Since Star Citizen is first of its kind crowd funded project that is breaking new ground in computer game development, and Chris Roberts has asked you to not just build a game but a universe. Do some members of your team get over enthusiastic? How do you keep the artists, writers, and designers from implementing so much detail on ships, stations, planets, or characters that they risk derailing the production schedule? Have you avoided hiring less experienced people because you don't have time to train them how to avoid issues like those described above?asked by AragornBH

I want to address the second part of that first...

That's what producers are for!

Yeah, that's what we're for. If we have to avoid hiring good people that means we're not doing our job. We have definitely not avoided hiring less experienced people. Like, actually have a very high number, for a AAA studio, of people who are a little on the less experienced side but have the talent and the know-how and they just maybe don't have that credit yet and it's kind of their first big break which is really exciting and it also kind of brings – even though you have to rein in on certain things, it also brings a really unique perspective. Whereas, someone who has been in the industry tackling a certain problem for 10 years now, you might get someone else who comes in and maybe they don't have all of the experience to bring to the table but they have a fresh perspective or spin on how to tackle this problem or how to solve this thing in front of you. We have, like I said, a slightly higher number than average of less experienced people but the talent is there and that's kind of what we look for first I think... and we do have a lot of experienced people mixed in. I actually think it's a really exciting mixture of people that we have here.

So, that's largely what producers are for – to keep everybody on track. But, to break down how our organizational hierarchy is, at least within the development side – I'm going to use the design team as an example – We have our design lead Dan Tracy, within the LA office what he does is he helps kind of steer what features we're going to be working on and how to break those down into individual tasks to make it a lot more manageable. So, for example he may task Calix Reneau with writing the design brief on something and he may then give it to Kirk Tome to make that particular... using a ship, he would make it flyable. Matt Sherman may be working on the components of that ship. So, everybody does have their responsibilities on what they're going to be doing but those tasks are then going to be broken down by the lead and what production does is make sure people are staying on those tasks.

Just to chime in, the funny thing I think is we probably have that problem... well... problem... We probably see that coming from Chris Roberts most because he has so many ideas in his head and such a vision for this world that we'll see him bringing up these awesome ideas and we'll say, "Oh, that's so great! This is what it's going to mean..." And then we get to make an educated decision about how soon and how we want to implement something.

But on top of that, I mean... when you have a room full of very creative people, they want to work on everything at once. So, you may have one designer who is working on one specific feature – once he is done with that design brief he may be completely filled with creativity at this point and be like, 'I just want to starting working on this and then I'll work on this,' which starts to deviate away from the main goal of whatever fix version or patch we're trying to work towards. So, it's up to the design lead and the producers to say, 'You still need to work towards this direction. Once we're done with that, maybe we can actually squeeze that little bit of creativity in.' So, they are creative people but it's our job to keep them on track.

It's an art and a science working with leads to make sure people get an appropriate amount of time – not too little and not too much.

Yup. Because if you don't let them spend some time on it, they get a little burnt out. So, you do want to make sure they're getting – I don't wanna say rewarded, it's not like a doggie treat or something – but we do want to make sure that they have the ability to exercise that creativity while still maintaining a goal and perspective on where we're trying to get in the game.