As a software developer, and someone who manages a small team of software developers as part of my job, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the pace of development. Looking at the front page, I see four pretty good size releases in about 3 months. As a point of comparison, modern agile development processes usually have 2-4 week "sprints " from release to release, so Schine looks pretty good as far as update timeline is concerned. My development team targets dot-builds on a 4-6 week timeframe, so there's another favorable data point there, too.
How about the content they deliver each release? In my opinion, the amount of update content delivered is very high for a small team working on an average ~2 week development cycle. A rough count of updates show since June they've squashed ~120-150 reported bugs. If they're anything like me, that doesn't always include deep "plumbing" related bugs that are important to fix but are difficult to report out to laymen with no familiarity with the codebase. It probably also doesn't include bugs that creep into the initial implementation of new features but are zapped before the new feature goes live.
In addition, it looks like there are maybe 6-12 notable features or improvements to discuss per update. Doing a little math, that works out to 4 updates * avg. 9 features/update, so roughly 36 features over 3 months, or roughly 12 features a month based on the past 3 months. Some of those features might be "easier," like new assets, but some of them are more complicated, like creative mode and ship docks, so I'll call it a wash on complexity. So, it looks like maybe a dozen features a month, and closure of 40-50 bugs per month on top of that. If it takes 3 hours to close a bug and verify it, there's 120-150 hours right there (3 man-weeks of effort). Add maybe another 2-4 man weeks for features if you assume it's only a day or two to implement each one. That a lot of throughput for a few full time developers and some volunteers.
Now, on top of the raw time it took to write the code or implement the features/improvements, you need to factor in time for planning for the road map, peer reviews (if they do them), socialization of design/architecture decisions across the team, testing of new features (including developing any unit tests or internal test procedures and regression testing of all the content that's already in the game), the boring aspects of running even a tiny business, web site maintenance, community involvement, etc.
I'm not trying to say that Schine is perfect - I don't know them, and I don't know the innards of their business. But from what I can tell based on the high level of community involvement, their release schedule, my experience in software development, and my time in the game, these people love what they do and do a damn good job of delivering product. If you and I have to be patient with some bugs so they can stay on their development road map and continue to mature this game, I'm OK with that. I'd rather have a buggy alpha and a chance to influence the direction of the game than no product until a beta release.
If you disagree, and think Schine is failing to properly manage their development, that's cool. There are plenty of ways for you to benefit from your foresight. Offer your management or development experience to help get them on the right track; they might just take you up on it. No useful experience? Convince a hotshot friend to put in some time, and fish for a referral bonus. No useful friends? OK then, see if enough people like you believe Schine is screwing up and will cough up some venture capital to buy them out. Starmade is pretty solid and I'm sure you could make a good return on your investment, once a competent development team is at the helm.
Or, you know, you could just vent on the forum that the free alpha game doesn't have enough performance for your liking, and that new content is a waste of everyone's time.
