[HTML1]

Any game with a budget of over 44 million dollars is bound to run into at least one or two hiccups during its development. In the case of crowd-funded games like Star Citizen, those hiccups are often analyzed and critiqued a bit more closely than those of games being produced behind the closed doors of AAA studios because of the nature of open development. Creator Chris Roberts and the rest of the team producing the upcoming space-sim have kept an open line of communication with the game's dedicated backers since day one, which has lots of people incredibly excited to get their hands on the game, but often just as many people anxious, even annoyed when delays occur since they have a personal stake in the final product...

Roberts has used his weekly updates on the project to share a number of internal target dates for Star Citizen, including the planned launch date for the Arena Commander dogfighting module. The rolling target was pushed back a few times and left some supporters of the game frustrated with the multiple delays. Roberts refused to launch a broken version of the module that the team was unhappy with, but it seems that the first real gameplay experience is finally ready for players to jump into the action.

The public release of Arena Commander launched this morning as version 0.8. Star Citizen users can download the new content at the official download page or they update their Star Citizen Hangar via the game launcher. The update will patch in all the necessary files to get into the dogfighting action.

[gallery columns="1" ids="227332,227333,227334"]

The module had been delayed last week due to bugs and critical issues that have since been resolved. That said, Roberts wants players to be fully aware that version 0.8 is still the very beginning and that things will likely evolve before the final product.

"Remember: V0.8 is just the beginning. It's the start of a hard push for the development team as we head towards V0.9 and finally V1.0, at which point Arena Commander will be ‘feature complete' with the modes, maps and options promised at PAX... By the time V1.0 drops, we aim for the entire community to have access to the multiplayer game modes!"

To start off, qualifying backers will have access to three ships; the Aurora, the 300i, and the Hornet. Those crafts can be put to use in the Vanduul Swarm and Freeflight modes. Multiplayer options will be limited to a small number of backers at first, but the Battle Royale and Team modes will open up to more testers once lag and sync issues have been resolved.

Now that Arena Commander has launched and Roberts is ready to start sharing his next steps for production, he also wants to address the issue of shared internal target dates. He took notice of the negative reaction backers had to the original missed dates for the dogfighting module, so he wants insight on whether or not fans want to know internal target dates, with the knowledge that those goals are often far from set in stone. It's an interesting dilemma when it comes to crowd-funded games and we look forward to seeing the results of the poll Roberts currently has open to gauge backers' feelings on the topic. It's wonderful that the dates aren't publisher-driven and it's even better that decisions like this and stretch target goals are up to the community.

Would you rather developers share internal target dates to keep consumers informed or keep things hush hush until the product is actually ready, in order to avoid disappointment at delays? Let us know in the comments.

____

Follow Denny on Twitter @The_DFC.

Source: Cloud Imperium