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Star Citizen's ship insurance explained
If you've been wondering how ship insurance works in Star Citizen, the game's latest comm link update is for you. Cloud Imperium says that SC's insurance system will ensure that your ship will be replaced "and/or its modifications and cargo will be subsidized should you be destroyed in a fight or accident." The costs will be "a relatively small part of your regular in-game expenses" (think landing fees, trade tariffs, fuel costs, etc.). Insurance policy upgrades based on risk levels will also be available. Players who pledged to support Star Citizen prior to November 26th will have lifetime insurance on their pledge ships, though it's worth noting that the lifetime coverage does not extend to mods or cargo. There's much more to read about SC's insurance system, so head to the game's official website for that as well as an update on customer service and stretch goals.
Star Citizen finishes gaming's biggest crowd-funding drive ever
"The traditional publishers don't believe in PC or space sims. Venture capitalists only want to back mobile or social gaming startups," wrote Chris Roberts back during Star Citizen's October reveal. "I say they're wrong. "I say that there is a large audience of PC gamers who want sophisticated games built for their platform." Boy, was he right. As of 2:00 p.m. EST, the game has secured over $6.2 million and over 89,000 pledges. Star Citizen is now the highest-grossing crowd-funded gaming project ever, and more importantly it has met a laundry list of stretch goals over and above its initial $2 million target and unlocked a slew of additional features (including more ships, star systems, mod tools, base types, and voice-acting). Roberts' Cloud Imperium firm has also released a new video that shows off some very early spaceport test footage. Click past the cut to get a look at the work-in-progress environment inspired by the concept art above.
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen crowdfunding concludes at over $6M
Star Citizen concluded its two-pronged pledge drive today with $6,226,891 in funding. The Roberts Space Industry drive currently sits at $4.1 million from believers in the space sim genre, with today's Kickstarter concluding at $2.1 million."I'm completely overwhelmed, humbled and grateful for the support from everybody who backed Star Citizen," Roberts told Joystiq moments ago. "I think we sent a statement to the rest of the gaming world that PCs and space sims are very much alive and kicking. I'm looking forward to creating the game and sharing the journey with this incredible community."Roberts is known for having pioneered the space sim genre with the Wing Commander series, which has been left to languish by EA for 15 years (no, Wing Commander Arena doesn't count). The plan is for Star Citizen's star citizen backers to start testing the alpha version of the game within a year.Update: Altered text based on new information. Roberts Space Industry page will remain open for pledges. Rewards will not be the same as they were during the Kickstarter window, but we've been told that interested folks can still participate in an early buy-in. More details in attached press release.
The Firing Line: Star Citizen shouldn't be EVE with joysticks
I've been spending a lot of time on Star Citizen's forums of late. And when I'm not doing that, I'm replaying Wing Commander, Wing Commander II, and Privateer (thanks GoG) and generally wetting myself with excitement for Chris Roberts' newest space sim. The one thing that gives me pause, though, is the unsavory player type that SC is already attracting. You know the guys I mean. They're PvPers, which is great, but they can't type a sentence on a message board without using the word carebear a minimum of three times while making sweeping generalizations about the playstyles, sexual orientation, and parentage of any and all who dare to disagree with them about what makes gaming fun. That said, I like PvP and plan to engage in Star Citizen's version of it. I'm not naive enough to think that the no-holds barred nonsense being advocated by some in the game's pre-release community will result in anything other than a niche title, though.
Star Citizen cargo ship boasts functioning interior, detachable fighter
Remember those old ship blueprints that came folded in your Wing Commander box circa 1991? No? Well, get off our lawn. Assuming you do remember them, or assuming you're as excited as we are about Chris Roberts' new Star Citizen space sim, you'll probably get a kick out of some images just released on the official site. The site has a preview interview and accompanying concept gallery that features a player ship called the Constellation Mark III. There are plenty of schematic views, lore-appropriate statistics, and of course renders of both the interior and exterior of the craft. Yep, apparently that answers the question as to whether or not we'll be able to walk around inside some of Star Citizen's ships, as many of the renders show off everything from the cockpit to living quarters to various observation decks and stations. Oh, did we mention that the Constellation boasts its own detachable star fighter? Roberts also puts to rest any notions of Star Citizen being a typical combat-only shooter. One of his goals is to let you actually look at the cargo in your ship's hold while you're in space. "There's a big focus on simulating and showing everything that you would imagine to be inside and functioning on a spaceship in Star Citizen," he explains. "So if you're hauling it you should see it in your hold (if you can walk back into your hold), if you activate a system, you should see your pilot avatar lean over and switch it on, and so on." The images come courtesy of Ryan Church, a familiar name to sci-fi geeks thanks to his concept art work on the Star Wars prequels. [Thanks to Eric for the tip!]%Gallery-171150%
Star Citizen makes final crowd-funding push, dogfight video released
There's less than a week to go in Star Citizen's crowd-funding push, and Chris Roberts has produced a new video short in which he challenges space sim fans to help his company over the $4 million hump. If the new stretch goal is met, it will allow for more mod tools, an expanded version of the Squadron 42 single-player component, and a larger free-roam universe for the multiplayer game, which is apparently still two years away. Roberts has also released an early gameplay video showing off a cockpit view, wingman AI, and a brief dogfight. He says the video is far from representative of the final product but useful for gauging the progress of Star Citizen's advanced AI system. "The Squadron 42/Star Citizen pilot AI will be the most sophisticated AI that I've attempted on any of my games. My goal is to take the ideas that I pioneered with Wing Commander and later games -- distinct personalities, dynamic learning, signature moves -- to the next level with the power of modern CPUs," Roberts explains. See both videos in their entirety after the cut.
Star Citizen crowd-funding tops $3 million with 10 days to go
The news keeps getting better and better for fans of Chris Roberts' new Star Citizen space sim. Cloud Imperium just issued a press release trumpeting the fact that SC's crowd-funding initiatives have surpassed $3 million with 10 days to go. The company initially launched a self-managed fundraiser on its own website that has generated over $2 million in pledges to date. This was supplemented by a Kickstarter drive that has taken in over $1 million. Roberts' pre-alpha demo reel has attracted nearly 45,000 backers as of press time, and the Wing Commander creator says that the crowd-funding success will allow the dev team to work on additional features. "This is extremely exciting for me and our team because it will enable us to create the game we've been talking about to our fans over the past month," Roberts explained. "But we can do even more. I'm still hoping that we'll reach four million dollars before we close. This will allow us to do more sooner, especially on things like our modder tools." Cloud Imperium has also announced a pledge referral program to help reach its new $4 million goal. [Source: Cloud Imperium press release]
Star Citizen well ahead of crowd-funding schedule, stretch goals added
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen is one of the more successful gaming-related crowd-funding projects to date, and even though there's still two weeks left until the Kickstarter drive closes, the title has already exceeded its $2 million goal by almost $800,000. What's going to happen to that extra money, then? It's partly up to the game's community. The Star Citizen site boasts a new poll with additional stretch goals. Choices include more ships, star systems, NPCs, an enhanced FPS mode, Linux and Mac clients, and some sort of tactical command mode for capital ships. As of press time, new flyable ships and additional star systems were leading the vote.
Star Citizen can't be done on current-gen consoles, says Roberts
Chris Roberts says Star Citizen's RAM requirements, based on its proof-of-concept video, aren't met by current-gen consoles. Speaking to Ars Technica, the game's creator also dismissed potential iterations, promising top-end PCs of today are "already more powerful than what a next-generation console is going to be." While he's aiming high with hardware requirements, Roberts expects them to be standard for PC when Star Citizen releases in two years' time."You can't do that much with 512MB [of RAM on a console], so that constrains a lot of your game design," said Roberts. "If I'm building a PC game, I'm going 'Yeah, you need 4GB on your machine.' Of course you're not going to get all 4GB because Windows is a hungry beast, but you're getting a lot more than 512MB so it kinds of open up what you can do, what you can fit in memory at the same time, and it changes your level of ambition."That doesn't mean the game will necessarily be limited to PC, though. Developer Cloud Imperium set up a poll recently for further stretch goals to include in its fundraiser, with options of support for Mac and Linux. As it stands, 19 percent of voters want Linux support, with Mac on 8 percent. Both are way behind the likes of "tactical command mode on capital ships" (37 percent), "more star systems in Star Citizen" (39 percent), and more flyable ship classes (41 percent). If I were you, Mac users, I wouldn't hold my breath.
MMO Blender: Jef's SWG/Star Citizen mashup
Thus far I've managed to keep my nose out of Massively's MMO Blender column. This is primarily because I don't need 1000 words to describe the ideal MMORPG when a short phrase like "Star Wars Galaxies minus the IP" basically sums everything up. That said, something happened a couple of weeks ago that caused me to expand on this idea. Chris Roberts returned to the ranks of gamemakers, and when he announced his Star Citizen multiplayer title (which I desperately hope he renames, incidentally), it set in motion an MMO flight of fancy that I would love to experience.
Star Citizen surpasses $2 million funding goal
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen project has surpassed its $2 million crowd funding pledge goal, which it achieved through a combination of Kickstarter and the game's website."I'm floored by the support we are receiving for Star Citizen. Our fans have certainly showed that they are ready for a space sim that will provide the kind of PC gaming experience that I think has been missing in the genre for so many years," Roberts told Joystiq."We want people to really feel they are right in the thick of a space battle or deep into a mission in a faraway galaxy. I want to make sure that the players know and understand that they'll very much be a part of this process of making the next great space combat game as we plan to communicate with them on a regular basis and utilize their feedback as we design Star Citizen."As of this writing, the two pledge sites combined total about $2.1 million. There are still 24 and 15 days to go on the Kickstarter and Roberts Space Industries drives, respectively. Roberts hopes to have backers playing an early alpha version of the game "within 12 months."
Star Citizen's Roberts doesn't want to watch Batman on his iPhone
Star Citizen space sim guru Chris Roberts is a great interview. We should know, since he just talked our ears off on this week's Massively Speaking podcast. The Wing Commander creator also has some pretty strong opinions about the state of the games industry that he's returned to after an extended break. While Roberts acknowledges that "there are cool things you can do on mobile," he also questions the wisdom of abandoning traditional platforms for it. If you think about Angry Birds --Rovio, right?-- it's the biggest outlier in the history of gaming. I mean, they've had a billion downloads. Last year, they did $100 million in revenue, and of that, $30 million was licensing. So they actually did $70 million in revenue off their core business, which is mobile. And they're an order of magnitude bigger than [other mobile developers] in terms of single-game sales. You compare and contrast that with, say, Call of Duty that does $1 billion every year. It's doing well over 10 [times] what [Rovio] is doing. Now, there aren't one billion downloads of Call of Duty, but people pay $60 [each] for it. And you've got World of Warcraft, and plenty of other things that are doing around $500 million, like Madden or Battlefield. What that tells you is that the core gamer is willing to pay for the premium experience. Roberts goes on to explain how he believes that new trends can co-exist with traditional models, but he also points out the inherent limitations that bother him as a gamer. "For me, the analogy is I can watch Dark Knight Rises on my iPhone, but do I want to? I want to go see it on a big-ass IMAX screen. I'm into games because I like to have that immersion. And I just can't do it on a mobile [device], and I can't do it on a Facebook game."
Star Citizen achieves Kickstarter goal with 26 days to spare
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen title is well on its way if the project's Kickstarter performance is any indication. Wait, Kickstarter? Didn't Roberts set up a crowd-funding initiative directly on the game's official website earlier this month? Why, yes, yes he did, but due to the overwhelming demand generated by thousands of starving space sim fans, the site had trouble handling all the traffic. Roberts Space Industries thus opened an ancillary Kickstarter project with a $500,000 target. When coupled with the $1.3 million raised so far on the main site, Star Citizen is within striking distance of its original $2 million goal with a lot of time left on the clock. Check out yesterday's Massively Speaking podcast for an interview with Chris Roberts himself.
Star Citizen achieves Kickstarter goal with 26 days to go
Chris Roberts' Kickstarter for Star Citizen has surpassed its half-million goal, with 26 days left to go on the clock.The Kickstarter is actually a secondary funding location for the project, opened after Chris Roberts' Roberts Space Industries site had difficulty handling donor traffic. That site currently has $1,348,900 in donations with 16 days of crowd funding left to go.So, if our basic addition skills are working -- and we aren't saying they are -- the Kickstarter's current $517,000, plus the $1.349 million on the official site, means the game has received around $1.87 million in donations of its $2 million goal.
Roberts talks Star Citizen boarding parties, customization, and more
Can't get enough Star Citizen news? We can't either, which is why we cajoled Chris Roberts into joining us on this week's Massively Speaking podcast to talk about his new labor of love. That's later today, though, so in the meantime you'll have to content yourself with a transcript of Roberts' recent AMA session on Reddit. There's a lot to digest, as Roberts talks up features including ship boarding parties, private real estate, ship customization, and more. Don't forget to check in with us this afternoon as we ask the Wing Commander and Privateer creator about his Star Citizen investors, crowd-funding, the economy, and PvP!
The Firing Line: On Star Citizen, DUST 514, and DayZ
Welcome back to The Firing Line, folks. While I don't have any nifty sequel announcements or contentious community issues for you this week, I do have some interesting tidbits on three upcoming shooters that you might have missed. Join me after the cut for a chat about Star Citizen's hardcore aspirations, DUST 514's PC potential, and DayZ's upcoming standalone client.
Star Citizen crowdsourcing moves to Kickstarter
Are you excited about Chris Roberts' Star Citizen project? Get in line, space jockey: Roberts said that "overwhelming response" to the proposed space sim ended up crashing the game's site. As a result, he launched a Kickstarter campaign to continue raising funds for the game. The good news for interested parties is that the game is already halfway to its fundraising goal, as one out of two million dollars has been raised through pledges. The Star Citizen Kickstarter is attempting to pull in $500,000 by November 19th. For his part, Roberts is bowled over: "It's a testament to the will power of our amazing fans. At a time when most would have given up, some dedicated fans kept trying to log on and eventually were able to get through and make a pledge. We appreciate all those efforts, and now with Kickstarter, we believe we have an answer for everyone." [Source: Cloud Imperium press release]
Star Citizen FAQ outlines modding, micropayments, hardware requirements
If you're looking forward to Chris Roberts' new Star Citizen title, you'd best be saving your pennies for a PC upgrade. Much like Roberts' 1990s-era Wing Commander series, the new game will push the limits of your hardware, this time courtesy of the CryEngine 3. The space combat sim's website has updated with a new FAQ that outlines the game's projected system requirements (it recommends an i7 CPU and a GTX 670 or better graphics card, but keep in mind that launch day is two years away). The FAQ also mentions Star Citizen's modding philosophy and its payment model. Modding is encouraged, as Roberts says that players are free to tweak the game however they wish on private servers. The devs also "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," according to the FAQ. In terms of payments, you'll need to buy the game initially and that's basically it. There will be no monthly fee, though "some in-game items may be available as microtransactions." Unlike most free-to-play titles, Star Citizen's cash shop "will never sell anything that can't be acquired through honest (and fun!) gameplay."
Star Citizen has raised almost half a million dollars
Chris Roberts' new space sim Star Citizen has already raised over $455,590 from its crowd-funding drive, despite being called Star Citizen. Pledge counts are not yet available on the website, but Roberts sent out an update today containing that number. "Seems everyone wants the RSI Constellation and physical goodies," he noted, suggesting that many buyers have paid more than $250 for access to the "RSI Constellation spaceship."Technical problems have held some pledges back, Roberts notes, entreating potential buyers to try again. "We still have a ways to go but I have no doubt with your support we will get there." Half a million in two days seems like a good sign.
Chris Roberts returns with open-world Star Citizen sandbox
It's a good day to be a hardcore gamer, folks, particularly if you grew up playing Wing Commander, Freelancer, or any number of similar PC-exclusive space sims. Genre heavyweight Chris Roberts has finally unveiled his new project, and it looks to be a sprawling open-world title called Star Citizen. Roberts has released an 11-minute video detailing various aspects of the ambitious game (it's been in development for a year now), which include a co-op fighter pilot campaign and a huge Freelancer-style cosmos that allows players to pursue their own goals. Wanna be a pirate? Go ahead. A trader? Sure thing. Oh, you want absurdly immersive details like full working cockpits, flightsuit wrinkles, and physics-based spaceflight too? You got 'em. "I'm building the game, and a universe, that I would like to play, so it's for gamers like myself," Roberts explains. "I wouldn't say that I'm a social, casual gamer who plays Farmville. I like sophisticated experiences." Roberts goes on to explain why he's chosen the route of PC-exclusive in an era when consoles and mobile platforms are all the rage, and he also touches on the subject of crowd-funding. His goal is a relatively modest $2 million, and he's aiming to achieve it directly on the game's own website rather than via a third-party intermediary like Kickstarter. He's also got quite a bit of in-engine footage to show already, and you can see it in the clip after the cut. Is Star Citizen an MMO, though? That's hard to say at this juncture. We know it's massive in scale, and we know it's multiplayer, but thus far we don't know much about the server setup or how many concurrent users are in the cards. [Thanks to Scott for the tip!]
