Solved

The race never started

Hi Kev,
As you've been around for so long, you'll know I'm more or less the backbone of iGP. As announced in another thread, I am in the process of moving country and this has severely disrupted everything I usually contribute. The move was not planned, it was forced upon us by unforeseen circumstances, and it has not gone smoothly. After moving country, I'm now trying to move again and have spent nearly all my time searching for properties this week and that will continue for the next few days at least.

What this has really hampered is me keeping you in the loop. I've been getting a lot done behind the scenes when I've been around, but a lot of it has been focused on critical support (for users or the other developers) due to the limited windows of time I get right now.

I'll address some of your concerns head-on.

1) "Will the app be "beta" forever?" For as long as we think it's appropriate. Google kept Gmail in "beta" for 5 years. Particularly if you feel the service is not 100% stable yet, it would be inappropriate to prematurely remove the label.

2) "Can you promise us a more stable game? A stable race viewer etc?" Yes. It's the top priority and I've allocated all available resources to it. Good people have been working on it, and one key individual is joining iGP full-time in late August. I've been arranging all of that while moving, spinning many plates.

3) "Will we ever see the reappearance of some of the better features of the old game such as a weather station Training of staff? A stable race viewer etc?" I'm surprised to see a couple of those mentioned at all, let alone as important points. Clearer weather notifications were on the agenda, but not a return of the weather station. Training of staff is also not a planned feature. Saying a stable race viewer was a feature of the old game is misleading. The old race viewer was actually significantly more unstable, but due to the relative lack of traffic it received by comparison to the current numbers, it appeared stable. The current race viewer is significantly more stable than it ever was at any point in the history of iGP. It's processing a magnitude of hundreds of times more users than the old one every day.

Far from a lack of progress or development, there is just as much activity as ever behind the scenes. There's just a lack of me talking about it. By comparison to most developers, I'm usually very highly available and talkative about these things (as in this post) but my situation has rendered me unable to do this as of late. This will improve significantly after I get my family in to a new home we can settle in. It has also been on my mind to write a blog, as it's overdue. We have lots to talk about that we are working on. But it takes much longer than writing a reply post, like this, where the talking points are handed to me on a plate in order.

Usually, my availability on the forums keeps me in the loop, but I've hardly been able to visit lately for obvious reasons. I had no idea some of these things were affecting the experience as much as you describe, but now I've had a moment to catch up a little in the last evening I'll make sure these things are prioritised. The transfers market should be the easiest one to address, and I expect to have it showing more 5-stars later today.

Revisiting the beta label for a moment, iGP Manager was not labelled as a beta until late March when the app launched, and only the app has the label on it. Obviously, the fuss is more about how it performs, but it hasn't been labelled as a beta for over a year as is being suggested, it has only been there for 4 months and only on the app, which is still very young. Perhaps the web should have the label too, because the app has had a knock-on effect of making the web feel like a beta at times, with the amount of strain it has put on the service. Anyway, the bottom line is we're working on it. :)