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Star Citizen - Chris Roberts E-mail (Sep 25th 2015) on subject "Organizational and Studio changes"
Erillion
Member EpicPosts: 10,329
"Recently, we’ve heard from backers who are worried over rumors that individual CIG studios are closing. This is not the case! In fact, Cloud Imperium Games is continuing to expand as we continue to find talented employees; we had twelve new developers start in September, alone! The root of this confusion seems to be the fact that the reorganization that began when Erin Roberts took over as head of global production is changing the specific requirements of each studio. In the spirit of open development, we are sharing the exact e-mail Chris Roberts sent to the team on the subject of restructuring two weeks ago.
From: Chris Roberts
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 8:12 AM
To: CIG GLOBAL STAFF
Subject: Organizational and Studio changes
Hello everybody,
I wanted to update everyone on some organizational changes we are making to maximize our creative synergy and development abilities.
It’s no secret that having a distributed development structure presents challenges as much as it provides advantages. At the outset of Star Citizen I decided that I wanted to go where the talent was rather than try to make the talent come to where I was. Without this approach we wouldn’t have some of the most talented people in the industry working on star Citizen. There are people in Los Angeles, Austin, Manchester and Frankfurt that are only working on this game because we have offices in these locations. We truly have a WORLD CLASS team.
With every positive there is always a negative, and that negative is the communication challenges that present themselves when people all working together on the same project are separated by large distances and time zones.
At the top level of the company, especially on the development side we’ve been discussing how best to reduce these issues while keeping the positive.
We’ve begun to think about how we can focus development at our various studios so people working on a certain feature or discipline can be concentrated for maximum effectiveness. Audio in the UK is a great example – the sound design and audio implementation in Star Citizen is just amazing (especially for our stage of development) – and this is partly because Lee Banyard, our Audio Director and almost all our audio staff are concentrated in Manchester, allowing them to frequently interact and problem solve in a way you can only do when in the same location. This is why when talking to Zane Bien about the possibility of becoming the global UI Creative Director, part of the discussion was about him leaving the beach and sunshine of Santa Monica to be with David Gill and Karl Jones and the rest of the UI team in Manchester that we are building to handle the global UI needs of the project.
We’ve also been thinking about how to make sure the key creative leaders in the company spend more time together and most importantly allow me to spend quality time with my key development lieutenants as I was feeling spread way too thin creatively – especially when we were in six game development locations with Illfonic and BHVR. When it was just Austin I could spend a lot of time between Austin and LA but as we’ve expanded to more locations and added external development my ability to spend time on the ground at each location has been reduced.
After much deliberation we have decided on the following:
To increase creative and game direction synergy Tony Zurovec will be spending significant time in LA (but still be based in Austin) in order for me and him to work closer together in getting the Persistent Universe in the hands of players.
Sean Tracy will relocate to LA as the Global Content Tech Director, allowing him to have a bigger impact on the whole company and help the LA team.
We’ve also decided to further continue the streamlining of our development groups – We’ve made a decision to focus the US engineering into two teams –
The backend services which is headed by Jason Ely will remain in Austin and will continue to work closely with Live Ops, which will also remain in Austin.
The Space and Persistent Universe game play and systems will be concentrated in Los Angeles, where things like the new item system and vehicle / space systems are being developed. This makes sense as Austin is weak on engineering CryEngine technical knowledge whereas LA is strong, and to really have an effective gameplay team we need one fairly large unit that can interact with each other on a daily basis. Having Stephen Humphries out in LA working closely with Paul Reindell and Mark Abent has really cemented the upside of having the people all working on the same systems being in the same space.
The current PU Art and Animation team will also stay in Austin, as will the Austin ship artists. Mark Skelton will be based in Austin but will split time between Austin and LA as the US Art Director. I really welcome having Mark out in LA regularly as I think it will significantly help the team.
On the design side Pete MacKay will move from Austin to LA to be on the ground with John Pritchett and the rest of the ship balance team to work closely with tuning our ships and weapons. Rob Reininger will remain in Austin to support Cort and prototype Persistent Universe locations.
We will staff up a small QA staff in LA, potentially with some key folks from Austin in order to support the gameplay work and also be collocated with the balance team (which has always been an issue as the designers that balance the space combat and flight aren’t in the same place as the QA teams that give feedback on this). We will also look to increase QA in Frankfurt for core engine and tech testing. QA in Austin will focus on Live release support and testing.
We are going to split Dev Ops (build support, internal distribution of builds) from Live Ops (deployment to the cloud, distribution to the players, maintaining & monitoring the game servers). Dev Ops will move to Frankfurt to be next to the engine team and the group that knows the absolute most about the engine and how best to compile it.
On the Production side Jake will remain in Austin and run Austin
Production, with Jason Hutchins and Mark Hong both moving out to LA to
help bolster the LA production staff – Having Jason in LA will be a
great help as he has lots of development experience and has experience
in getting big complicated online games out the door 
Comments
(continued)
"Global IT will remain in Austin.
John Erskine will continue to run our various online operations, digital publishing and IT from Austin but will also regularly spend time in LA in order to actively create opportunities for our senior executive staff to interact in person regularly (no matter how good Skype is, it’s still not that in person discussion about an idea around the coffee machine)
We are actively hiring in Manchester and Frankfurt to build up the ship, environment, prop and character teams and in all locations to bolster the engineering teams.
Finally we are trying to focus our remaining external development partners on content creation as opposed to engineering , which we want to bring in house as much as possible.
We will have more internal staff than we have now – they will just be distributed differently between our four studios in LA, Austin, Manchester and Frankfurt.
As with all reorganizations there will be some roles that will no longer exist in their current location – we are really trying to reduce the single man outpost syndrome – as well as concentrate feature teams in single locations. In the event relocation doesn’t make sense for the roles that are now redundant we are at the minimum giving the small number of people affected five weeks’ notice as well as two weeks’ severance to allow people to try to land on their feet. In some cases we are allowing for work until the end of the year to give even more runway. This is the not so great part of the reorganization as we will definitely be losing some hardworking and talented people and we haven’t come to this decision lightly but ultimately we felt we owed it to the backers and the game to make sure we were allocating our resources effectively. So for the people in this category I’m sorry and hope the big lead-time helps.
I know for some of you these are some big changes but we wouldn’t be doing them if we truly didn’t believe they would help us get the project out and work closer together as a team. Please feel free to talk to your Studio Director if you have any questions or concerns.
We have an amazing opportunity to build something special. There is nowhere else that we would be given the support, the funding to make the open universe game we are making. No publisher or VC would ever back a game this ambitious on a PC, and probably not even on a console. I see the potential with Global Entity Ids, Entity Streaming, Large World, Local Grid and the Zone System coming on line to really build something that has both incredible fidelity and massive scope. I don’t think our backers are expecting just how cool their first experience of a large world map and multi crew will be. I also don’t think they are prepared for just how amazing Squadron 42 will be and how it’s going to push the envelope for interactive storytelling and action. I’m looking forward to blowing them away in two weeks and then putting the content in their hands and continuing to add and improve until they have a game that no one can compete with.
We will make history with Star Citizen. People still talk about Wing Commander 25 years later. We can go one better with Star Citizen.
It won’t be an easy road. We’re very public and there will always be obstacles trying to block our path, whether they are normal problems that crop up in development or outside agitators that are threatened by a completely crowd funded project building a dream game they wished they had the talent or support to build. Just remember that this is all noise and at the end of the day the game will speak for itself. It always does and that is the best reply to anyone that doubts our ability to deliver something great.
Let’s blow them away at Citizen Con and get Star Citizen and Squadron 42 in people’s hands!
-Chris"
Have fun"This guy is in way over his head and no one is saying stop to him.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
If he could get all the expertise and talent he wanted within one single location, he would have done so.
A lot of development studios use talent/expertise from various locations.
I'm not saying there isn't some ego going on here where they are trying to use this project to setup a whole new full blown studio but it isn't easy filling specialized developer and graphics designer jobs either.
Almost 24 hour development and customer service during regular business hours.
Access to Hollywood screen and voice talent.
Servers worldwide with minimal latency once Persistent Universe goes live.
Have fun
Distributed teams are a common approach to solve, but as mentioned by Chris it creates new challenges in terms of collaboration and communication which his Mgmt team is working through.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No am not trying to start trouble, just need it to be explained to me.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
With 10 mil he would have only made Squadron 42 solo game, most likely with 2/3 of the people in Manchester, UK (--> tax break, lower salaries) and 1/3 in the US (most in Austin, some in LA to keep in touch with his old WC actor buddies "Luke" and "Gimli" to get them for voice acting in SQ42).
If SQ42 would have sold well, he would have enlarged for Persistent Universe based on success of SQ42.
When I say SQ42 in this context, I mean the first of the three planned parts of SQ42 (35ish missions or so).
Have fun
I am not an expert in big budget productions, but is it really necessary and or productive having the Team split in 3 different places so far away to each other?
I understand sometime there is the need to outsource but this is not really it.
If you really want to get the best talent is it not better asking them to relocate?
Surely the poor sods located in rainy Manchester would not mind relocating in sunny Austin.
Paying for relocation and getting work permits is a PITB.
And not everyone wants to work/live in the USofA.
Have fun
When you get to that point moving becomes less of a option. It's easy for a single person to up a relocate most of the time. But when you have a family with 2-4 kids, its not just a simple lets move. ALOT of work has to go into the move at that point. And generally for the pay the move just is not worth it most of the time.
Also, three studios with almost 100 million dollars isn't all that hard to do. Austin, for instance, is cheap as shit for office space, Manchester is not exactly the most expensive area of England to set up shop and LA was necessary for all the name grabbing celebrity voice acting cause they sure as shit ain't flying to Austin to record their material.
Although, there's gotta be 10 bazillion recording studios in LA, so why they couldn't just record it there without opening a studio there is beyond me. I guess CR just couldn't give up his jet-setting hollywood lifestyle and since we have no clue how much he's paying himself, I guess he can afford it.
As much as I like games, even if I had the talent to work on one I don't think I could deal with the volatility of the market.
So it's not uncommon for major game studios to have multiple studios and offices around the globe.
Oh and he's far from being in over his head. And why should we try to stop him? People want to se his games get made. Also, after talking to a very dear friend of mine, CIG isn't solely getting his funding from just crowd funding - he has other investors that are backing him as well(they know a sure fire winner when they see it).
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
you write dozens of posts day in day out bitching about this game but some how you can't READ their own info answering your utterly naive questions? Are you twelve?
"It’s no secret that having a distributed development structure presents challenges as much as it provides advantages. At the outset of Star Citizen I decided that I wanted to go where the talent was rather than try to make the talent come to where I was. Without this approach we wouldn’t have some of the most talented people in the industry working on star Citizen. There are people in Los Angeles, Austin, Manchester and Frankfurt that are only working on this game because we have offices in these locations. We truly have a WORLD CLASS team."
So yes I just and never will get it! I really wish he would of only got 10m I would be playing the game by now.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
We've gone over this before on these forums with you, and you are clearly just trolling now - trying to keep a negative spin on Chris and CIG...it's your whole spiel. If you really want to rag on someone, go rag on DS for Line of Defense. A piece of crap game that he continues to try and sale on Steam that doesn't work - still...a game he has been working on since 2005 and continues to rip people off by keeping it in Early Access on Steam(because he knows as long as it is in EA he doesn't have to offer refunds - want to talk about a real honest to goodness scum bag).
This have been a good conversation
It isn't like it wasn't expected.
There is no game play...oh we saw gameplay...well it's bad gameplay.
It is all the same stuff we saw before...Point out the new stuff... well it all looks bad.
etc
You can't have an honest discussion with people who do that.
even the base game SQ42 alone needed 23 million and the plan was to get the rest from investors if the crowdfunding income stops. BUT IT DID NOT STOP, so please blame me and a million other backers who are making this publisher-suit-free PC-only game happen.
Having lived and worked in both the EU and the US on the business side of multi country organisations getting the people you need is a first priority. And the logistics / cost of taking people to another country to co-locate is huge - and not something everyone wants or can do e.g. kids doing exams in a year. The downside of not co-locating is communication. Having "been there, done that" Chris's letter makes perfect sense.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"