Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Amaron]

Why does the trailer feature a ship with a landing strip? They're in space...

Because it looks cooler that way.

[lamaros]

Does it? I'd rather a game about space be imaginative.

[Mrbloodworth]

[apocrypha]

Seriously what?  We can't talk about it even if we think it's going to fail?

Talk about it all you want, I'm just surprised that nobody had been usefully cynical yet.

And yes guys, I know who Chris Roberts is and what games he's made. And what films he's made, and all the ones he's written & directed have been utterly, utterly terrible. He only produced Outlander, but that was utterly, utterly terrible too IMO. Lucky Number Slevin and Lord of War were much better, I liked them, but this is all irrelevant really :p

I'll pop back in 5 years and see how this is going, but I strongly suspect anyone ponying up for this particular Kickstarter is contributing to a unicorn hunt.

[Lantyssa]

That's okay.  Much like Wasteland 2 and MWO, this is a guy who inspired my childhood dreams and giving me hope for a product I've wanted for decades.  I'm okay giving him a bit of cash in thanks.  If I actually get the game he wants to make out of this?  I win.  Everything.

[Miasma]

Game's website has been down all morning.

I've played and enjoyed some of these games but the guy sure does like to plaster his name on everything.  So my question is this - is he a megalomaniac douchebag or not?

[Mrbloodworth]

I think every game he has made has had such a clear, concise vision, no ones name could be on it.

He also comes from a time when games were made by one or two people. Games were more like Novels in how they were packaged back then.

Example:

[Lucas]

Yeah well, I always considered him and Garriott quite similar :) (from an outsider perspective, of course) . Now that I think about it, Origin at the beginning of the '90 had Spector, Garriott and Roberts   ; plus, Looking Glass with a similar relationship to the Black Isle/Bioware of a few years later...Good times.

[Mrbloodworth]

When I said I missed old school difficulty to gaming you probably didn’t think that I would make the pledge process more difficult than fighting the toughest boss monster in Demon’s Souls!

Well neither did I!

Wednesday morning we set out to prove that PC gaming and Space Sims are not dead… and prove it, we did!

We're absolutely floored by the attention and humbled by your comments. We hoped everyone would be excited about the big idea behind Star Citizen and Squadron 42 -- but we had no expectation about the kind of praise and interest we received yesterday.

The downside of all this attention was that the huge number of people from all around the world trying to learn about Star Citizen and make their pledge, crashed our custom crowd funding page and also took down the core community site.

Until then, we were on track to break crowd funding records. Now, thirty hours later, we're only just getting the core site back online. The proper crowd funding page is still unfortunately down, but we have a backup site that, while not having the full range of features we intended, can take people’s pledges. With this site we have to update the data manually as there is no way to easily collect the crowd funding statistics on a live basis, which is why you haven’t seen a counter on the backup site. We are working very hard to get the main crowd funding plug in to play nice with the rest of the site, so we can deliver the seamless experience we envisioned when opting to have the crowd funding integrated into the main community site. Don’t worry, no one has lost their golden ticket, and we will ensure that everyone who makes a pledge on the backup site is connected to their community account. Please be patient while we organize this process.

We didn't just set out to raise money to build a game; we set out to build a community. The intention was never to shut off the forums, disable the Golden Tickets or stop the flow of information after the launch; anything but. We hope you'll bear with us as we get the community back online. The features you've enjoyed for the past month will continue -- the Comm-Link, RSI Museum and Time Capsule -- along with much more information about Star Citizen and chances to interact with its development team. As we move forward in this endeavor, you are our strongest asset; a vanguard of dedicated fans who will help us build and promote this game.

If you're one of the lucky few warriors that snuck past the Java trolls and WordPress goblins to access the pledge site yesterday, thank you so much for your dedication.

If not, we promise we’ve beaten back these evil interlopers and ask you to pledge and spread the word to make this new universe possible. We are listening to you on the forums, are committed to giving you daily updates and will be rolling out some exciting new features in the coming days that hopefully make up for our initial snafu.

We lost the opportunity to break the first day record, but the race isn’t over yet! We currently stand at $455, 590 raised from 4,564 pledges which is pretty impressive considering the outage we’ve had. Seems everyone wants the RSI Constellation and physical goodies!

But we need get this up. Space Sims trumped RPGs in the old days, let’s get a little of that inter-genre friendly rivalry back!

If you haven’t made your pledge yet, please do as I would hate for the technical problems to have derailed our initial momentum. We still have a ways to go but I have no doubt with your support we will get there. This is our chance to tell the world: PC gaming and space sims are BACK!

Chris Roberts
Cloud Imperium Games

Half a mill in two days.

[Shaje]

The idea of playing something like this with the occulus rift has me sold. Yea, its way too ambitious and just can't deliver everything promised. Don't care. It's vision is what I have wanted since watching star wars for the very first time.

[Venkman]

Why does the trailer feature a ship with a landing strip? They're in space...

Hey, the Galactica had them, all of the shuttle-equipped Starships had them, and most of the latter ISDs did. Not having them in a space game would be more wierd than the more realistic tracker-beam and/or docking cones we'll probably end up going with in a few hundred years

Having said that, thing I always hated in space sims was landing. Always screw them up.

[Ratman_tf]

Why does the trailer feature a ship with a landing strip? They're in space...

The space fighters had jet intakes too. 

Lotta callouts to the orginal Wing Commander in that video. Vega sector, the icons on the alien ships. I hope they have talking cat people, because the Kilrathi were the best WC baddies.

[Yegolev]

tracker-beam

[Venkman]

LOL. Shit, as much as a geek as I am, I'd think I'd catch that.

I could go full on nerd defensive though and claim I meant some type of object tracking technology for ships to properly target shuttles for coordinated landing.

[Mrbloodworth]

Goal: $2,000,000
Raised: $688,128
Space Sim Fans: 7,164
Crowdfunding ends in 26 days

[Venkman]

Not bad, but I still don't know what he thinks he can do with $2mm. Maybe finish a fully functioning playable slice to shop around for some real funding?

[Goumindong]

Why does the trailer feature a ship with a landing strip? They're in space...

Yea and why are there fighters! Why aren't ships just lobbing massive chunks of metal at each other using currently existing technology to determine the location and trajectory of ships hundreds of thousands of kilometers away?

[5150]

Do we know what the golden tickets do yet?

[Amaron]

Goal: $2,000,000
Raised: $688,128
Space Sim Fans: 7,164
Crowdfunding ends in 26 days

I feel like he would of gotten a million right away on kickstarter.

[Mrbloodworth]

Not bad, but I still don't know what he thinks he can do with $2mm. Maybe finish a fully functioning playable slice to shop around for some real funding?

AFAIK, all hes looking for is 2 mil, + the numbers of supporters to show some inverters he already has on the hook. So, its really just an interest gauge. I think I read somewhere the budget is something like 20 million.

[kaid]

SWG Space Combat was quite awesome.  It's just they didn't have it at launch.

Though I'd still love a new Privateer.  (Military life isn't for me. ;)

I think SWG would have been a wow like hit if it had their space combat stuff in there from day one. It was a great addition but by the time they added it the people had already started the exodus.

[Mrbloodworth]

Various Dev quotes from the forums in response to threads:

Star Citizen – Forgettable Name – Plz change it!

Ben Lesnick:

“Interesting thread, guys! We’re watching all of this closely, of course. It mirrors the development process pretty closely… Chris was debating the name up until the very last minute possible (about a week before the announcement, when he had to start his press tour with a visit to PC Gamer… and needed a name.) Lots of late night e-mail conversations trying to pick something.

For my part, Star Citizen has grown on me an awful lot and I’m rather proud of it now. I think it’s the sort of name you’re going to appreciate a lot more once you get into the world of the game, where citizenship (and the question thereof – pirates!) and the sheer number of possible careers for players are going to be a big part of the game. Heck, it makes a lot more sense than ‘Strike Commander,’ a game that was rarely about commanding strikes…

… all of that said, I AM very amused by Joystiq’s headline about our crowd funding efforts: “Chris Roberts’ new space sim Star Citizen has already raised over $455,590 despite being called Star Citizen”

———————————————————————————————–

Difference between ‘Member’ and ‘Subscriber’?

Ben Lesnick:

“The way it should work is that subscribers are users who haven’t posted yet while members are those who have.”

———————————————————————————————–

Anyone get anything from a Support or a Dev?

VG:

“All pledges, regardless of where they were placed, will be recorded and matched to your ID. I know we might seem silent, but we are very active behind the scenes, believe me”

———————————————————————————————–

General pledging FAQs

Ben Lesnick:

“I’m working through all the support emails right now and am going to catch up on the forum posts.”

“The plan is to let you increase your pledge after the 30 days… but we may have different packages available at that time! (We’re running low on some already…)”

VG:

“Obviously, because the site went down and the backup site has been collecting pledges since Wednesday, we have a lot of data to merge, but rest assured that regardless of what email you used to register or purchase, and/or whether or not your account here works properly, your pledge will be properly credited to your account.”

———————————————————————————————–

Perma death or not

Ben Lesnick:

“The short answer is that we just don’t know yet. It’s too early to balance the game exactly.

I know Chris is very keen on the idea that death is an actual punishment; that there has to be some impact for losing your life beyond just respawning somewhere else. Whether that’s some downgrade in equipment or a loss of credits or something else is totally up in the air right now. (My guess is that your base ship is safe… wouldn’t be fair to sell you one via pledges if you could immediately lose it!)

I did watch him talking about optional insurance during one of his press interviews the other day, which is one way to do it. That would play into the whole you-take-your-own-risks/control-your-own-destiny aspect.”

 

Christopher Roberts:

“Love this thread!

I promise I will take the time to answer this in a comm-link in the near future.

My concept for the dilemma  of modern day instant re-spawn, no penalty vs. old school lose everything start at the beginning will hopefully cater to most of the view points here. Both sides of the argument are valid and I want to strike a balance. I will promise you it wont be like a modern day shooter with zero penalty but it wont be so harsh as you lose everything (well in most cases!). Your ship is a large part of who you are in this universe so there will be multiple options to make sure you don’t have to start from the beginning if you get unlucky. But in all cases it will definitely be an inconvenience if you get blasted (kind of like a car accident is even if you have insurance)!”

———————————————————————————————–

General information about ships

RSI Facebook:

“We’ll release more information on the ships soon! If you think of it like Privateer, the Aurora is the Orion, the 300i is the Galaxy and the Constellation is the Centurion…”

““The Constellation is the top of the line fighter; think the Centurion in Privateer. The big carrier is a “Bengal class” and we aren’t selling those… you’ll have to earn one in the game.  You will always have your preorder ship — no way to lose it permanently. You can also buy other ships and upgrade your starter as the game progresses.”

“…ships can be changed in the game later. You’re not locked in to one, you’re just able to start with a special one if you pledge more money. Think of starting Privateer with a Centurion instead of a Tarsus!”

———————————————————————————————–

General information about landing on planets : cut-scenes or seamless?

RSI Facebook:

“We’re looking at both options for planets. I know we’d LOVE to include atmospheric flight, but it’s a money/time issue… so I can’t promise it just yet! Thanks for your support!”

“Everything will be bigger than Freelancer! You will certainly land on planets, visit bases, etc.”

———————————————————————————————–

General information about Localization

RSI Facebook:

“ There will be localizations. Merci and Danke Schon. Thanks”

———————————————————————————————–

What are the specs going to be?

RSI Facebook:

“Too soon to know! But we’ll try and get you a rough idea in the next week.”

———————————————————————————————–

General physical goods information

RSI Facebook:

“The citizen cards are physical items that replicate something you’ll have in the game – sort of your in-game identity card.”

———————————————————————————————–

General modding information

RSI Facebook:

“Hello! Yes, the idea is that there is both a living central server that everyone can connect to AND the option for Freelancer style player-run worlds where modding/experimentation/etc. are all encouraged. We’d also like to work with the mod communities to integrate the best of the best of what they come up with on their servers into the main world.”

———————————————————————————————–

Question about Physics

Christopher Roberts:

“First post on the forums! I finally have a few spare minutes.

As someone that was taking Physics at Manchester University before I dropped out to make games full time I can assure everyone that the physics model is COMPLETELY accurate and its a full rigid body simulation. I know because I wrote the code.

Maybe I should have done a better job in the demo, but if you are flying at speed and you set your desired velocity to zero you WILL see the top front thrusters articulating and firing to slow your velocity. If you watch my demo you will notice there is some momentum with the Hornet when I slow down close to the bridge. It may not have been apparent on the screen, but I can assure the Hornet does not stop on a dime. if you load it up with more mass (like extra weapons) you feel the effect of this.

There is no drag modeled – everything is done as it would be in space.

Additionally there is actually counter thrust being applied inside the physics and if you had your hands on the controller you would feel it. If you look closely you will see the inertia of this – the ship doesn’t stop rolling or pitching on a dime. There is however a very good reason why you don’t actually see the thrusters fire entirely accurately.

The problem with visually depicting the proper thrust is that it would actually look pretty horrible (trust me this is how I first did it, and is still pretty easy to switch back to as I’m actually doing some extra work to make the visuals looks nicer).

The reason is because there is no drag in space, so even a micro amount of thrust starts the Hornet (or any spaceship) rotating until you apply counter thrust. So what is really happening is that the flight control system is always applying micro thrust and counter thrust to achieve the pilot’s inputs. This results in the thrusters flickering off oand on in micro amounts and you actually not getting a good feel of the general application of thrust. I think you know I like things to look cool (come on, we all know you probably wouldnt be engaging in space dogfights at WW2 speeds, but its so much more fun than what the reality would probably be), so what happens is that the system is still modeled accurately, but I use the angular /linear velocity delta to drive the visual represntation of thrust. Here’s my code comment

//Note the thrustGoal is actually the linear velocity delta (desired vel – current vel of
//the vehicle & rotational vel rather than the actual linear & angular acceleration / thrust.
//This is because, while inaccurate its cooler to see more constant thrust that gives
//you a visual clue as to what correctional movement / velocity vectors the vehicle is using.
//If we just used the acceleration as opposed to the desired velocity correction, the thruster flames
//would flicker on and off – especially in the Wing Commander use case of Space, where
//there is no atmosphere to provide drag.
//Of course if you pass the actual accelerations to SetThrustGoal, then you’ll get an accurate
//visual representation of what a thruster would really do

I hope that clears up any confusion!

I will admit that the ship doesn’t need to have wings or fans on the front, but the idea behind that is for possible atmospheric flight (this is not a promise of planetary action for the early build but allows for expansions in this direction), and as a RAM scoop. Plus it just looks / feels cool.”

———————————————————————————————–

Cheaters/botters be gone

Ben Lesnick:

“Interesting question, and it’s something we’re going to be thinking a LOT about in the next two years. My gut tells me that the first big anti-cheating factor in our game is the fact that it’s skill-based rather than click-based. If you want to win a space battle in Star Citizen you damn well have to handle a joystick… and as I think pretty much every air and space combat game ever has proven, you can’t be an AI and do that well.”

“I’d be a damn liar if I told you we were going to make sure it never happened ever. The fact is, there’s a segment of the audience that’s GOING to try to exploit the system and that IS going to figure out how to turn our game against us. It’s just a 100% certainty. So what I will promise is that we’re going to be a damn sight more reactive to this stuff than others have been in the past. Star Citizen is being designed so that we can update it quickly rather than rebalancing with big patches every six months. What’s more, we’re building the game WE want to play… and if someone has figured out how to mess it up, you can believe me we’re going right in and closing that loophole as fast as we can.”

———————————————————————————————–

[Venkman]

This I will donate to.

I think SWG would have been a wow like hit if it had their space combat stuff in there from day one. It was a great addition but by the time they added it the people had already started the exodus.

Muuuusstt resist!

Eh. Can't. Space was too connected to the janky ground game to have kept the early folks from leaving.

[Stormwaltz]

Am I the only person who thinks Star Citizen is a great name for a "Privateer Online" style game?

[Mrbloodworth]

To say we’ve had a lot of questions in the past five days would be an understatement. We’re hard at work on an official RSI FAQ to supplement the great work being done by users at the forums. It will have its own place at the website soon, but we wanted to go ahead and share the work-in-progress here since many of you have questions you need answered now! Please post additional questions in the comments and we will do our best to keep this updated.

My community account is not showing my pledge!

We are currently working to sync our pledge database and our community database. Your pledge will show correctly soon and we will send out a message when this process is complete. If you pledged from a different e-mail than your RSI account, we will contact you after the database sync to incorporate your pledge manually.

Is my Golden Ticket gone?

No! We have a record of your Golden Ticket and it will be returned to your account in the near future. We won’t forget our earliest fans!

Is Star Citizen an MMO?

No! Star Citizen will take the best of all possible worlds, ranging from a permanent, persistent world similar to those found in MMOs to an offline, single player campaign like those found in the Wing Commander series. The game will include the option for private servers, like Freelancer, and will offer plenty of opportunities for players who are interested in modding the content. Unlike many games, none of these aspects is an afterthought: they all combine to form the core of the Star Citizen experience.

What are the “Citizen Cards”?

Citizen Cards are physical props to prove that you have supported Star Citizen and will be one of the first pilots in space when the testing process starts. They will be wallet sized cards that you can carry with you anywhere you go. Citizen cards will also appear in the game itself, showing your character’s social standing, credit account and so on. We’re hoping to make them available to backers by Christmas 2012, so you can gift the game to friends and have something to show for it!

Can you tell me about the different ships?

We’re working on concept art right now that will show you the different levels of ships! For now, imagine the sort of ship advancement you encounered in Privateer or Freelancer, with the Aurora being the basic ship and others being improved or more specialized craft. The top-of-the-line ship in our pledge campaign is the RSI Constellation, which is a multi-person craft that includes a turret and a smaller fighter that can be manned by your friends!

How will modding work?

Players will be given full control of their game! When operating private servers, players will be able and encouraged to mod the game. It doesn’t stop there, though: we hope to institute a ‘mod approval’ process that will allow the best of the best player created ships and other additions to be integrated into the central persistent world as well.

Can I upgrade to a bigger ship?

Yes! You will always have your ‘pledge’ ship, but you can purchase and fly others to your heart’s content in the finished game. Star Citizen will feature plenty of other ships and we expect players will want to earn credits and figure out which suits their particular style of play best. You can also upgrade to a bigger ship during the crowdfunding phase by pledging additional money.

What platforms will Star Citizen be available on?

Star Citizen is a PC game through and through and could never be played on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or WiiU. We currently plan to support Windows and are examining our options regarding possible Linux and Macintosh releases. The Cloud Imperium team includes many Linux and Macintosh fans!

How can I work for Cloud Imperium Games?

Please e-mail hr@cloudimperiumgames.com with your information.

Will Star Citizen only be in English?

No, we plan to support many languages. A huge percentage of space sim and PC gaming fans come from Europe and especially Germany, and we want to make sure Star Citizen is accessible to everyone. The game will initially be localized to French, German and Spanish with plans to handle other languages afterwards.

Can you explain the stretch goals?

The purpose of the higher stretch goals is to ensure that the game-as-described is finished in the two year time period. We intend to build the game that Chris Roberts described at GDC Online regardless, but without additional funding we are going to have to do it one piece at a time, starting with Squadron 42, rather than as a single larger production. With more funding we can include more ships, systems, unique locations, animations and cinematic sequences.

Why Direct And No Publisher?

Publishers are useful in the old physical distribution world, but the Internet is the great equalizer. Notch didn’t need a publisher to reach 20-million Minecraft fans. Riot games didn’t need a publisher to reach 30-million League of Legends players, and Wargaming.net didn’t need a publisher to reach 20-million World of Tanks gamers. If we were building a big “AAA” console game it would be crazy to try without a publisher. But we want to build a PC game and publishers increase costs because of their need to recoup their sizable overhead cost. We want to make sure all the money raised goes directly to the development of the game. So we’re throwing ourselves on the mercy of the PC gamers out there that share our vision and passion for the platform and the space combat genre to raise money outside of the “cartel” of traditional publishers. The game will cost less, be more creatively pure, and, most importantly, be built for the real “core” audience – not some corporate suit worried about including all the casual gamers.

Is Star Citizen “free to play”? A subscription game?

To play Star Citizen you need only to buy the initial game. There will never be a monthly charge for usage. Some in-game items may be available as microtransactions, but we will NEVER sell anything that can’t be acquired through honest (and fun!) gameplay.

What will the gameplay be like?

Star Citizen will feature gameplay similar to the original Wing Commander and Privateer, with a more realistic physics system. This means that it is NOT a ‘click to kill’ interface like most modern MMOs; your success in combat is going to depend as much on your skill with a space fighter as it will with your ship upgrades and your pocket book.

Why not Kickstarter?

We love Kickstarter. We’ve backed projects on their site, and believe everyone in the development community owes a debt to Kickstarter for putting crowd funding on the map, and making it legitimate. But for us the ultimate goal of crowd funding is about connecting the “crowd” directly with the creators with as little friction as possible. By building a crowd funding component directly into our site we can insure everyone who wants to back the game can – we provide multiple payment options to make sure that wherever in the world you are there is an option that can work for you. It means you just have one destination to support the project, read updates, and most importantly participate with other members of the community! All on a site that’s designed around the game universe being created, providing the least friction possible. Kickstarter, as great as it is, can’t deliver this experience, which is why we’ve decided to go it alone.

Can you estimate the system requirements for Star Citizen?

There will be a lot of optimization in the next 24-months, plus the usual fast pace of technology, so it is hard to say absolutely. At the moment you will be able to play it on a 4GB dual core PC with a GTX 460 or greater, but not with full fidelity. If you’re running an i7 2500, 2600, 2700 or better with a GTX 670 or greater you will get the full experience and we will only scale up from there. You will need a dedicated GPU. Since the game is built on CryEngine, their system requirements will stay roughly the same as ours.

Link

[Mrbloodworth]

Now on kickstarter. Rather open video to go with it.

Star Citizen adds Kickstarter!

[Trippy]

Am I the only person who thinks Star Citizen is a great name for a "Privateer Online" style game?

Possibly. Being a citizen of a single star doesn't seem all that exciting to me (i.e. we Earthlings right now are "star citizens"). "Stellar Citizen" would be better, IMO.

[Miasma]

Now on kickstarter. Rather open video to go with it.

Star Citizen adds Kickstarter!

So they built a huge, redundant, unnecessary system to collect donations that crashed on them their first day when there was already a perfectly viable solution available, then they changed their minds and are now using it in addition to their own?

That bodes well for the success of the actual project.

Also, anything that you are this excited about is doomed to fail.  I don't know why, you just seem attracted to things that don't work.  You are like a litmus test for disaster.

[Furiously]

words

You are like a litmus test for disaster.

OMG..... You might be right. Please go out and support Romney. You have an amazing superpower... USE IT WELL!

[Furiously]

Also do they have pictures of the ships for the various levels anywhere?

[UnSub]

There's a term to made up for manipulating Kickstarter as a promotions tool, since, "Game X appears on Kickstarter!" is easy copy for blogs to write. Which you want so that more people pour money into the Kickstarter.

I didn't look - if Star Citizen fails to hit its target on their own site, are they refunding the money or keeping it?

[5150]

There's a term to made up for manipulating Kickstarter as a promotions tool, since, "Game X appears on Kickstarter!" is easy copy for blogs to write. Which you want so that more people pour money into the Kickstarter.

I didn't look - if Star Citizen fails to hit its target on their own site, are they refunding the money or keeping it?

Refunding it minus a transaction fee (or something) assuming you ticked the 'yes refund me' box when you pledged

[Lantyssa]

They're past half-way to their original goal on their own site, and looking to break the Kickstarter goal in a few days.  I doubt refunds will be an issue.

[Mrbloodworth]

Exclusive Interview: Star Citizen's Chris Roberts - Mittani

Yesterday afternoon, Chris Roberts (of Wing Commander, Freelancer and Privateer fame) was down to visit another studio to share ‘war stories’ regarding CryEngine 2. On his way back home, he decided to give me a ring and talk a bit about Star Citizen, Eve Online, and the future of space sims while braving the dangerous I-405.

Star Citizen is a newly announced space simulator game with ambitious, if not outright grandiose, goals. Featuring a full single player campaign (with coop mode possible), multiplayer private space combat servers, an entirely moddable interface as well as a public, persistent online universe, Star Citizen seems to promise something for everyone even vaguely interested in playing internet spaceships. Of course, with any ambitious plan there are always doubters, naysayers and (dare we say it) even haters - but Chris Roberts is unfazed by these facts of life. His enthusiasm and belief in the vision of Star Citizen goes back many years and will not be stopped any time soon.

For those of us that have seen the announcement trailer and subsequent footage to come out, it seems like a hugely exciting project. How long have you been working on the game so far?

Chris: Basically I’ve been working with a small team over the course of the past year to get the early prototyping and production done. The team has varied in scale from just me, essentially, to about 10 people. That’s just the actual work though.

Star Citizen is the game, essentially, that I wanted to make when I was working on Freelancer. A very big game, with both single player and multiplayer, a game that you could play with other people on a large scale. I feel I never really got to realize that dream. Microsoft was the publisher of Freelancer and at the time was very focused on getting the Xbox developed, as well as titles for it. I never got to do Freelancer the way I wanted to - it has always felt like a bit of unfinished business.

If EA didn’t hold the rights to the Wing Commander franchise and you somehow ended up with them, would Star Citizen be called something like ‘Wing Commander Online’, or do you feel that the game is essentially different from Wing Commander or Freelancer to the point that you would have renamed it anyways?

Yes, if I somehow owned the rights to Wing Commander still, this would definitely be Wing Commander: Star Citizen or something like that. Star Citizen really is the spiritual successor to all of my work with Wing Commander, Freelancer and Privateer. If I had to sum it up, it is essentially Wing Commander and Privateer blended together.

You have stated that you expect to have an Alpha up and going in about 12 months, with a beta roughly 10 months after that and then launch. For a game of this size and scope, do you think you can really be done in the next two years?

Really it is all about constant iteration from launch. The whole idea is to be constantly updating. It isn’t like the old days where you had to have everything and the kitchen sink in at launch because you weren’t going to come back to it for awhile. We’re already one year in - another two years puts us at 3 total which is ideal. Any more and things would begin to get stale.

Speaking of constant updates, you’ve stated that you would like to roll out updates on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. How sustainable is that vision and what kind of investment of resources do you foresee that taking?

Obviously we would scale up the staff over time until, once live, we have about 20-30 people generating content, not counting high-level development of new features. The idea is to set up a structure for the players to use and add in new content as the spice, where the player-generated content is the meat. Eve Online does this very well. You don’t want to be like [Star Wars] The Old Republic, where all your content is heavily scripted.

Implementing more intelligent procedural systems as in real life, driving player behavior, and then sprinkling in some studio developed story content is what will give us the longevity we need.

You mention Eve Online and obviously have some knowledge of it. Have you played it, or just followed its progress?

I have played Eve a little bit but never really got hardcore into it. I’m more of an in-the-cockpit kind of guy. The game concepts, the ideas that CCP has put out - they have done a great job of it. They are the only ones, really, holding the fortress for space [games]. As for playing Eve, it is really a matter of scale. For myself, I would rather be in a cockpit as opposed to flying a big freighter or something from a distance.

There are obviously some close similiraties on a conceptual level between Star Citizen and Eve Online. How much has CCP’s progress with EVE impacted your current development of Star Citizen?

The main thing is that they proved it could work. Eve Online is a bit larger scale, but has most of the same stuff as when I was pitching Freelancer. Dynamic universe, player driven interaction, etc. CCP has done a really good job of proving that the concept works. What I want to do now is basically make Star Citizen the Call of Duty to Eve Online’s Company of Heroes, in that Star Citizen will give more of a first person, in the moment experience while Eve Online provides a strategic point of view.

The thing that would be really cool, for me, is to have player’s making their own groups like in Eve. My ideal scenario would be something like one player setting himself up as some kind of Criminal Overlord out in the fringes of space, with an asteroid base and hired [player] muscle, harrying other people. Then those other people band together to go take out the Criminal Overlord and his group in order to maintain their own safety or profits.

[Editor’s Note: At this point in the interview, things nearly came off the rails as a typical LA area driver decided it would be a good time to slam on their brakes for no apparent reason. After confirming that Mr. Roberts was alright, we continued...]

You have planned many ways for players of Star Citizen to make a living, including trading and mining. Mining in Eve is literally one of the dullest experiences in modern gaming. What are you planning to make mining something fun to do?

[Laughter] Mining and trading will take some level of actual flying skill, whereas in Eve you are just sort of clicking a button every once in awhile to make money. It’s sort of like playing Farmville and I hate that stuff. I feel that the first person, active flying experience in Star Citizen will turn, for instance, a boring trade run from Eve Online into a more immersive and exciting experience.

Other games in the past have sought to provide a sort of two-part game, though not on the same level as we will see in Star Citizen with its Squadron 42 component (referring to the single player/coop mode of the game). In particular Age Of Conan springs to mind. However, AOC was fairly terrible, as the first 10 or 20 levels was fully voice acted, really high quality content - and then there was nothing. Could you go more in depth as to how the Squadron 42 aspect integrates with the overall Star Citizen universe?

I know just what you mean. I played Age of Conan and yeah, the beginning was really cool then you seemed to really run out of content. We’re definitely going to avoid that with Star Citizen. Squadron 42 is going to be the kind of military campaign, a linear campaign, reminiscent of Wing Commander. Something where, if you only have a little bit of time or you just don’t want to deal with everyone else trying to backstab you. You’re in the military and you go out on these missions. Once you finish your tour of duty, you muster out into the open universe and pursue your goals. In the end, players may prefer one or the other, in which case they will just have to wait for more content to be put out.

Star Citizen also has plans to enable privately hosted servers that can run mods of the game, either in coop campaign mode or as a small scale space combat server. Will players be able to transfer characters between these private servers and the persistent universe hosted by yourself? How is that interaction going to be handled?

You know, I really don’t have a good answer for that right now, its a bit of a problem that we’re working on ironing out. Probably you will only end up being able to transfer your character itself, not any of the money you earn on the private server or the ships you acquire. The whole point of the public persistent universe is to make sure people stay honest and are coming by their goods legitimately. You won’t be able to mod yourself a megaship in a private server and then take it out into the universe.

The most recent FAQ put up on the Star Citizen website definitively states that Star Citizen is not an MMO. Obviously, with single player and private hosted servers, it isn’t just an MMO, but doesn’t the online persistent universe make it an MMO in some way?

To be honest, all these classifications are a bit silly. We stated it isn’t an MMO because when people hear ‘MMO’ they think of subscriptions and World of Warcraft. We wanted to reassure old Wing Commander and Privateer fans that this they wouldn’t have to pay a subscription to play a game they love. Obviously at no point does this mean you won’t be able to play with your friends - who doesn’t want to do that? It is an MMO in the aspect of having a big, massive galaxy, a persistent universe, that sort of thing. But it will also have a full single player game, so it isn’t always an MMO.

What kind of consequences will there be for death in Star Citizen? Can your ‘flesh and blood’ avatar be killed?

Well, when your ship blows up, you’ll be floating out in space and someone can pick you up and take you to the nearest space station or planet. There will be things like insurance for your ship and even for your cargo in the event of its demise, but there will also be things like tariffs and taxes in the safer parts of the galaxy - someone has to pay for that protection. So in some parts you won’t need insurance, but will pay taxes. In others you won’t pay taxes, but will definitely need insurance. It is sort of like the real world - if you live in a bad neighborhood, you pay more in insurance. In Star Citizen, insurance rates will vary depending on where you get it.

I like setting up the world and letting the players gravitate towards whatever they want to do. As a developer, you are always surprised by what the players want to and eventually end up doing.

You plan on having Star Citizen not only support the typical mouse, keyboard, joystick and gamepad that you find in PC gaming, but also things like rudder pedals, flight chairs and the Oculus Rift. Why go to such great lengths to support equipment that isn’t that prevalent, and what kind of impact will this have on development costs?

I feel like I’m making a game for the enthusiast. If someone not only spent the money on a gaming PC to play Star Citizen, but also dropped 100, 200 dollars on some other equipment, I want to be able to say to them ‘You paid for it, you should be able to use it’.

In terms of development time, it doesn’t take much. Input is input and if I didn’t think we could accommodate all those different types of peripherals, I wouldn’t have the support in the game.

Earlier today you launched a Kickstarter campaign after previously going with your own crowdfunding solution. How is all of that going?

Well, the website had some issues when we first announced the game. People weren’t able to see their pledges right away and I’m sure some weren’t comfortable going with just some website. I like Kickstarter a lot, I’ve supported multiple projects on Kickstarter, so when we had these issues Kickstarter came to us and said ‘how can we help?’. They’ve been excellent at helping expedite the process of getting a Kickstarter set up for people that want to use them.

Not using Kickstarter to begin with was never about saving the 5% fee they charge or anything like that. It was about making pledging as frictionless as possible for those who were already supporters of the site and the game.

Any parting words for the Eve Online community or in general?

If Eve players are interested in more of a first person, spaceship type of experience, it would be awesome if they backed Star Citizen. I really want to show the big publishers that there is significant demand not just for space games, but for PC games as well, and that people love them!

Thanks very much for taking the time to talk to us!

So there you have it - words straight from Chris Roberts. To find out more about Star Citizen I highly recommend checking out the website for the game. Unlike some that stay stagnant for weeks or months while in development, Mr. Roberts is committed to putting out updates on various aspects of the game as often as possible.

And if, as Mr. Roberts said, you fancy yourself a bit of a cockpit kind of guy like him - definitely back the project. It has raised over $1 million USD on the RSI/Star Citizen website itself in about a week and an additional $100,000+ on Kickstarter (in just a few hours).

[Stormwaltz]

Just to say, as of this moment the donation totals are:

$1,137,872 12,582 backers on RSI's own page
$215,185 / 5,155 backers on Kickstarter

Total: $1,353,057 / 17,737 backers