Eric-Peterson
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The man who left behind $78 million to revamp a classic space shooter
Eric Peterson has dedicated 20 years of his life to the video game industry, handling development and production in startups and large studios alike. He has a passion for space games, and in April 2012, he helped found Cloud Imperium Games, the studio building Chris Roberts' massive interstellar simulator Star Citizen. Cloud Imperium has since raised $78.6 million from nearly 900,000 dedicated fans, with more adding to the pot every day; it's the largest and most ridiculous crowdfunding campaign in gaming history. Late last year, Peterson walked away from Cloud Imperium, Star Citizen and that pile of cash. Not because he wasn't into the game anymore; he just didn't want to leave his home in Austin, Texas. "I loved working on the project; I just didn't want to move to Los Angeles," Peterson says. "They're my friends. Look, I built that company with them. ... It's just that, I've made sacrifices before in this industry for games that almost cost me personally with my family. So I'm just not willing to do that anymore. The priorities for me are family first."
Here's what CIG accomplished on Star Citizen in June
It's the beginning of a new month, which means it's time for Cloud Imperium Games to recap last month's Star Citizen progress. The big news was the release of Arena Commander and its four patches, but there are plenty of other interesting nuggets packed into the the latest update wall-of-text. Foundry 42 studio director Erin Roberts says that capital ships are coming together, and his team has also begun work on multi-crew vehicles. CIG Austin studio director Eric Peterson says that his bunch has been "busy working on the persistent universe and backend server component," while Behaviour producer Mathieu Beaulieu says that his studio is hard at work on hangar revamps as well as Star Citizen's mobiGlas development. Read all about those initiatives and more at the Roberts Space Industries website linked below. [Thanks James!]
Star Citizen issues its monthly report to backers and fans
As they do every month, Star Citizen's studio leads have just posted the latest report for Cloud Imperium's upcoming sci-fi sandbox. The highlights? Dogfight Producer and holder of one of the most epic job titles ever Travis Day recaps the Arena Commander demo at PAX and discusses technical strides made by his team. Austin director Eric Peterson details work on overall code integration, the planetside module, and the persistent universe part of the game. Manchester lead Erin Roberts steps up to talk Squadron 42 and capital ship controls. Other team leads mention work on art, audio, finalizing multi-orgs membership, and at least a million other things. It's probably more information than anyone but Massively's Jef wants to know, but hey, if you wanted transparency, this newsletter is it.
Stick and Rudder: The best bits of Star Citizen's Thanksgiving livestream
Cloud Imperium hosted another lengthy Star Citizen livestream this week, and if you missed it, well, so did nearly everyone else who has a nine-to-five job. This particular shindig was some 20 hours shorter than the last one, but there were nonetheless plenty of interesting details to digest. If you want a blow-by-blow summary -- and you don't share my aversion to Reddit -- here you go. If you want my personal highlights, click past the cut.
Stick and Rudder: Wingman's Hangar is must-see Star Citizen TV
OK, technically Star Citizen's weekly Wingman's Hangar webcast is must-see YouTube. I mean, does anyone still watch television? On a TV, really? Over the past couple of weeks I've powered through my personal back catalogue of WH episodes, mostly for my own fanbot gratification but also to minimize the knowledge gaps in this column. And as I was watching, the strangest thing happened. I began to care about the people involved. Not care as in I'm-going-to-go-stalk-Eric-Peterson, but care as in the sort of distanced-but-semi-invested attachment that I form with characters in a particularly effective documentary film.
Stick and Rudder: A guide to Star Citizen's community
Welcome aboard pilots, privateers, and pillaging pirate queens; you've found Stick and Rudder, the gaming press' first Star Citizen column! I'm putting all pretenses of objectivity aside today because I'm terribly frackin' excited for this game. That's why we're here, now, talking about it way out in front of its release. With all of this expectation comes the potential for massive disappointment, of course, but the good news is that Cloud Imperium is being pretty open about its development process. This has the added benefit of giving us lots to chew on while we sit through the agonizing months leading up to launch. Anyway, now that some of my fanboy gushing is out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks and carry on the time-honored Massively tradition of kicking off a new game column with a community guide.
Joystiq Interview: Puzzle Quest, Vicious Cycle's Eric Peterson's 'Holy Grail'
On paper, the genre-bending Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords reads like a madman's manifesto, meshing together elements of classic puzzlers like Bejewelled with those more commonly associated with traditional RPGs for an experience that is anything but traditional. Nonetheless, the game proved to be one of 2007's surprise hits, as it tapped into both the casual and hardcore gaming communities like few games before it. It also helps that in the span of just a few months Puzzle Quest has managed to be ported to nearly every platform under the sun, including the game's most recent incarnation for the Wii. In the wake of this release, we got some face time with Eric Peterson, CEO and president at Vicious Cycle Software -- one of Puzzle Quest's two development partners, about this latest release, the series, and which version, to him at least, represents the definitive Puzzle Quest experience (Hint: It's not the Wii version). More on these topics and more after the jump.
Dead Head Fred tries to please fans with violence
Don't you love it when a developer listens to the masses? The developers of the upcoming Dead Head Fred held some focus tests on their game, and found that gamers wanted more violence. And indeed, the developers have provided, as seen in the trailer above. In an interview with IGN, Vicious Cycle president Eric Peterson, revealed some of the violent additions to this head-swapping brawler. "So we gave the people what they wanted and amped up Fred's combo list. We created more kill moves, more decapitations, more melee attacks, more counters and more abilities in general ... You can string combos together to pound on an enemy until they are weak and vulnerable for a kill move or decapitation. You can use head powers in combination with environmental items to create new attacks. For example, you can fill the corpse head with gasoline and then find an ignition point in the environment to create a flame thrower attack." Sounds good to us. We can't wait to get our hands on the game, and try out some moves ourselves. The team shows a lot of enthusiasm for PSP, and making the game solely for PSP -- let's hope they succeed with their ambitions.
Dead Head Fred interview
Dead Head Fred was one of the games I said "you should keep your eyes on." And for good reason: it's an original action game, made exclusively with the PSP in mind. QJ had some time to sit down with Eric Peterson, president of Vicious Cycle Software to get some info on the game. Here are some of the more interesting comments: "Dead Head Fred is a very ambitious game and we plan to deliver on all fronts. We want people to buy a PSP just to play Dead Head Fred." "Currently our load times are extremely fast and we are pleased with the results... the E3 demo that we showed, allowed for 30 min of straight gameplay without the player ever experiencing a load time." "The last thing we want people having to do is fight then camera when they should be fighting the enemies in the game." You acquire new powers by attaching new heads to yourself. Here's a few examples of heads you'll find in the game:"The Mutant head helps you survive radiation fields. The Scarecrow head lets you float on the water. The Stone Idol head makes you sink underwater. The Shrunken Head lets you get into tight spaces and glide along high wires. The Corpse head allows you to inflate with air and hover over obstacles; you can also fill it with water or gasoline to generate different effects and attacks. The Dummy head allows you to interact with citizens without scaring them out of their minds. " The full interview has details on the graphics engine, combat, mini-games, and more. The developers would love to do a downloadable demo for the game, so hopefully we'll see one down the line. The game has still a lot of development time left: it comes out next year.
