Cliffs of Dover Is The Best. But Some Of You Don't Appreciate It.

[=69.GIAP=STENKA]

This was a development management problem and it is now a marketing management problem.

If you put put a development team in a closed environment without regular product contact with real users for 6 years and constantly slippable deadlines you are asking for trouble.

They will fiddle with technicaly and philosphicaly intersesting stuff and will not even notice real world requirements.

Every Sim developper will as a professional always have the latest hot PC setup, so will not notice that performance is an issue. He will build a quirky user interface which he always tests in the same way and think it's obvious to anyone that it should work that way, users are so stupid. A complete manual, documentation and content are not interesting, after six years immersed in the product he thinks humans are born with a head full of such inate knowledge or can make it up themselves.

Note carefully, IL2 was not developed this way. If I remember right they bought out a limited prototype which was first released to the public as a demo way before the product. From that point it had constant user feedback which refined it and kept it on-track.

OK so the problem exists, you can't fix the past, what's happening now?

Well they could have put in a development manager to spend another 12 months trying to sort it out.... and probably money would run out...

The other choice is to stick it on the street, let user feedback focus the development team on real world issues and well it will sink or swim.

As far as I'm concerned it was a good decision. Another 12 months in the closed room with a manager weilding a baseball bat and it might have been all lost.

What you will now see is the development team reacting like a scalded cat and delivering patches

The current marketing problem is a bit more regretful. It would have been more honest if they had offered the chance for customers to buy a copy so they could participate in product testing. I think a lot of us would have bought in to that - I would have.

However, you don't get rich in marketing by scrupulous honesty, so I can understand the decision.

Now what are we going to do about it?

1/ Say there is no problem
2/ Have a good rant
3/ Throw the toys out of the pram
4/ Get testing and log nice clear bug reports
5/ Get back to real life and start complaining that I have to press shift F1 to see 109 gunsight and while I'm on the subject it dives slower than a spitfire and..
6/ Have a go at Stenka cos what he's said is immoral
7/ Open a beer and chill out

Now all together now, in chorus let's.....