lazy when, in reality, the issue is they're overworked and pushed to the absolute limits because you can't be without a game for Y amount of time because you lack the patience for anything to be done, and then when confronted with this fact, you throw out "amazing" games with 10/10 experiences without acknowledging the developers of those games have ABSOLUTELY spoken out against things like crunch, player expectation, etc.

Ya'll act like developers themselves abuse you, instead of their publishers putting those demands on the developers, both for the micro-transactions, and the development work.

Instead of actually looking at the ACTUAL problems, you, just like every boomer before us all, throw out that the developers are just lazy.

God damn, now I'mma get back to helping folks with their technical issues they get paid 4x than me to cause. Write better.
Maybe players are too demanding, but studios hype their games before release by saying that their upcoming title will amaze us in ways we cannot imagine (or something like that.) I still remember how Codemasters hyped the very first F1 game, F1 2010, as the greatest sim of all-time. The idea is to get people to buy the game and you can't do that if you say that this new title will be "pretty good, but maybe with a few flaws and will require 8 major patches."

But Reiza didn't do that, I have to say. Right from release 1.0, they said that AMS2 was a work in progress and that it would take several updates, and probably years, before the full potential of the game would be achieved. So far, it's true. AMS2 is getting better and better with each major update.
 
Last edited:
Frankly if a game sucks I'm just not gonna buy that stuff, and I'll recommend against doing so to anyone that asks. Not gonna do no apologetics, no nothin.. If it sucks, it sucks, go ahead and improve it.
 
I think some developpers work really hard at their game and put out quality releases. AMS2 or European Truck Simulator 2 are great examples.

ACC is another story. The base of the game is very solid but I'm disappointed by the lack of a safety car. That's an example of laziness to me, unless I'm not aware of a fundamental reason for this.

But by far the worst offender is EA which seems very happy to release the same "Madden" and "FIFA" every year as so-called "new" games when they are in fact glorified roster updates. That doesn't bode well for the F1 series.
 
Last edited:
You could ask the same question of any industry. Web sites for instance. Spelling errors in articles. Poor grammar. Not reporting facts. Are they all due to laziness?
When it comes to spelling and grammatical mistakes, it's usually cost-cutting. The proof reader was fired. There was a Twitter account solely devoted to spelling and grammatical mistakes in the New York Times because that newspaper no longer employs proof readers.
 
Dont know who to blame?? But am sick to death of paying full price for a game, so I can beta test it!!!!!!

guess until we all stop buying games that are not ready, it will continue.. Saying that just pre-ordered Grid legends LOL
 
"It's ready when it's ready", should be the standard, not just for the modding community, but also for game development! Most of the times it's publisher's fault, because they rush the game release, other times, games are so ambitious, that their Early Access alpha state, remains there forever.
 
Like realistically, if they've saturated the hardcore simulator market, games cannot become more complicated every generation unless prices go up. You've gotta draw some lines, trim out the optional features. Compared to GPL, content probably takes 100 times as long to develop now... modern sims don't cost 100 times as much as GPL. It's gotta come from somewhere.

This is about realistic expectations.
Yes customers may have developed a unreasonable level of expectation, but again who can blame them?

If a racing game takes longer to develop than 10 or 20 years ago it means that the development process has to adjust. More capacity, more talent, more time, more planning and ultimately more money. With a bigger investment comes more pressure for return of investment.

it is not only about the price, as different business models do exist to earn revenue.
Look at the success of Fortnite.
No not a race sim, different challenges, but interesting business model.
Something like Raceroom could adopt that model and maybe make it work, but the market for race simulations is not the same as that for battle royale games.

Meaningful DLCs are a good way to get revenue for further development.

If the market is saturated it is because there are too many companies producing mediocre products.
These companies are not forced to do so, some do so by design - the shovel ware lower tier seasonal race games on contract are a good example.

Today it has somehow become acceptable to sell a first gen game as a full game patch it up a little and sell an improved iteration as the next season, with 2 to 3 seasons needed to reach an iteration that deserves to be called a fully matured product. Some players even openly support such a quasi EA approach.

The challenge is for publishers / developers to resist their own marketing and drive to push out quantity over quality. Design by the numbers and corporate business models may not be the best foundation for creative and quality design.

Take a look at Rockstar and their games. They take years to develop and they do not follow the yearly / bi-yearly model where you buy the patched, upgraded version and/or new season as a new game. Different genre sure.

Why is AC such a classic?
Good foundation and time.
 
Last edited:
I personally believe it's just a matter of cost / how much you get back

delaying game by 6 month will improve it, but it won't sell 3 times as much in that improved state. And paying for extra 6 month is a huge deal, it can dramatically reduce how much you make from the finished product

The other approach is Indie game development, where money isn't really involved, and it's more about people's free time and their passion. But in these projects, you can run out of passion ( just like you can run out of money in the first group) and either release unfinished game or scrap it

I have seen small games released as early access , and after 2-3 years, there is hardly any change ( Like EmergeNYC, which I had really high hopes for )

despite what people might thing, hardware is more complex these days, people running more and more types of steering wheels, sim boxes and what not

It's a very hard job to make a great game on the projected budget in the projected time, only few companies can do it

but look at games on phones / ipads? so much rubbish ( the free games especially) , 5 copies of the same game released by same studio with slightly different models and you have a brand new game.

And one big problem that a lot of companies face is that they are not the publisher, so they can't make all the decissions and sometimes that means they aslo have to make it worse, becasue that's what the publisher wants. ( not wanting to spend money on improving certain aspects)

I wouldn't call anyone lazy, that's really offensive ! if people were lazy, they won't be in this industry , you won't survive if you are lazy ( you go on mobile game market and release free games with tons of adverts , haha)
 
I personally believe it's just a matter of cost / how much you get back

delaying game by 6 month will improve it, but it won't sell 3 times as much in that improved state. And paying for extra 6 month is a huge deal, it can dramatically reduce how much you make from the finished product

The other approach is Indie game development, where money isn't really involved, and it's more about people's free time and their passion. But in these projects, you can run out of passion ( just like you can run out of money in the first group) and either release unfinished game or scrap it

It's a very hard job to make a great game on the projected budget in the projected time, only few companies can do it

And one big problem that a lot of companies face is that they are not the publisher, so they can't make all the decissions and sometimes that means they aslo have to make it worse, becasue that's what the publisher wants. ( not wanting to spend money on improving certain aspects)

In short yes, it is about cost and returns.

So better release early to pay bills, yet sell less copies because your product is unfinished or light in content?

Indie development can involve money just like a premium game from a big brand publisher, the difference is about being an independent developer - a single guy in his spare to a full studio. Running out of steam can happen with big studio projects, especially if a project is mismanaged. Big game projects by big studios have been cancelled while being developed, or released in an unfinished or even broken state.

Indie or published does not guarantee quality nor failure.
It is more about funding, stakeholders and marketing.

if you can’t make a good game based on your budget and projected time you are in the wrong business.
if it is about shovel ware, it is quantity over quality.

The actual problem may be the gaming industry itself, with a lot of little studios shoveling out games to feed the mobile market. Cheap, low quality freemium model.

I sympathize with those who work in that environment, but we are talking about racing sims in 2022.

EDIT: …and no it is not laziness, it is complacency - the acceptance of lowering standards.
 
Last edited:

This wouldn’t stand in any other industry.​

Ahem, every industry cuts corners somewhere. Might not be that obvious on first sight. But at least some games do get finished after all (patient gamer shoutout). Look at Tesla bug-ridden Autopilot, movies with plotholes because of deleted scenes and bad lighting in green screen scenes, monitor manufacturers using subpar capacitors resulting in smoking screens, the list goes on.
 
I recall Super Street Fighter 2 TURBO on Amiga 1200 : totally unplayable :D

That is why a modding platform like GTR2/RACE07/AC is always the best : when studios give up the updates then cummunity like RD is here to continue updates/patches and to bring a new life :)
 
I recall Super Street Fighter 2 TURBO on Amiga 1200 : totally unplayable :D

That is why a modding platform like GTR2/RACE07/AC is always the best : when studios give up the updates then cummunity like RD is here to continue updates/patches and to bring a new life :)
Jealous, I only had the Amiga 500, but I did have that extra 1/2 meg of memory. So I got more sounds than just the regular A500.
 
NASCAR 21: Ignition is such a special case that it's probably not fruitful to extend complaints about that title to sim devs in general. They are basically a former publisher (not a developer) who lost the dev team (Monster Games) that made the only successful title they had (NASCAR Heat). In their place, they started hiring small dev teams around the world to develop a bunch of new licensed games, none of whom had a track record of developing and releasing AAA titles from scratch. Couple this with the problematic ISIMotor 2.5 engine maintained by a caretaker studio that's only ever been tinkering around the edges of something ISI developed in the past, and there's not really any indication anything functional will ever come from MSG no matter how many exclusive 10-year licenses they spend money on.

I would rather see MSG fail quickly and the licenses pulled and given to other devs that can actually deliver. Let Kunos develop a WEC game, Sector3 develop a BTCC game, and Reiza develop an Indycar game.
 
Do we buy half baked games and keep buying DLC for it, year after year?
Yes!

So, the blame is on us, the consumers.
 
I'd say it's the unfortunate impact of user's expectations being far too high and too stringent.
Remember No Man's Sky? They had goals, but wanted to push it back, then got death threats for holding it back.

The problem with game development is there isn't a "one size fits all" approach to anything, especially when you get into the sciences. The entire idea of developing a racing simulator, for instance, has a stringent requirement of A: Being based on real world sciences and B: Being based on consumer hardware.

Both A and B are constantly changing. Games also suffer the issue of undesired outcomes. Lets say you have feature A in the game, say walking. But you need it to also run. You then have to develop locomotion that allows for you to merge in walking and running. (In Unity, not sure all other systems, this is done through a Blendtree). Now, add in more things.

For instance, let's look at racing sims. My favorite thing is looking at the different systems folks have used for doing something as basic as shifting. ACC has pretty simple shifts, with it being all paddle. But then you get to something like Dirt Rally 2. It's using sequential, h-pattern, and paddle shifters. And it STRUGGLES. Sometimes you'll be steering and you can see that it's trying to blend between steering and shifting, but never finishing either action and basically going "DJ" on you.

iRacing has to do a similar system, but needs it to work "correctly". So, rather than develop an unfinished shifting animation (like DR 2.0 did), you get nothing for shifting for now.

At the end of the day, development is entirely a series of trial and error. What may have been done correctly in a past game does not get ported over to a new game. And on-going titles (MMOs like FFXIV, iRacing, etc) have to deal with those changes on a live and active product, meaning there's less room for "gutting it all out and redoing it" (though iRacing has done a great job of this so far with their DX11/LFE/XAudio/Dynamic Track/Dynamic Skybox systems over time.

But....

I still think the issue lays with the players themselves. They have incredibly high expectations, make unreasonable comparisons (especially when you consider "X game does Y why can't you" but doesn't consider the entirety of what any of the games they're comparing. So at the end of the day, we get a tone deaf article discussing developers getting lazy when, in reality, the issue is they're overworked and pushed to the absolute limits because you can't be without a game for Y amount of time because you lack the patience for anything to be done, and then when confronted with this fact, you throw out "amazing" games with 10/10 experiences without acknowledging the developers of those games have ABSOLUTELY spoken out against things like crunch, player expectation, etc.

Ya'll act like developers themselves abuse you, instead of their publishers putting those demands on the developers, both for the micro-transactions, and the development work.

Instead of actually looking at the ACTUAL problems, you, just like every boomer before us all, throw out that the developers are just lazy.

God damn, now I'mma get back to helping folks with their technical issues they get paid 4x than me to cause. Write better.
I highly doubt it's "boomers" or even "gen X" who are complaining the most. Those gens grew up with Pong, space invaders then Ataris then Spectrums and C64s). IMO it's Millenials and Gen Y who are the worst slagging games off for being crap with "OMG NO 4K textures" paddy fits or "OMFG only getting 45 fps not 100".........People saying crap like that should be MADE to play Doom on a 386sx, screen reduced down to LITERALLY the size of a post card to get a frame rate over 10fps!!!!

But yeah overall it's entitled gamers and publishers/investers who are the problem.

Also I think Covid 19 really arsed things up for some major releases over the past couple of years.
 
Last edited:

Latest News

Article information

Author
Damian Reed
Article read time
3 min read
Views
16,323
Comments
110
Last update

Online or Offline racing?

  • 100% online racing

    Votes: 105 7.9%
  • 75% online 25% offline

    Votes: 137 10.3%
  • 50% online 50% offline

    Votes: 190 14.3%
  • 25% online 75% offline

    Votes: 375 28.2%
  • 100% offline racing

    Votes: 517 38.9%
  • Something else, explain in comment

    Votes: 5 0.4%
Back
Top