This week, we bid hello to a new direction for MMOs as Tyler regales us with voxely tales of Everquest Next from SOE Live... and we bid farewell to intern Jake Godin on his very last podcast. Plus, what's a PC gamer to do when the dreaded Gaming Funk makes everything in your Steam library sound like watching paint dry? All this, our playlist, and more on...
It's the crowdfund that's reaching for the stars—Star Citizen has surpassed the $15 million mark according to a recent announcement on its official website. That's more than enough money to make a game that'd test the limits of even Chris Robert's PC. The site writes to the Star Citizen community: "ten years ago, big publishers decided space games weren’t profitable… and you are proving them very, very wrong."
Chris Roberts is the creator of Wing Commander and CEO of Cloud Imperium, where he's leading the design of Star Citizen. He may not get much time to play games, but he sure as hell can make them.
In-progress space sim Star Citizen has achieved $14 million in crowdfunding support, according to a recent announcement on its official website. Reaching the funding goal for the Chris Roberts-designed game means the promise of additional features and opens the door for more content at higher funding levels, should it reach them.
It's not quite as immediately sexy as their previous in-engine trailer, but this video for the economic plans of Cloud Imperium's Star Citizen still dazzles with its descriptions of a vast and emergent system. Here, studio founder Chris Roberts takes us through examples of naturally occurring trade missions - and how their success or failure can tie directly into the galactic price of goods.
In the car advertising world, words don't mean what they mean—they mean whatever a robust masculine voice tells us they mean. The same goes in the latest Star Citizen trailer, which apes the style of luxury car ads to introduce the Origin 300i, a spaceship which redefines speed as "a shock to the soul." Physicists are hurriedly rewriting major theories to cope with the revelation.
Star Citizen's Kickstarter campaign demonstrated that you don't need a publisher to make an ambitious space trading sim MMO thing - and now the Roberts Space Industries site has shown that you don't even need Kickstarter. In addition to the two-and-change million dollars Chris Roberts and co managed to drum up on the funding site alone, they've raised $7.9 million via RSI (no, not Repetitive Strain Injury), bringing the total to a cool $10 million, or enough to afford their own private universe. Probably. Or at the very least, one of the more leper-free Caribbean islands.
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The year is 2053; the world is on the brink of financial and social collapse. It started innocuously enough. Star Citizen - Chris Roberts' multiplayer space sim - took to Kickstarter, making a healthy $2,000,000 from backer pledges. But the money kept pouring in through the game's website at Roberts Space Industries. By the end of April 2013, Star Citizen had raised a staggering total of $9,062,402.
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Star Citizen is one of the most ambitious games in development—a massive, high-fidelity, multiplayer space combat sim headed by Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts. Back at GDC I interviewed Roberts about how he plans to realize Star Citizen's prodigious goals, the latest development update—which details modular ship customization—and how the universe as a whole will be simulated. You probably also want to scroll down for the first in-engine screenshots since the prototype reveal.
Star Citizen is being billed as a return to form for PC gaming and the space combat genre. It's to be bigger than the rest, more open than the rest, and more detailed than the rest, especially in regard to ship design and handling—the official bullet points describe full rigid body simulation, "Dynamic Ship Maneuverability," and meaningful component decisions. Tasty stuff, but just a sweet glaze of promises on top of the rich, substantial detail filling we're after—and now we have a little more of it.
Star Citizen's huge ambitions haven't faded since the upcoming space sim warped past the $6 million mark during its twin crowdfunding campaigns. In a lengthy blog post, project head Chris Roberts shares his ideas for creating a "sense of living history" through a permadeath mechanic that underscores a character's legacy.
Guess what secured six million dollars of funding? Here's a clue, it's about space, and it rhymes with Spar Witticism, tenuously. That's two clues actually, but you've got it already because the answer's in the headline. STAR CITIZEN has received a colossal collective thumbs up via its two pronged crowdfunding spree. Kickstarter raked in $2,134,374 and the drive on the Star Citizen site took the rest to form a grand total of $6,238,563. The ticker on the official site has been kept open after a community vote, and it looks like money is still rolling in.
Wow, if I had that sort of money I'd make some sort of ambitious space game with a rich universe focused on epic space adventure with trading and dogfighting in first person. Considering I have no game development experience whatsoever, and Cloud Imperium Games Corporation is helmed by Chris "Wing Commander" Roberts, everything's turned out okay.
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen continues its rocketlike ascent with the news that its crowdfunding drive has passed the $4.2 million mark. Since that story was published on Blues News, it's even raised an extra $400,000 odd - at the time of writing, it's now at $4,605,301 and counting. This means, according to Roberts Space Industries, that Star Citizen is now "the highest crowd-funded game project ever".
With one week still remaining to gather funding, Chris Roberts' ambitious space sim Star Citizen has raised an astonishing $3,385,532, nudging it just ahead of Double Fine Adventure ($3,336,371) and putting it in sight of Project Eternity ($3,986,929). Roberts, best known for creating Wing Commander, has released a video exhorting his pilots to back him for the final push by defeating stretch goals in the quest to break the $4 million mark, all while awkwardly trying to avoid breaking the fourth wall. Bless him.
Chris Roberts' Star Citizen has reached its 2 million dollar goal, and to celebrate he's added some new stretch goals. If the project reaches $750,000, on Kickstarter alone, every player will start the game with a class 1 repair bot, which apparently acts as a "pilot's best friend". And if both campaigns reach $2.5 million, another pilotable ship will be added to the game: the Anvil Gladiator. This vessel is "a capital ship's worst nightmare." That's right - it's the Freddy Kreuger of the space federation.
Chris "Wing Commander" Roberts' campaign to fund sandbox space sim, Star Citizen, has failed. Oh no wait, the other thing. SUCCEEDED. Yes! RPS have combined the donated funds amassed on Kickstarter and the Star Citizen site using the power of maths and the total has indeed surpassed the $2m requested.
Chris Roberts' next big space sim, Star Citizen, is now on Kickstarter. The Wing Commander creator's new project has been gaining capital for a little over a week through pre-orders on Roberts Space Industries, and though it's earned over $1M, Roberts fears that website instability, or something else, is stalling potential backers.
Star Citizen, the new space game from Wing Commander-creator Chris Roberts, has released a new FAQ which reveals the estimated system specs for the game, clarifies how modding will work - it is, in fact, highly encouraged - and what sort of things may be purchasable via microtransaction. Many of the other questions within the FAQ have already been covered in our substantial preview of the game, but it's good to hear Chris Roberts clarify the fine print on a few points.
