How do you decide priority of the different departments regarding new game mechanics, ideas, concepts? Is there a weekly boxing fight between department leaders to decide this, but we backers are missing out on? .... Just kidding, :-D For new backers it would probably be interesting when you describe generally how the usually process goes from concept to release and how the different departments are involved.asked by Doc

So I can answer the first question, priorities. This is a very very difficult question. Generally the leads of each of the teams are aware of what they need their team to do, we meet frequently ,we do weekly goals, we have a master schedule that were trying to drive the long term of things, we're' trying to get all the ideas out of chris's head, we trying to put it all in one place put it all together, very much on the production side that doesn't burden you guys at all, you guys keep making awesome stuff. But then we do have constant priority clashing. Forrest and I have been experiencing this a lot lately because it's the same resources doing multiple different things.

Because we know we all need to get it done and that's when you know if you have two leads that want to both to get something done it kind of clashes that's when you raise it up to production and that's why I like Eric here to help make the decision on what does come first and it's not a boxing match it's actually a steel cage match[Everyone laughs]

You have the top with the ladder, you put tacks all over the groundEKD: I think the perfect example right, let's use something very realistic to now that Forrest and I just talked about. The amazingly wildly talented Mark Mcall, upstairs right.

He can do technical ships and do technical animations for characters.

He's excellent at everything he does and so that means everyone wants him and wants to use him for things, that's a frequent conversations between Forrest and I the design leads, whos' going to use mark for what this week and what's the long term thing so we're constantly battling the, we got the long term vision but we got the short term things we need to achieve, so when events come up and it's already tech that we've been developing and were about to show it off to so we can keep going, we're shifting things around frequently and we're all tense.So we're all trying to get things done and everyone wants to use the same person and so, there's aggressive conversations but it's generally healthy, it's usually for getting the the thing done, we all want to get this thing done and make it awesome, make it look great and we all try to drive for our peace, that's usually how it works, but then at the end of the day the leads or people who are leaders of places or points of contact need to work together, alright I'll give him up to you for this week but this means that will mean this this and this for the schedule and so that kind of comes down to where like you said work with production, look at the long term with all of our studios global, it's a complex little beast.

and there's also the director's role you know and if the leads have a clash on what the priorities are because they both want their own individual disciplines to have priorities and then it gets raised up to the directors who can kind of work things out.

And then ultimately Chris. We present that to Chris and say hey the directors agree with this, the production agrees with this, this is the what the team wants to do, Chris which way should we go? I think he does a great job at kind of seeing this whole somehow, seeing this massive thing and going let's put this there , there and there, it's a big puzzle.

Star Citizen is an experience and it's a very unique one, it's driven by the things that you can do and the places you can do it and so that means that we have art and design and programming all these things really need to add up to the star citizen experience that Chris's vision is for. On a given thing that balance might skew differently because, also at a given time because you know, sometimes it's really easy to get something functional but ugly, sometimes it's very easy to get something pretty but not functional and then we fill in the rest right? and it comes back to what what were talking earlier about context of get as much of the thing so that that informs decisions and informs the thing that you're creating and when the thing exists you can say Yes that is right or no that needs to be a little bit different and for these reasons, that continues to build upon itself into a real thing. It's really important.