Eric took over (he was previously only in charge of F42) back when Alex Mayberry left - a year ago. Nothing's changed because even he can't change the Status Quo. And more than one source has stated that he is no better than Chris in terms of personalities, work ethics etc. Heck, I know quite a few people he worked with over the years. Not to say he is the same as Chris. No, it's that he is not that different; other than he has shipped games over the years and worked in a team that didn't have to abide by his every word, like they have to do with Chris. When it comes to gamedev, I will take Erin over Chris any day. As they say, the necessary of two evils.
Well game development is a difficult business. Not everything goes as planned or according to schedule. There are delays and some game mechanics that looked good on paper turn out as difficult to implement, problematic during the game or simply not fun.
There is no studio on earth that does not need to face such challenges during a project.
Chris and Erin Roberts had a bigger challenge to master as not just create a game.
1. They set a pretty ambiguous target that increased in size and scope over time as more funding could be raise as originally planned. The change was communicated with the backers and a majority decided to go with this and supported it back in 2013/2014
2. With the Kickstarter campaign there were no CIG as we know it today. No 330 people were working on the game and its assets on 4 different studios. They needed to build up this environment that took at least 2013 and part of 2014. Hiring good talented people and create the process in how everything need to work together is not as easily done as said. Everyone who claims otherwise is either a liar or have absolutely no clue and/or experience in project management of this scope.
3. The Cryengine3 that was chosen for the game needed updates in several areas like map size (64bit positioning), flight model, physics (different grids that are stacked into each other like 0g space include several space ships with own gravity), net code and others.
Yes there was a possibility just to create an own engine but rather use an existing once but both ways have advantages and disadvantages. From the development time I would not count that creating an own engine rather than modified an existent one would give you a better start when it comes to the Star citizen project. Retrospective CIG had a lot of luck to get the people hired who were actually creating the engine to work on it again to make the needed modifications. So this definitely benefitted the project. However from the marketing and project perspective I agree with the decision to use an existing engine rather creating an own one. It allowed CIG to show off the game progress to its backer much earlier as can be clearly seen with the Hangar module release in 2013.
Of course there is more to it but see the projects achievements in the past 4 Years of development and how this work now pays of is surely something that can be called remarkable. Of course you may claim that the project was schedule for a 2014 release as stated on Kickstarter but 1. This was an estimate and 2. Only for the extreme limited scope that has – as already stated – changed. Modern AAA titles are several years in development. New titles where assets, lore and other is not already present from a game that was released before (game succession like it is seen in Fifa or the GTA series) tend to need more time and without the needed environment (no existing development studio) there is no say how much time it would take to create a game like Star Citizen. I am pretty surprised that they could do this much progress in such a short time and I guess we will see several star systems completed in the next year and a potential release of the game in mid/late 2018 with all the needed game functions and mechanics (like mining, salvage etc.) this does not mean that the development will end as Star Citizen is an MMO and is planned to be expanded in future like CCP does it with EVE online.
TL
R – I do not agree with Mr. Smarts opinion that CR and ER are no good managers. In fact they have done a remarkable and great job so far.
