Given that Star Citizen requires near constant iterations and updates to a playable build baneky Arena commander and soon Star marine, does this help or hinder the progress of the overall project? If you didn't have to plan for these playable branches, would production of the game be further along, or is it just another layer in the game development process that only requires minimum attention and resources.asked by Booyakashasta

It's for efficiency purposes. Because developing them at the same time keeps them all unified as we move forward. So does this help or hinder the overall project? Probably a little bit of both. I know the Arena Commander guys would rather just solely focus on Arena Commander and the Star Marine guys would love to just solely focus on Star Marine – focusing on just that particular aspect of development – but given that our global office has to keep their eye on the ball with everything that everyone is doing, it does both help and hinder the project.

Yeah this one is a really great question because there are a lot of companies that are starting to try and do this. You have essentially a live game that you are supporting while you are creating a game at the same time. A lot of companies have done this by separating the development teams and having a live team versus the people who are creating it...

You are doing production and preproduction at the same time.

Exactly exactly. Not necessarily the case for us. I don't know if it hinders because there are a lot of things that mesh well. We benefit a lot from things that have come up during the live build that we can then put into what we are trying to develop at the same time and vice versa. And because we are working on it at the same time we are more agile with moving that stuff around. Maybe a little bit of both but I definitely think it definitely helps a little bit more to have that live feedback and to get people playing it and when people play our game it gets us excited. It makes us want to make more.

It also doesn't help that we are kind of spearheading this. This is a brand new kind of project and we are paving the way. I wouldn't say we are learning as we go but we are breaking a lot of new ground here so there is going to be learning experiences as we go.