CEO & CTOThis is a quick update before we begin releasing new features and publishing blogs about what we’ve been building. I originally hoped to release the larger updates in July, but development uncovered areas where the underlying systems and architecture needed more work. In the past, we might have rushed to meet a publicly announced timeline, but this year we’ve prioritised service stability, which aside from a few certificate renewals and obscure third-party interruptions, has ensured we've maintained 100% uptime for several months in the service itself. Those of you who remember the iGP Manager 26 launch will appreciate how far we've come on that front.
The first in a series of updates should arrive in early September with the new avatar editor, rebuilt from the ground up, including a new unlock system where items are purchased once, kept permanently and can then be used freely. This has required changes to every layer of the system, from the interface and supporting technology to how items are unlocked. We think you’ll be very happy with this update and the wider changes we’re making to Tokens, shifting their use away from performance advantages and towards more enjoyable gameplay, features, experiences, time-saving and convenience. These changes will roll out gradually, beginning with the avatar editor.
More updates should follow relatively quickly and continue throughout Q4, including a new race viewer and simulator updates that are currently in testing. This is a major overhaul focused on usability, making it much easier to manage both cars on a mobile phone, for example. The existing interface dates back to around 2017 and has become increasingly clunky and dated, so this is a long-overdue improvement.
Despite some misleading indications in the game, the safety car is unlikely to be included in the next update. It appeared in the seasonal poll earlier than intended after parts of the unfinished system accidentally became visible. Development is continuing, but it needs more testing and the 2D and 3D visual components in particular require considerably more work before release. We’ll therefore remove it from the next poll and give it the time it needs.
A large part of our recent engineering work has involved rebuilding our architecture and workflows around rapidly advancing technologies. Progress has been uneven: some possibilities emerged sooner than expected, while experiments that were ahead of their time have been put on hold, including new and innovative areas of gameplay. Integrating these tools properly has absorbed significant development time because it requires redesigning processes built for a different era, but the results are already visible, our recent 100% uptime reflects how we’re using technology to improve every aspect of the service. Ultimately, automating builds, maintenance and repetitive work gives our small team more time for gameplay, development and creativity, allowing us to take on bigger projects. I remain excited by that potential and am starting to see real results, even if the journey from promising experiments to genuinely usable output, and the leverage I anticipated a year or two ago, has taken longer than expected.
That’s all I have to say about those projects for now, as our immediate focus is on completing and releasing the substantial work already under way. By Q4, more of the systems we’ve been developing behind the scenes should be operating across the studio, improving how efficiently we build, test and run iGP Manager alongside the player-facing releases. The summer holidays also shifted the schedule further than planned, as I’ve effectively been a single parent for around three weeks, which puts a hold on a lot of work. I’m still working whenever I can and will return properly next week, refreshed and motivated for this next phase, with months of work approaching release.
Thank you for your patience. I’ll post again as individual updates are ready to go live, rather than waiting for another large roundup.