Star Citizen studio to limit roadmap after criticism of ‘passionate’ players
Developer Cloud Imperium Games will restrict Star Citizen’s roadmap after criticizing schedule delays. The company will only show features that will be added to the game in the next quarter.
Cloud Imperium Games says it will do this because Star Citizen’s “most passionate players” saw features on the roadmap as “promises” and then criticized them for being delayed. The company writes this in a roadmap update. The company introduced a public roadmap showing future features six quarters ago and is now calling it a “mistake.” The studio says the roadmap focused too much on features that had a high probability of shifting.
“It has become abundantly clear to us that despite our best efforts to communicate the mutability of development and how features marked as tentative should not be trusted, the general focus of many of our most passionate players has led them to ignore everything on the Release See View roadmap, continue to interpret it as a promise,” the company writes. The studio reports that many players did not see it that way, but that “the constant noise” from these players was delayed as a deliverable “has become a distraction”.
As part of the changes, deliverables will no longer be placed on the roadmap until the developer can actually work on the feature. As of Alpha 3.18, only items on the Release View roadmap will be placed on the Release View roadmap with a maximum delay of one quarter. In addition, the company will place more emphasis on the Progress Tracker, which shows what various internal teams within CIG are currently working on.
Star Citizen is a crowdfunded game that took in just over $2.1 million on Kickstarter in 2012. Fundraising continued with this game and the studio has raised over $430 million for the game to date.
Last month, CIG shared a five-year plan from Star Citizen with MCV magazine. Among other things, the company is building a new large studio in Manchester that should open in May 2022. In five years’ time, the studio’s team must grow from 400 to 1000 employees during that period. By 2026, the company should also be working on sequels to single-player game Squadron 42 and managing “a very large mmorpg” with Star Citizen.