7 Deadly Video Game Sins - Sloth!
I'll patch it later... zzzz.
Making video games is at its core, incredibly hard work. The horrible terms of "crunch" being thrown around even massive studios showcase that no matter the power of your workforce, crafting an epic video game is time-consuming bordering on the dangerous. Things do not get any easier even when you're scaling down the scope of your title, and one need only watch Indie Game: The Movie to see the toll that programming to deadlines has on its developers.
Sleepless nights, social withdrawal: these are the sacrifices that many game developers make for the benefit of an audience to enjoy their work in their free time. Like vampires, we feed on their energy, but at the end of the day, it's something we are extremely grateful for.
However, what if all of this sounds like just too much effort? Why not reuse assets, why not cut corners, why not simply phone it in? If you're a big enough franchise then surely you can set the gear to neutral and coast?
Well, coasting has a cost, my friends, because it's time to delve once more into the pits of gaming hell and detail that most apathetic of sins: Sloth. For while there are many tirelessly working to improve the industry, there are others who look not only to ride the coattails of their efforts but take a bloody nap on them.
This is Sloth, the fourth in our series of Seven Deadly Gaming sins, a series you definitely shouldn't sleep on.
7. Asset Flipping
You can't really talk about laziness in gaming without addressing the sheer amount of asset flipping that goes on within the industry. Now it's a common trend within video game developing circles to outsource some of the asset creation for your game; with deadlines to meet you might have to rely on others to create animations, character models, or textures for you to plug back into the main experience.
However as has been shown many times over, this can lead to some developers copying designs that can land them into a tonne of hot water. Fortnite is routinely criticized for its dance animations which seems to be lifted from other sources, tattoo artists are constantly having to remove their artwork or receive some form of compensation when it appears in a create a player suite, and of course, there are those that simply buy from generic packs available online to drop into this game, creating an experience where you might have seen the same building or object thousand times over.
This gets especially lazy when some developers EXCLUSIVELY purchase these assets, plug them into a game, and call it a day. This shovel-ware approach has tarnished platforms like Steam with the same look and feel being replicated for a cheap payday. While it's brilliant to see people trying to get their vision to market, the sheer laziness on show by a select few is ruining the reputation of the majority.