The new iGP Manager is almost here

It has been a very busy time for us since the last blog. We’ve been making great progress on the iGP Manager closed beta, and are eager to get the open beta testing going as soon as possible. The feedback from the testers involved so far has been overwhelmingly positive. We know many of you are excited and looking forward to your chance to play the new game.

Becoming a father

First though, I’d like to take a moment to express my joy at becoming a father! My first child was born recently, a boy, and we’ve named him Thor (that's him, to the right). If you're outside Scandinavia, Thor is actually quite a common name here in Norway, where we’re currently living. I was initially inspired to name him Thor after watching the movie Kon-Tiki, the true story of an expedition across the Pacific Ocean by raft, led by Thor Heyerdahl. The movie is well worth a watch and I hear the book is a great read too. Of course, there is the awesome Marvel Thor as well, which may or may not have played a factor in the naming…

The birth and becoming a dad was an amazing experience that I will never forget. I cried almost as much as the baby when he finally arrived. It’s something you can’t put in to words.

iGP Manager: Open beta news

That said, you’re here for news about the new iGP Manager and wondering when it’s going to arrive, aren’t you? Needless to say the birth set me back a little bit, and we found a lot of improvements during closed beta testing. We’ve been working on those while adding some stuff in preparation for the open beta and eventual live launch.

One project which we decided to bring forward is to migrate the entire service to a better server setup, which we will use for the open beta and live launch. This is not a small task, and you may remember such upgrades from the past, making the stability and latency of the service much better. This time, it has more to do with scaling; ensuring that the service can scale when we get to the app stores in particular. These are essential technical updates which don’t impact gameplay, but which need to be done before we can consider an app launch.

This server migration was originally planned for after the live web launch, but we decided to bring it forward to before open beta testing, so that we can get our teeth in to the new setup and familiarise ourselves with it during testing. All things considered, this means we’ll need to launch the open beta sometime around mid-April. It's a couple of weeks further, but it is a relatively minor delay considering everything involved. I feel comfortable that it will be worth the wait.

By getting all of the technical challenges out of the way now, we’ll be able to focus on new features and content when the game is finished, with less chance of being slowed down by red tape and technical work. That’s something I think everyone will appreciate.