Discovery Gaming Community

All members of DGC,

After two and a quarter years as the Discovery Gaming Community Development Team's Lead Developer, I hereby announce that I am beginning my retirement process, and am stepping down. The other developers are currently working on deciding who the next lead dev will be, if there will even be one. That situation is being carefully and fairly managed, and other than that, I shall refrain from comment on what's going on there.

My process of "stepping down" is more literal than figurative. In order to ease the transition period, I will remain on staff as the Assistant Lead Developer (alongside ) for the next three months as a means to instruct and facilitate the new lead developer, as necessary. After May 21st (22nd in some time zones), I will resign from that position as well. Until the next Lead Developer has been decided, I will effectively be standing in for that role, but nominally I will not, and functionally I will be a "lame duck". Once that role is filled, I will be his or her deputy, or in faction terms, SiC.

Separately , who is also departing the team, is working with me to train existing junior devs and , along with others, to take our place as the game's storyline developers. The changeover in staff for this department, or so I intend, is meant to maintain the level of communication and cooperation that has been built over the years with this community's faction leaders and representatives. As soon as a new Story Department Head has been selected and is ready, I will step down to either a senior or junior level position within that group, whichever is needed by the new head at the time.

As we are are all at will volunteers on the DGC staff, I will remain on the moderation team and as a senior/junior story dev as long as 1) my services are needed by management and 2) I feel content to work there. For a long time, I've been looking forward to spending more time as an active member of the factions I am / was once in ... I feel that I can stick around, as desired, in these limited capacities and still accomplish my goal of playing more. I have had this in mind for roughly a year, and it has taken some preparation; more of that is still to come. I also apologize if I have been slow to respond to people on the forums and Skype lately.

There may be changes under new management. This could be in program methodology (for example, in 2015 I revamped the team's waterfall update process into iterative/overlapping waterfall with progressive elaboration ... maybe agile is to come next?), or in how the community is engaged, or in how the team is structured here on out. Regardless, it is my recommendation that you work with whoever takes my place to ensure a better future for the mod and for the community.

tl;dr - I'm (kind of) old, I'm (kind of) leaving; there exists plenty of capable people here to continue development on Discovery without me, and just to be sure I'm doing my best to transition things properly. I'm not leaving the community, and I'm not ignoring my responsibilities.

I don't much like long speeches, yet as I kept editing this it kept getting longer, so I'll stop now.

It has sincerely been a pleasure helping and working for you all. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity, the experience, and the good times.

Regards,
Teerin

P.S. In 's words, "Dev announcements should remain announcements, not debatable issues."; as with the thread announcing the beginning of my time as lead dev, this thread will be locked for comment. If you feel the desire to discuss this amongst yourselves on the forums, please constructively conduct it elsewhere, within a relevant subforum.