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CIG spotlighting Star Citizen's Freelancer this weekend
Cloud Imperium is spotlighting Star Citizen's Freelancer class hull this weekend, with a lengthy website update, one of those spiffy in-character ship brochures, and three new variants either available via a pre-release backer purchase or available to earn in the finished game. CIG has also patched Star Citizen's hangar module, so if you own one of the Freelancer variants you'll now be able to explore them to your heart's content (though you can't use them in the recently released dogfighting module just yet). The new variants include the DUR, custom fitted for exploration, the MIS, a missile boat design, and the MAX, a dedicated hauler with additional cargo space.
Star Citizen's monthly report, AC tutorial vid released
Cloud Imperium has had a busy couple of days, what with launching Star Citizen's long-awaited Arena Commander and all. Last night the firm also released its latest monthly studio report wherein CIG's development teams share their progress reports for the past 30 days. The devs also published a mouse-and-keyboard based flight tutorial for the new dogfighting module. You can view that after the cut.
Star Citizen's Arena Commander is live
Cloud Imperium has released Star Citizen's dogfighting module, more commonly known as Arena Commander. Qualified backers can now access the Vanduul Swarm and Freeflight modes using three different spacecraft: the Aurora, the 300i, and the Hornet. The current version includes limited multiplayer for a handful of backers in the form of the Battle Royale and Team modes. CIG says that these modes will open up to more players as it hunts down lag and synch issues. The announcement post also features a lengthy blurb from Chris Roberts on the future of open development as well as a poll to gauge interest in internal date targets. Finally, there's a launch trailer with gameplay footage after the cut! [Thanks everyone who tipped us!]
Star Citizen's Arena Commander delayed
Despite the best efforts of a dev team that's been working around the clock for the past two weeks, Cloud Imperium has decided to delay today's planned Arena Commander release for Star Citizen. CIG's Chris Roberts offers a lengthy explanation on Star Citizen's official website, complete with a list of critical bugs soon to be squashed. It would be foolish to release an unstable build, even if pre-alpha for the sake of meeting an internal deadline. This is the power of the crowdfunding that made Star Citizen possible: a publisher would make us ship tomorrow regardless of the current build quality... but as you are all focused on quality rather than a financial return for shareholders we are able to take a few more days to deliver something that is stable. I know that's not the news you wanted to hear tonight. No-one would like to see the community get their hands on Arena Commander more than I would. This is what can happen with an open development process, especially when we are sharing code and content long before one normally would in traditional development. [Thanks Kommissar K!]
Star Citizen tops $44 million, talks trading, map rooms, and more
Star Citizen has topped $44 million in crowdfunding. As you might expect, Cloud Imperium boss Chris Roberts has penned a thank-you letter and it features a couple of interesting nuggets. First is the concept art, shown above, of a Banu Merchantman freighter. More specifically, you're looking at the negotiation room, and it exists so that traders can have other players visit their ships, display their wares via the visible cargo bay, and generally go about the business of being a trader. "Transporting cargo is going to be more complex than just finding the ship with the highest storage capacity," Roberts writes. "It's going to involve finding the right ship type for the job." In terms of the usual million-dollar milestone backer rewards, the latest unlock is a map room hangar add-on that will allow players to walk through a holographic representation of the known universe.
The Daily Grind: Do huge dev teams give you pause?
We recently discovered that the Skyforge dev team numbers nearly 300 people. Star Citizen's team is over 200. Those are pretty crazy numbers, even for alleged AAA games and even for full-featured massively multiplayer online things. Taking into account that budgets vary wildly from project to project and company to company, do large numbers of devs on an MMO project give you pause? Why or why not? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Star Citizen's Arena Commander is launching on May 29th
Star Citizen fans, mark your calendars for May 29th. If all goes well, you'll be playing at least a single-player version of Arena Commander as Cloud Imperium begins to roll out portions of its long-awaited dogfighting module. CIG chairman Chris Roberts has posted his weekly recap, which contains the tentative date and a preview of what to expect. "The goal is that every backer will have access to the single-player Free Flight and Vanduul Swarm games mode on this day, and the very first batch of multiplayer testers will get access to the game's multiplayer game modes," Roberts writes. "We will scale up the multiplayer as quickly as possible starting on that date, increasing the number of players as it is stable and stopping to fix bugs where needed." There's much more to the weekly studio report, so click through to the Roberts Space Industries website to read it!
Braben on Elite's GTA successors and friendly competition with Star Citizen
Space sims are in vogue again, thanks in large part to crowdfunded darlings like Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. Prior to the past couple of years, though, the genre was basically dead in the water aside from occasional indie gems. Elite mastermind David Braben says the lull happened because game devs and publishers lost sight of the freedom that defines space sims. "The true successors to Elite and Frontier were the Grand Theft Auto games. For me, the setting is secondary to the feeling of freedom," Braben recently told Tech Radar. "The success of the Elite series has always been based on the freedom that players are given. It's all about individual choice in an open world -- you don't select 'pirate' or 'bounty hunter' or 'trader' from a list, you simply do what you want and events will unfold accordingly." Braben also addresses the "friendly competition" between Elite and Star Citizen, saying that he and Chris Roberts are "both alpha backers of each other's games and both want the other to succeed."
Star Citizen hires former D3, WoW producer
Crowdfunded space sim sandbox Star Citizen has a new executive producer. Effective immediately, former Diablo III and World of Warcraft producer Alex Mayberry is joining Cloud Imperium Games. "After 10 years at Blizzard, I didn't think that there was anything that could ever get me to leave," said Mayberry via press release. "But then Chris invited me to come check out Star Citizen, and after seeing the game and listening to Chris talk about his vision, I knew that I had to be a part of it. Star Citizen is bold and ambitious, with a unique and innovative approach to game development. I am extremely excited to be joining the talented people at Cloud Imperium Games, and I strongly believe that together, with Chris Roberts' direction and the support of the player community, we will set a new standard for AAA games." Click past the cut for the full release.
Star Citizen's latest video Q&A talks used ships, collisions, and more
Will Star Citizen's dogfighting module feature collision damage? Will the game allow you to buy used ships from other players? Will you be able to name your ship (and will said name be visible to other pilots)? These and seven other gameplay questions are answered by Cloud Imperium boss Chris Roberts in the latest episode of 10 for the Chairman. The answers are yes, yes, yes (and yes), if you don't have time to watch the video embedded after the break.
Stick and Rudder: How Star Citizen is turning the game industry on its ear
When this column began, the first thing I talked about was Star Citizen's then-unique development model and how important it was both for fans and the game industry as a whole. Over a year later, the jury's still out on whether or not Cloud Imperium's opus will bring balance to the Force and give starving hardcores a home of their own. It's already safe to say that Star Citizen has turned the industry on its ear, though.
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.
America's next fleet of spaceships will have to double as lifeboats
Right now, there are six people living and working in the International Space Station as it hurtles around our little oasis among the stars. That thought alone is astonishing/freaky enough until you realize the sheer number of things that could go wrong (Gravity, anyone?). That's why it's no surprise that NASA wants the new ships that'll ferry people and supplies to the ISS to act as lifeboats in case things up there take a turn for the worse.
Star Citizen tops $43 million, Roberts talks Gladius and combat armor
Guess what folks? Star Citizen is still making money. Chris Roberts' latest Letter from the Chairman celebrates the $43 million stretch goal achievement, which adds a set of marine combat armor to each backer's account. The letter also details the Gladius light fighter, which became a thing when SC broke the $42 million barrier. The Gladius is "an older fighter that doesn't have the arms and armor of a Hornet... but that can maneuver and strike quickly," Roberts writes. Click through the links below to see the work-in-progress screens and read the full letter. Don't forget to click past the cut and watch Roberts field backer questions in the latest episode of 10 for the Chairman.
Stick and Rudder: On crowdfunding and 'dev abuse'
The DFM PAX reveal came and went, and it was exactly what I expected: full of bugs befitting an alpha state and still absolutely stunning in terms of its potential. And that's all that really needs to be said about that, at least until we get our hands on it in the comfort of our own homes! I'm more interested in riffing off some of the trollish behavior from the pre-PAX backer-only gala. If you watched the full presentation, you probably know what I'm talking about. If you didn't, well, it was basically drunks being drunk, but it leads into something I've wanted to talk about for a while, which is mass appeal, niches, and the gaming industry viewed through the prism of Star Citizen.
Make My MMO: April 13 - April 19, 2014
MMO crowdfunding news this week centered on industry titans Richard Garriott and Chris Roberts, as well as The Secret World's new ARG companion game called The Black Watchmen. The title kicks off in September and is currently being funded through a Crowdtilt campaign that still has 49 days left to run. For more info on the title, click past the cut or check out Massively's Black Watchmen interview.
Star Citizen tops $42 million, adds towels
The Star Citizen money train is still chugging along, as Chris Roberts' latest chairman letter makes clear. What's the occasion? The crowdsourced space sim sandbox just passed $42 million in funding, which unlocked several "celebratory goals" including an updated observist guide, an explorer-class mobiGlas rig for backers, a new Squadron 42 fighter craft called the Gladius, and most crucially, a towel for your hangar that comes complete with its own damage state. Roberts says that the SC team is back at work on the dogfighting module after its PAX East hiatus, and he also provides a poll for choosing the next stretch goal reward.
PAX East 2014: Erin Roberts on Star Citizen's development
Star Citizen's backers have been waiting to see the game's dogfighting module in action for quite some time now, and it finally happened just before PAX East 2014. Unfortunately, it also wound up having some technical difficulties right at the beginning, which wasn't exactly what anyone had in mind when showing off the whole thing in action. It wasn't quite as bad as having the computer running the module burst into flames and die, but it was bad. Do the developers regret it? Not a chance. We got a chance to sit down and talk to Squadron 42 producer Erin Roberts and were told, in no uncertain terms, that even hitting technical hiccups like that don't make a more private development cycle feel better. In a way, having the development cycle be so public actually makes technical hurdles less problematic for the company when they're encountered because the language is in place to keep a meaningful dialogue going with the fans.
The Game Archaeologist: The danger of expecting lightning to strike twice
It's no secret that many of the more successful Kickstarter projects over the past few years have heavily capitalized on player nostalgia, brand names, and former dev gods who are back for another round. The formula for drawing in the big bucks seems to be the following: Take something players hugely loved back in the day, dangle the concept of a sequel (spiritual or otherwise), and promise some measure of iterative improvement. I once wrote about how we really can't go back again to recreate a particular game experience because it was usually a confluence of several factors that were related to where the industry was then and where you were then. I'm not saying that there isn't value to retro gaming, playing classic MMOs, or involving the past in future development! But there is a danger in how we as gamers become so beholden to our nostalgia that we dare lightning to strike twice -- and we're paying big bucks to see that happen. But can we? Will it?
PAX East 2014: Star Citizen and the DFM are 'more than just PvP'
Chris Roberts took the stage at a backer-only pre-PAX event in Boston last night to show off some of Star Citizen's alpha dogfighting footage. Despite a few technical glitches, fans were able to get an extended glimpse of the game's first playable module, which Roberts said will likely release in a month or so. The dogfighting module will be presented as part of the in-universe fiction and thus will take the form of a space sim called Arena Commander which released to gamers in the year 2944. Players will load into the DFM through their pre-existing hangar module where they'll choose between five alpha game modes: Free Flight, Battle Royale, Squadron Battle, Capture the Core, and Vanduul Swarm (basically a horde mode). Cloud Imperium is including leaderboards and plenty of stats which will show up both on Star Citizen's web-based player and organization profiles as well as in the finished game. The upcoming module will also feature co-op capabilities along with PvE AI. "At the end of the day, for me, it's not all about combat," Roberts explained, "so if [combat's] not your thing you don't have to worry about it." Click past the cut to watch the full livestream.
