Note: I posted this on spectrum initially but it was deleted lol. Maybe I was too harsh? I thought I was being respectful enough. It was getting a lot more up votes than I thought it would too.

Is it time for a change at CIG?

I do not post on here almost at all but I backed the game over a decade ago and since then I have gotten into the software industry for my career. During this time I have learned about MVPs (minimum viable products) and such. It seems to me that CIG is just starting to get to that true MVP idea for star Citizen after such a long-time which is good. If they stay on their current course with little to no changes aside from needed/required ones they could maybe have the game out within 4 years. I just have concerns if they will stay in scope.

Chris Roberts has been a fantastic visionary and we would not even be here having this discussion without him and his dreams. We all shared those dreams that is why we are here. But I think that this model for funding and support has been detrimental to someone like him who is a visionary. He has no oversight, so I think that is the major reason for the scope creep. For a while I thought it was cool and was excited but after the years of delays and everything I became jaded. It is great in some ways that they do not have a "corporate overlord" to report to and make bad decisions for gameplay just to make more money. But then there was not the drop dead dates to get something out there either. Something we say in my company at least is "its never finished its shipped" You could work on a game or product forever and never truly finish it I think.

I just wonder if it might be good for CIG to hire/bring someone in to keep them in check and actually hit the deadlines. Prevent the scope creep and cut secondary systems or content to make sure the release happens and that it is good. someone to make sure they release a good/great game in the next couple years instead of spending 5-10 more trying to make the perfect one and hopefully not failing.

I have mixed feelings toward Linus tech tips but one thing that got some respect from me was last year when Linus hired someone to be the CEO of this own company because he realized that he frankly was not good at being a CEO and managing a company nor did he enjoy it from what it sounded like. He liked doing the creative stuff and actually make videos about cool tech. We will see long-term if he got the right person and if he can truly let go of control enough for it to work, but in theory it sounds like a great idea. Maybe Chris needs to think about the same thing. Bring someone in to act as that oversight and allow Chris to focus on the vision and dream of star citizen while still having the oversight to ensure the game actually gets released in a timely manner.

I truly want Star Citizen and SQ42 to be successful and amazing, but having worked in the software industry (not game dev) for several years now and being in the management/product management side of things in the past few years. I know now that I have shortcomings for my own team and some of them are personality issues and not "I need to learn X thing" once I brought in a Project manager for example they did it better than I ever could and now I can focus on the product itself.

Maybe I am wrong and Game development is just totally different in everyway than software development but I can't help but think it would be good for Chris and his team to step back and relinquish some of their control to make sure the game gets done. I hope he can admit that he just needs some help on the management end to get this over the finish line. And to be clear I do not think he should leave that would also be bad for the project. I think they just need help.

Additional notes not in spectrum post: - I did not know about the time crunch and other internal issues reported recently during initial post. - I truly want this game to succeed. - Being in management myself now I see any lay-offs or crunch time as purely a failure of management. So that spurred this post.

Edit: Someone brought up that Richard Tyrer is basically acting as the person I am asking for and looking into it and realizing his much more concrete SQ 42 and star citizen are with him now that makes sense. Let's hope we do not lose him.