Reposting my thread from Concierge forum to encourage discussion in a larger group: Dear CIG Team, I'm a former head of external testing in Europe and North America for Wargaming.net - I spent about 6 years working on several projects for them and overseeing all aspects of external testing, recruitment, and communications. Throughout my time at Wargaming, I watched as the same transparency issues grew, for much the same reasons as have been given by CIG. I did my best to communicate with the players and explain development delays, etc. At WG, we were under very strict NDAs, so communicating with the player base was often very difficult. As a former game developer, I understand that sometimes development goals are pushed back by various requirements from R&D, technical limitations, and unknown unknowns. One thing I can say without a shadow of doubt - players/backers thrive on communication from the teams developing the product they're invested in - even if that communication is not what they want to hear. The important factor is how the communication is handled. What CIG has here is very interesting: a development cycle accountable - not to a publisher - but to the players/backers themselves. CIG is not funded by a publisher who can demand deadlines - you are funded by a very large group of passionate fans who believe in the vision of Chris Roberts and share the same dream for the 'Best Damn Space Game Ever'. Very early on in the project's development, Chris promised the backers that he would hold the project accountable to us, treat us with respect, and remain transparent with us. As the current fire throughout the community is showing, this has not been accomplished. Now, to be clear - this is not an issue created solely by the changes to roadmap/progress tracker - this is an issue which goes far beyond a simple UI displaying what teams are working on and expected progress. This issue is directly related to the continued delay without valid explanation for important gameplay elements, deliverables, and features which have been promised for years. It is also exacerbated by CIG's failure to provide clear feedback channels for the backers to discuss issues important to the community. The Ares Starfighter Ion nerf quickly comes to mind in this discussion. CIG tested the ship in Evocati, tested the ship on PTU, created marketing material for the ship, released the ship during a 'free fly' and 'free rental' event, sold the ship after allowing both backers and potential backers to experience the ship, and then promptly reworked the ship to be something completely different after a record setting funding drive. There has been no communication from the developers regarding the plans they have for returning the ship to something resembling the marketing materials, no plans discussed regarding how the ship will fulfill its marketed mission, and virtually no feedback on backer/community concern for this unexpected change to something people paid $250 USD for. The Banu Merchantman was concepted and sold in, I believe, 2014. Here we are in 2022 and the community hopes to see the ship this year. The ship has missed at least one release date and your backers have been waiting for nearly 8 years to see something they paid real money for. Don't get me wrong - I think the wait ended up getting the backers more than they were expecting, but 8 years without valid explanation is a very long time to wait and have money invested for something. I could go on and on with a list of unmet deadlines and failures of communication. To my point, I believe it is acceptable to miss deadlines due to the unknowns of working in an environment where technology is constantly changing and new exciting features become possible. It is extremely important, however, that developers remain open and honest with backers as these changes in scheduling happen. CIG, be honest about why deadlines are missed. Be open about your expectations from management, development, player experience, ship design, art, and other teams. If something needs to move on progress tracker and/or roadmap, give a detailed statement regarding why it moved. If a feature, weapon, ship, armor, etc needs to change, be open and honest about why you believe a change is required and discuss it with your backers/community before making a change. This brings me to my next point: Star Citizen is in alpha - that is important. Normally, when a game is in alpha, the developer is accountable directly to the publisher and only the publisher. This means that money has not been transferred from players to developers/publisher, and therefore, there is no accountability to the community in terms of nerfs and buffs to purchased virtual assets. During a normal development process, the developer is free to play with balance without consequence - the minute you sell something, you have a responsibility to deliver what was sold, as it was sold, or better. If you want to tweak game balance and figure out vehicle performance, release the vehicles/weapons/etc as free-to-play while you gather your data and find a home for it in the 'verse. Once you are satisfied with performance, you are free to sell it. Again, the moment you sell something, you are responsible to deliver the purchased asset as-sold, or better. Your company is accountable to your financial backers, and your products (purchased digital assets) must be delivered. The issues CIG are facing do not stem simply from a change to your development communication, but rather, from a loss of faith and trust in the actions you are taking as a developer. Your backers/community are losing trust in your promise to include us in the development process due to situations like the Ion coupled with the decision to reduce transparency with the community. CIG's plethora of missed deadlines which are not rectified immediately in the next quarterly patch do nothing to assuage the feeling of helplessness rising in your community of backers. CIG's lack of schedule transparency does nothing to show a recommitment to open and honest communication with the backers. I switched careers from game development to construction management. One of the things we do in construction is provide a 3-week look-ahead schedule showing what work we plan to have finished each week. This look-ahead schedule is updated weekly showing the work we completed, what was not completed, and how we're going to remain on-schedule for the project calendar. In addition to the 3-week look-ahead schedule, we are generally contractually obligated to provide the project owner a 'critical path method' schedule which shows the dependencies of each aspect of the project, expected start/finish dates for each task, and how we as a company are going to accomplish the required work within the contractual period. Anything we, as a contractor, believe would make the project better, help it remain on schedule, etc is handled through RFIs (requests for information), work orders, etc where we submit our ideas to the project owner and have them give feedback on whether they believe doing something different than the original plan would benefit the project. Extra work is generally accompanied by extra time on the contract. Perhaps CIG should provide the same scheduling to the backers as an act of good-faith to restore some semblance of trust between CIG and its financial backers. Provide us with a CPM schedule showing all of the planned features for the game - I understand that deadlines are a rather hard thing to pin down in software development, but show us the critical path - which features depend on other features, etc. Show us a 4-week look-ahead schedule and update it weekly to show progress and delays. Provide us with information about what caused a delay. Celebrate the accelerated aspects of the schedule with us. Most importantly: define the features required for release of the game. This should be evident in the CPM schedule. When new release features are dreamed up, submit something for the backers/community to vote on and show how those features may impact the critical path. We are lost on a development path that nobody understands, nobody can see the end of, and nobody knows where it's going, and, most importantly, due to the just mentioned points - nobody can effectively trust. I strongly suspect that the loss of morale among the developers is more significantly impacted by CIG's management than seeing an angry mob on Spectrum. Developer replies to concerns being expressed on Spectrum is minimal at best, which leads me (a concierge backer) to believe that the developers are not spending much time reading the feedback on Spectrum. This is backed by my experience working with Wargaming.net as well as my time as a QA tester at Gaijin Entertainment - the developers rarely read the forums and anything that they did read was passed on to them by community teams. Essentially, the project is nebulous. Management is not accountable to anyone except Chris Roberts, who (and I love him) has a very nebulous dream and is more invested in dreaming than delivering in a reasonable amount of time. That's great, the world needs dreamers, but a dream will always remain a dream if deliverables are not defined and a project does not have a deadline. A community can only be sustained on dreams so long as the dream is definable and concrete progress is being made towards that dream. Respectfully, Banu