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Anyone been following this? Seems like a pretty ambitious project. Hangar Module will be out on 8/24/13 for those that have pre-purchased ships. Dogfighting Alpha in December 2013.


robertsspaceindustries.com
 
Each ship with have a different style HUD based on the ships manufacturer

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Dat HUD.
 
I've been keeping tabs on it. Seems like it might be cool. Or possibly a 30 million dollar train wreck. Time will tell.
 
I've been keeping up on it on my own. Alot of it looks interesting. I thought of all people to make a thread for it it would have been soapy though.
 
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Star Citizen livestream happening right now, and Massively's liveblogging it

(21 minutes ago)
Sci-Fi, Business Models, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Events (Massively's Coverage), Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play
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Guess what, Star Citizens? It's time for another Cloud Imperium livestream, that's what. It's not one of those 24-hour marathons, fortunately, but today's presentation should give us a better idea of where development stands on the space sim sandbox's dogfighting module.

According to the teaser post on the official website, Chris Roberts and company will also be talking up the latest hangar module tweaks as well as the Squadron 42 stand-alone campaign. If you're stuck at work or otherwise unable to tune into CIG's Twitch broadcast, don't sweat it. Massively's is here to liveblog the full event. Be sure to refresh this post and its comments every so often to see what's happening.

source:Massively
 
Star Citizen's Arena Commander open to all backers

(9 hours ago)
Sci-Fi, Video, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play
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Cloud Imperium released Star Citizen's July update this week, which says that the dev team has "finally achieved victory" in its long battle with the game's pre-alpha rubber-banding issues.

Arena Commander multiplayer is "playing like we originally intended," the firm explains, and as a result the module has been made available to all eligible SC backers. The rest of the update letter details happenings at all of CIG's studios around the world.

[Thanks Cardboard and James!] Continue Reading


 
Roberts discusses Star Citizen's inventory system, balancing, and factions

(4 hours ago)
Sci-Fi, Video, Game Mechanics, News Items, Community Q&A, Sandbox, Star Citizen
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Star Citizen fans can get some answers from Chris Roberts, assuming that the questions they have match up with the five questions featured in the latest video. There's nothing fancy about this one, just Roberts sitting down and answering top fan questions about the game as collected from the game's Reddit directory.

Roberts starts off by discussing inventory and how it will be influenced by player outfits, along with the different inventories for ships, player characters, and the like. He also talks about balancing with weapons and items in the present and in the future, the interplay of organization membership with enemy NPC factions, ship durability, and the details on the Caterpillar. If you want to hear about all of that, jump on past the break to watch the full video; it's only eight minutes long, but it contains plenty of information for fans to consider and discuss in depth. Continue Reading

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Here's what Star Citizen's devs accomplished in August

(18 minutes ago)
Sci-Fi, Video, Business Models, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play
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Wondering what Star Citizen's devs accomplished in August? The latest monthly report is written with you in mind. As always, it's a wall-of-text comprised of reports from the heads of Cloud Imperium and contractor studios around the world.

The TLDR version boils down to "massive progress on everything from the first-person shooter module to the soon-to-be-playable racing mode." Don't forget to watch Star Citizen's Gamescom presentation, if you haven't already. It's embedded past the break.

[Thanks Cardboard and Oliver!] Continue Reading





 
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Star Citizen answers a new round of subscriber questions

(3 days ago)
Sci-Fi, Video, News Items, Community Q&A, Sandbox, Star Citizen
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Ready for another round of answers about Star Citizen's mechanics? Because that's what you're going to get in the video just past the cut. Chris Roberts picks out 10 questions from the game's subscriber base, talks a bit about the community, and then answers all of them in as much detail as he can provide. Rather fittingly given recent events, he starts off with questions about electronic warfare, data hacking, and stealing data from ship databases and the like.

Other questions ask about being able to take jobs on NPC ships, using rovers on different planets and for different purposes, and the encounter slider for ships crewed by players who prefer different sorts of content. There's also an in-depth discussion of some of the guiding principles used to make decisions and solve problems when crafting the game's fictional environment. Hop on past the break to watch the full video, although you may want to wait until later if you're pressed for time right now (it's nearly half an hour). Continue Reading


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Citizen Con 2014 celebrating SC in LA on October 10

(1 day ago)
Sci-Fi, Events (Real-World), MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play
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Are you a Star Citizen fan? Will you be in Los Angeles on October 10th? You might want to grab some tickets to this year's Citizen Con if you answered both of those questions in the affirmative. The two-year(!) anniversary of Star Citizen's announcement will serve as a platform for Cloud Imperium to "celebrate the progress of the game's development to date and honor the contribution of the community."

There will be a livestream, a recap of what's been accomplished thus far, and a sneak peak at what's upcoming. Tickets go on sale tomorrow. They're $40 each, but there are only 300 available so mark it on your calendar! Further details are available via the links below.






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You can race your Star Citizen spaceship today

(5 hours ago)
Betas, Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Races, Sandbox, Star Citizen, Buy-to-Play
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Before I get too deep into this news post, I'd like to take a moment to thank Cloud Imperium for releasing Star Citizen's racing module on ArcheAge's launch day.

Now that that's out of my system, let's see here. Arena Commander 0.9 is officially patchable right now. It brings with it the Murray Cup racing simulator, co-op play, leaderboards, and "too many bug fixes to list," according to CIG's announcement post.

[Thanks Oliver!] Continue Reading







 
Star Citizen hits 55M in crowdfunding, sets a new Guinness record, and rolls out Arena Commander v0.9.1

(11 hours ago)
Betas, Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, Patches, News Items, Sandbox, Star Citizen
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Ready to command the heck out of the arena? Star Citizen has just rolled out the latest patch to the Arena Commander module, which includes the welcome introduction of customizable keybindings. If you find the default controls for dogfighting or racing to be not to your liking, you can change them now. The keybinds currently support mouse and keyboard options as well as joysticks and and controllers; moving forward, the team wants to allow for options like allowing double-tap bindings and device-specific tuning.

This update also includes a fix for SLI/Crossfire display drivers and an option for backers to control exactly which ships appear in the hangar for use. Of course the full patch notes also explain some other assorted balance tweaks and bug fixes, but we imagine no shortage of people will be happy just by virtue of being able to set up the control scheme just the way they like it.

In more meta Star Citizen news, the game officially crossed the $55 million crowdfund threshold last evening. In his ensuing letter from the chairman, Chris Roberts noted that according to Guinness World Records, the game is now not just the largest crowdfunded game of all time but "the largest crowdfunded anything of all time!"

[Thanks, Cardboard and Oliver!]

 
Remember hearing about this several months ago. Seems pretty cool, though I'm not a pc gamer
 
With the way this is going I doubt it's be restricted to just pc's especially since most dev's these keep saying that PS4 and XBone are on par with pc's (debatably)
 
Star Citizen's Roberts: 'A working universe is much more interesting than just a battlefield'

(4 hours ago)
Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen
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Do you think Chris Roberts keeps a stack of future Letters from the Chairman in his desk drawer? It would make sense, given the fact that Star Citizen regularly blasts through million-dollar crowdfunding barriers (each one prompting a new letter).

The latest milestone to fall by the wayside is $56 million, and the latest letter talks up the sci-fi sandbox's non-combat bells and whistles. Roberts writes that he's pleased to see the new Reclaimer salvage ship striking a chord with backers, as it confirms his "feeling that a working universe is much more interesting than just a battlefield."

He also mentions a community poll that determined the role for Star Citizen's initial fourth wave ship. "The results of the poll also confirmed my belief that the community understands the broader reach of Star Citizen: an overwhelming number of backers voted for the research and hospital ship!"

 
Here's an early look at Star Citizen's planetside gameplay

(4 hours ago)
Sci-Fi, Video, Events (Real-World), Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen
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Did you miss CitizenCon last weekend? I sure did, and as a result I also missed this rather exciting 11-minute clip that shows off a boatload of Star Citizen sights and sounds.

Better late than never, though, right? Click past the cut to see an early version of the game's planetside gameplay and environments! Continue Reading


 
Star Citizen pimps out the Drake Cutlass

(3 hours ago)
Betas, Sci-Fi, Trailers, Video, News Items, Sandbox, Star Citizen
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Are you considering purchasing a new ship in Star Citizen? Do you anticipate yourself frequently dodging raider attacks while listening to up-tempo instrumental music? Are you generally fond of using car commercials to determine your purchases? If you answered in the affirmative for all of that, you might be well-served by checking out the new commercial for the Drake Cutlass embedded just past the break.

The entire commercial is rendered in-game (except for one specific gesture), so it serves the dual purpose of showing off the ship and showing off the ships themselves. If you'd like, you can view the commercial in stereoscopic 3-D as well. And if you like what you see from the commercial, you can step into your own Cutlass starting at $115, although you can currently only explore the ship rather than actually using it for anything. Continue Reading


 



Star Citizen : A Great Deal of Hope for the Newly Minted FPS Module

Posted Nov 01, 2014


Since the idea was introduced as a stretch goal, the inclusion of a first person shooter component in Star Citizen has been a somewhat debated topic. There have been legitimate questions about how feasible it would be to add that sort of thing in an already ambitious project, and many have concerns that the attempt might come off feeling cheap or slapped in. We’ve all seen those games where something was just forced in for the extra bullet on the box. For the sake of expanding the potential audience of a game, things can sometimes be added that end up detracting from the quality of the overall game.
Read more of Red Thomas's Star Citizen: A Great Deal of Hope for the Newly Minted FPS Module.
Like many, I was deeply concerned about Star Citizen’s FPS module. I knew it was added because it seemed like a really cool idea, but the technology to do it was so divergent from the game’s space sim roots that I couldn’t help but have a knot in my stomach over the idea. Then, I saw something that gave me hope. As they’ve done with several other parts of the project, CIG outsourced the FPS module to folks who have more experience working with that genre.
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Lunch time is over, maggots. The FPS module is inbound, and it’s angry.Even with that, I wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but my recent conversation with Kedhrin Gonzales, IllFonic's co-founder and creative director, gives me a great deal more hope for the future of the module. Kedhrin took time out of his busy schedule to Skype for a bit about what we can expect to see out of the FPS module and how it should fit into the persistent game. IllFonic is a company with some experience with producing shooters, which lends a certain weight to what Kedhrin says of their plans with respect to Star Citizen.
The Mechanics
When I initially ask him about what we can expect of the first-person shooter module in Star Citizen, Kedhrin says,“The FPS module will essentially have every mechanic that is in the whole picture of what is FPS.” It goes beyond that though, because “the overall design theory of making this FPS system has been very sandbox-driven,” he notes in explaining some of the big differences due to the scenario-based nature of the new module. Due to the module being developed to function as a part of the larger game, you’re not likely to have any one situation that allows you to experience everything there is to offer in the module. “Players can do so many different things,” as Kedhrin explains.
To address that, Kedhrin tells me that they’re developing a series of scenarios to showcase some of the different highlights of the new module. He says, “Some of the levels may be the standard team deathmatch style call to elimination that will highlight all the core mechanics like movement, weapons, armor-types, and that sort of thing. Also, [it will] highlight all the good stuff, like zero-gee fighting.”
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Boarding parties will need to worry as much about the hostile space environment as they will the defenders.“[The initial release of the module] may not showcase the really cool stuff you’ll see in the persistent-based universe where you fly your ship and jump out the airlock to land on another guy’s ship. You blow out the wall, suck everybody outside, and then you go in… Those are the mechanics that we have some other modules planned for highlighting,” he continues. So like the space sim portion of the game, I think we can expect both run-and-gun type scenarios in the FPS module, as well as additional team-based objective-driven matches to select from.
All the standard movement will be coded in, to include prone, crouch, and leaning. Though when asked about jumping, Kedhrin suggests there’ll be a little less emphasis placed on it. Jumping is certainly in, but may not what you expect it to be. “Because it’s more hardcore, jumping isn’t really a mechanic players would be using as much.” Instead, there’ll be context-sensitive movement like jumping over railings or climbing ladders, and a typically over-emphasized jump mechanic would sort of break the immersion of the overall experience.
The seriously cool aspect of this FPS element is the zero-gee fighting, though. Getting around in zero-gee probably isn’t that bad if you have thrusters, but what if you don’t? “If you don’t have thrusters, then we’re introducing a push-pull mechanic,” Kedhrin explains eagerly. “If you move away from a surface, you’re essentially just floating at whatever velocity you left that surface. You could be floating dangerously in the middle of an open hanger, and you’re just a sitting duck until you come to the next wall.”
The Damage Modeling
I also asked Mr. Gonzales to tell me a bit about how damage is handled in the game. He began with, “we have lower arm, upper arm, lower leg, upper leg, torso, and head. The health system is pretty complex on the back end, but what’s introduced to the player is fairly straight-forward.” That’s not to say it’s just a standard percent of health, though. Kedhrin goes on to say, “We didn’t want to introduce too much of a gamey element like, ‘oh, I have 100% health.’ On a ship it makes sense, but on you as a human being, it doesn’t really make much sense at all. So instead, what we have a status monitor that gives you an overall status of your body.”
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Where you get hit matters, so be prepared to take advantage of cover.That monitor gives the status of your extremities in various states like normal, lightly wounded, heavily wounded, or ruined. Kedhrin says that “ruined would be where a limb got blown off or a grenade went off right beside you.” Once a limb is ruined, you’re put into a state of bleeding out. Also, there’s some crossover to the persistent world because if it’s ruined, that’ll be a limb that may need to be replaced with a mechanical one. That’s assuming you live at all, of course.
Damage can be healed in combat, though. Well, it’s probably more accurate to say that you can be patched up in combat. Kedhrin tells me that battlefield triage can only take a limb to the next state, so a heavily wounded limb can only be taken to being lightly wounded with your typical field dressing. “We don’t want a game where you can have a medkit, just press use, and be back to normal,” Kedhrin says when I ask about the limitation.
According to Kedhrin a good example would be if “your leg gets ruined and you use a personal medkit to stop the bleeding. Your limb is still ruined, but now you’re not bleeding out. The rest of your limbs are kind of messed up. You can heal those limbs up to their last status, but not to fully healed.” Though there are other larger medkits that can be carried to do more, but at the expense of being able to carry heavy weapons.
The larger medkits can potentially heal damaged limbs up to full health, but not ruined. If a limb is ruined, you’ll have to wait until after the battle to get to a medical facility to have it healed or replaced. This all ties into a larger health system where damage degree and location have actual impact on your character. Specifics aren’t being released publically yet, but expect to see some pretty cool effects dependent on the various types of damage.


The Equipment
No FPS conversation is serious until you’ve discussed equipment. Star Citizen’s complex model for ships is carried over into the FPS portion of the game, and Kedhrin was also willing to talk a bit about the equipment and gadgets players will have access to in the game. The way he describes what they’re doing sounds pretty dang cool, too.

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The current plan for the modules is to choose a loadout before you go into combat or have a pre-defined loadout in the case of some modules, sort of like the current implementation of dogfighting. In fact, the dogfighting module really parallels the route the FPS module is taking in a lot of ways, so you can draw a lot of conclusions from how they’re doing that. Just as you pick a loadout in the hanger and then enter a simulated combat scene with your ship, you’ll be able to do the same thing with your character.
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A sharp eye will tell you a lot about your opponent, what he can do, and whether he has any ammo left.​
The loadout you chose is set for that match and can be changed between events, but just like ships, the persistent mode will be no where nearly as controlled or restricted. Players will have armories on their ships for storing gear and for selecting loadouts in the persistent universe. Though, that assumes you can make it to the armory and gear up in time.
Remember when we were talking about fighting in zero-gee? Here’s where it starts becoming important in the persistent universe. “If you’re in your captain’s chair on your ship, you’re more than likely in no armor, or light armor,” notes Kedhrin. Because armor is restrictive, you don’t tend to wear it all the time. Kedhrin goes on to say that if you’re attacked, “You need to get out of your chair, run to the armory, and manually select each weapon you want.”
All gear will be visual on your avatar in the game, as well. Kedhrin specifically pointed out that gadgets, weapons, grenades, and even clips will be visible, and even targetable by players. So, I’m not sure about you, but we’re going to be very discriminating on who carries grenades in my crew, and especially specific about who has to stand near them.
Weapons and gear will be selectable via mouse-wheel or by hitting number keys, and with the expanding selection of gear, that’ll be important. Besides the medical gear already mentioned, Kedhrin tells me that there’ll also be a hologram device for burning up opponents’ limited ammo supply and confusing them. There’ll also be something like a personal shield generator, turrets, and a mine similar to a modern claymore. However, something tells me C4-accellerated ball bearings may not be standard issue for ship-board combat. Added to all of that, there’ll be a selection of several ammo types for each weapon.
What and how much you can carry will be somewhat limited by the type of armor you’re carrying, and then titan armor types come with systems built in. You may not want to just load up heavy, though. There’ll be mechanics like breathing built into the game to create some balance between gear and mobility.
The Result
There’s no solid answer yet, but all signs point to a release of the FPS module early next year. Kedhrin notes that the mechanics of Star Citizen’s FPS module is pretty different from everything else out there, if for no other reason than its close ties to the space sim and persistent world aspects of the game. That means they’ve had to do a lot of initial design on the backend to support integrations that you wouldn’t see in a typical FPS game, but they’ve worked their way through that and have been making big strides forward.
Like ships, FPS in the finished game will be utilized in several ways from the single player experiences in Squadron 42, to the populated space of the persistent universe. Also, just like the training sims for ships, players will be able to compete in FPS sims without risk of losing life or, quite literally, limb. This’ll be important for those who want to play a more mercenary-type role, by giving you a way to demonstrate your prowess via the leader boards.
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Complex = Awesome with the FPS module, but what does that mean for future mods?​
The selection of ammo types and complex damage modeling hint at some seriously cool mechanics on down the road, as well. I’m fairly sure there are some great ideas still being worked, but a system like this begs for awesome mods by the community if nothing else.
Which actually brings me to my one red flag. First, I should point out that I don’t really have any integration concerns. After spending plenty of time with the Austin office where all the really important stuff happens tying things into the persistent universe and getting to know the folks working that part of the game, I think I have a decent feel for how they’re handling it. The integration part is constantly in the front of every developer’s mind and I don’t expect to see trouble there.
If there’s a problem, I think it’ll with that initial vision of fans hosting their own servers. There are some truly enormous systems being built into this game, and as cool as the FPS module is, I can’t imagine anyone being able to host it and all the other modules on a single server. The complexity also suggests a lot of flexibility, but those of us with programing experience know flexibility is another word for coder’s hell. The promised engineering books may end up being an engineering library from the look of it, assuming it’s even something that’s still feasible.
Yeah, that bothers me a little. There’s no doubt that this has moved well beyond the game that I helped to fund a couple years ago. That’s not to say it’s bad, but rather just different. Though, while CIG has obviously struggled a bit with those growing pains here and there, I have to say that the FPS module Kedhrin Gonzales speaks about makes it sound like they’re pushing through the problems well enough.
If nothing else, I now know the FPS module is in the hands of a passionate group of people with the experience to pull off some really great things. The start they’ve made on it shows passion and creativity matched against skills and experience, which bodes really well for Star Citizen’s next installment. One more reason why trusty “Vera” and I will be seeing you in the ‘verse!
Click to expand...
Lunch time is over, maggots. The FPS module is inbound, and it’s angry.
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Read more at http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm#ej8QiUVuu50qgyVF.99

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Get your first look at Star Citizen's FPS gameplay

(3 hours ago)
Betas, Sci-Fi, Screenshots, Video, MMOFPS, Sandbox, Star Citizen
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Star Citizen's first-person shooter gameplay has often gone overlooked in its large (and mostly space-bound) features package, but this weekend it's been the star of the show at PAX Australia.

In a 10-minute demo, the devteam ran a four-player co-op mission through a dilapidated space station. Eurogamer notes that animations are synced between viewpoints and players, and that players can move their heads independent of their guns.

The FPS module is currently scheduled to be released (among other things) in 2015. You can get your first look at this combat in the screenshots and video below.
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Star Citizen FPS


Continue Reading


 
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Getting Furious in the Rundown

Marissa has the latest from the Marvel cinematic universe, a first look at Furious 7, and more like the Star Citizen FPS modual in the Rundown.

Also more Recently
Star Citizen passes $60M in fundraising, becoming 'single, coherent vision'

by Justin Olivetti (47 minutes ago)
Betas, Sci-Fi, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen
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Star Citizen appears to be unstoppable, with the in-development space sim passing the $60,000,000 crowdfunding mark this past weekend.

The $60M barrier unlocked the Aegis Bulldog fighter stretch goal. Moving forward, Chris Roberts revealed the next few milestone goals: the Espera Prowler boarding ship ($61M) and the Genesis-class Starliner ($62M).

"I think I speak for everyone on the team when we say it really feels like Star Citizen is starting to go from a series of modules to a single, coherent vision," Roberts said before teasing "a few more surprises" before the year is out.

 
Star Citizen's Roberts on job boards, affecting AI, and more

(1 hour ago)
Sci-Fi, Video, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Star Citizen
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Got a few minutes for a Star Citizen update? Good, because this week's 10 for the Chairman is available for viewing. If you're new to 10FtC, it's a video sitdown with Chris Roberts where he fields subscriber questions and does his best to answer them.

Roberts talks about everything from in-game job boards (both NPC- and player-run) to capturing capital ships to the effects of player action on Star Citizen's AI. Click past the cut to watch the full episode! Continue Reading


 
Star Citizen's crowdfunding total tops $61 million

(35 minutes ago) Sci-Fi, Business Models, Game Mechanics, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Sandbox, Crowdfunding, Star Citizen
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What's better than $60 million in crowdfunding support? $61 million, of course, and that's what space sim sandbox Star Citizen's sitting at today. Cloud Imperium boss Chris Roberts has penned his usual Letter from the Chairman in response to another million-dollar milestone. This particular milestone unlocked the Espera Prowler, which Roberts says will be interesting to watch during the build process since it's an alien design that will be retrofitted for human use.

The letter also features a poll that allows backers to choose Star Citizen's third starter ship.

 



Star Citizen : Change is in the Air

Posted Nov 18, 2014 by Suzie Ford


My feelings on the subject of Star Citizen are shrouded in more shades of grey than the murkiest Seattle skyline. I’m a Golden Ticket holder, Imperator, High Admiral, and very nearly the first writer to report on the game as being a major movement in the gaming community. If I wasn’t the first to point out how it’d shape the future of the industry, I was dang close. Beyond seeing the historical impact this game was bound to have, I’m also a straight up fan. I’ve been a fan of Chris Roberts and his games since senior developers were few enough that we actually knew most of their names.
Read more of Red Thomas's Star Citizen: Change is in the Air.
Today, I’m going to walk through where a few of my conflicted feelings appear to be coming from in an attempt to analyze the current health of the Star Citizen project. This is something very similar to what I did not long ago with another favorite project of mine, Shroud of the Avatar. Even more so than with Shroud, I have a somewhat love/hate relationship with Star Citizen, so let’s get going and dig right into some of the more recent stuff.
Eric Peterson
Star Citizen may be Chris’s game, but it’s not stretching a bit to say that Eric Peterson made it. Eric’s extensive experience with producing and developing games has been the ballast this rocking ship of a game has desperately needed, and his excitement and candor probably deserves more credit for the game’s success than even Chris Robert’s name. Eric loves making video games with a passion that just makes you want to cheer every time you see him in his element.
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Star Citizen, in many ways is the game Wingman built.Eric has been the soul in Star Citizen’s development in so many ways that you can’t help but be rocked to the core at his recent announcement that he’s leaving the team. I have a serious knot in my stomach at what his absence could mean for the eventual game. There are still plenty of exceptional people involved with the project, but the recent exodus of several long-time members of the original team can’t help but raise hairs on the back of my neck. While it doesn’t herald impending doom, this is the sort of thing that immediately raises red flags, and you have to step back and take a hard look at the situation.
There are indications that this isn’t as dire as it might appear, though. As central as he is to the culture behind this massive project, Eric could have created serious waves on his way out. However, in an unmitigated demonstration of class, Mr. Peterson has quietly left the building. Not only did he refrain from blasting the situation that necessitated his departure, but he modestly expressed sincere faith in the future of the enterprise and his respect for everyone still working on it. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve never in my life seen a deed more nobly done.
Culture, the Darker Grey
No matter how smooth the exit, Wingman’s departure still concerns me, though. In a lot of ways, it’s indicative of a larger issue with the emerging culture around this game, and that culture’s departure from the roots that it was founded on. Spend a little time in chat or on the forums and you begin to note the slightly more juvenile influence fairly quickly.
The early days of struggling to make the crowdfunding goals were attended by a significantly different crowd. A very large part of us were employed in technical fields like programming or engineering, and the conversations demonstrated that fact quite obviously as we debated various aspects of the game. Earlier suggestions in the forums seemed to come with far more substantive and tenable concepts for expanding the game, and there was a great deal more tolerance for dissenting ideas.
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Early fans of the game coordinated periodic food deliveries to CIG Austin.How the change happened is pretty easy to spot, I think. Due to many of the younger gamers not being as familiar with the space sim genre, it created a fairly mature core audience initially. As the game got off the ground, the early backers were mostly composed of long-time space sim fans who were nostalgic for a taste of their youth. Being a bit older, I think our voices tended to carry a modest amount of weight with those around us as we discussed games that interested us and why. Our obvious excitement over this fantastic new project pulled in a wave of friends, which of course only helped to further fund the game.
With each successive generation of new fans created by the spreading excitement, the pool of technically-minded and more mature backers became increasingly diluted. The project spread to younger demographics and wider audiences, and the natural result is what we see surrounding the game now. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, but rather that it’s no longer a different collective from what you’d find around any other popular MMO these days. That’s a bit of a buzzkill for many of us who looked forward to something a little more niched, but there are some distinct advantages.


West Coast vs No Coast
Another problem I have with where the game is going is the shift away from Austin. When the game initially funded, I threw myself into it with a great deal of excitement. Not only was it an under-represented genre, but the core cadre behind its development would be in Austin. I’m one of those guys who’ll pay a little more for a head of cabbage or ear of corn if I know it was sourced locally, and games are no different from produce when it comes to supporting the local economy.

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Plus, being developed in Austin set Star Citizen apart from most other games, which tend to be developed on the East or West coasts of the US. It meant hiring from the local pool, which promotes the technology field among kids who might not otherwise have considered it as a career, and it also created what I felt to be a unique development atmosphere that would translate to a better eventual game.
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The LA office felt like a satellite office as it opened, but it’s become much more central to the development since.With the core of the game’s development now being located in LA and pulling on many of the developers who have been involved in several other games, I kind of start to worry that there’s less chance of the cool ideas we might have had otherwise. Do I expect that tenacious adherence to rugged individuality so common to Texans to be replaced in part by a somewhat more Californian desire to make sure no one acts too mean or finds too much success? I’m not exactly worried about folks breaking down in folk song, but yeah a little bit. I kind of am concerned about the cultural shift. It’s not a totally rational fear, but it’s there in the back of my head and I can’t seem to get rid of it.
Of Proportion and Pellucidity
Somewhat related to each other, are the issues of scope and transparency. As Star Citizen has grown steadily more complex, so I think they’ve started to stray away from two of their earlier promises to backers. The first, and I think least likely resolved is the idea that players will be able to host their own servers with modified versions of the code.
The universe has grown massively compared to the hand-full of planets that were initially planned. With the inclusion of a massive economic model supporting that expanded universe and the complexity behind the newly unveiled FPS system, I don’t think there’s much chance of any normal user being able to host out their own shard of the game for their friends. The horse-power required to host something like that puts it too far out of reach, I think.
Additionally, I suspect that there’s a great deal of proprietary code in the outsourced components like Moon Collider’s AI system, and I’m not sure they’d take too kindly to it being turned over to the community for modification. I’ve been told CIG owns the rights to the AI, but I’d be surprised if those rights allow them to make the source code publically available for modders to start carving into.
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The size of the universe in Star Citizen has exploded past the initial planets originally planned for.I also note that you don’t really hear the team talking about community-driven post-development like you did in the earlier days, and that’s how this relates to the second point of transparency. It’s not a new point for me, as I’ve dinged CIG a number of times for failing to be as open with the community as I feel they should. What you might find interesting about this time, is that I’m about to start defending them for it.
No, I don’t like it, and I’d really like to see it change. I do understand it though, and that’s why this is the point in the article where I start swinging towards defending CIG and what they’re doing with Star Citizen. I think the combination of the game’s expanding scope and expanding audience has required Chris and his team take a different track than they’d intended with the original funding campaign. Not only is the audience larger, but it’s demographically different than what they’d started with.
The current audience is far less prepared to deal with the realities of game development than the one the team originally attracted. It’s not a mark against them though, and really should be considered a plus as a testament to how diverse it’s become. The original fan base, as I said, was far more technical. That had its own appeal, but the current audience has a diversity that’s really more likely to aid in the creation of a richer and more sustainable game.
Defending the Decisions
If you’re one of those rabid fans who can’t stand anyone questioning your team, you’ve probably quit reading by now. On the off chance you’re still around, let me tell you a bit about why I’m not as angry as it may sound. The truth is, while I really am a little upset about some of the directions the game’s development has gone, it’s with the full realization that it’s due to Star Citizen’s dramatic success.
The game is far larger than it was ever intended to be, so the idea of crowdsourcing the later development is no longer needed. It’s really actually better that they don’t, because the more professionally developed software will be far more sustainable in the long run. The higher quality product will also attract a much larger crowd, as they’ve demonstrated, and that translates to a more interesting in-game experience with a better chance to stay current for a longer period of time.
It also means we’ll see more ships, more planets, more of everything, than we would have ever seen before, and it’s really hard to argue with any of that. It’s still a bitter pill to swallow for those who’ve been around from the start, so you’ll just have to be understanding when we holders of the Golden Ticket lament our loss. You see, there was a time when Star Citizen wasn’t Chris’s game, it was our game, but that’s not really true anymore. I, and others, really need to learn to be okay with that.
These days, Star Citizen is bigger and in many ways better, and it’s probably time we stopped holding CIG to a standard they set for a game that no longer really exists. Trying to hold them to a standard that’s no longer tenable isn’t helping the game, and it’s frankly more likely to hurt it. That’s why I’m trying really hard to get past what I expected and appreciate what will be delivered. After all, I’ve heard it said that if you love something, you have to let it go…
Good bye, Wingman.
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General : Crowd Power: The Future of Video Games

Posted Dec 18, 2014


Five years ago in the summer of 2009 a single independent developer released a small alpha build for a game that he was working on in his spare time. Two years later, the full release version of Minecraft rolled out amid a tidal wave of excited gamers. It could be said that Markus Persson single-handedly pulled indie video game development into the lime light.
Read more of Red Thomas's Crowd Power: The Future of Video Games.

Since Minecraft stormed into popular culture, Valve introduced their Greenlight service and began promoting indie games and a number of development tools for creating them, Kickstarter and other crowdfunding websites saw a wild surge in popularity, and other dramatic other shifts in the economics of the video gaming industry have taken place. As tools were developed to place more power in the hands of the crowd and as game developers learned to harness the creativity among their fans, we’ve seen the first real shift in the way the video game industry conducts business since the initial surge of online gaming in the late 1990’s.

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What started with a serious growl from Minecraft has turned into a full-throated roar with Star Citizen, the new massively multiplayer online (MMO) space-simulator and brainchild of game-pioneer, Chris Roberts. Star Citizen was initially crowdfunded in the fall of 2012, with the team asking a modest $2 million initial funding for the project and offering stretch goals through $4 million. They ended up clearing over $6 million by the end of their campaign, which was well beyond any of their initial goals. All that is just a drop in the bucket next to the $55 million dollar mark they currently sit at. That’s more than twice what Chris Roberts had initially projected as the total cost of development.
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Chris Roberts and team captured the power of the crowd to not only fund a game, but promote it.Other games like Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar and Jon Mavor’s Planetary Annihilation have successfully reached out to fans for initial funding, a very suggestive sign that the current trend has likely passed beyond mere fad and into the realm of established economic models and business strategies. A large part of the draw for backers? The opportunity to help contribute to the game they helped to fund via something called “crowdsourced development.”
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are two sides of the same coin. Where crowdfunding is community-driven funding of a project, crowdsourcing takes advantage of the group’s diverse talents and large labor pool to actually do the work of building the game. It’s not just a model for indie developers and niche games, though. Some of the largest developers and publishers are rapidly switching gears to take advantage of the new trend.
Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), which originally came to fame in the online gaming market through their EverQuest and PlanetSide games, has adapted to the new norm with all alacrity. As President of SOE, John Smedley is a guy who follows trends in the video game industry closely, and SOE’s success can be directly attributed to his ability to perceive the flows of that market. SOE has made a major push to crowdsource items in all their games over the last couple years, and I had the chance to ask him about his thoughts on the subject recently at SOE Live in Las Vegas.
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“The strategy where we were making everything was just untenable.” – John SmedleyMr. Smedley specifically pointed out how different SOE’s operating strategy was today compared to how it was even five years ago due to the rise in crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. “It’s a complete and total make-over of SOE,” he remarked. “We’re building the foundation of our company on croudsourcing. Though, community-building would be a better way to put it, because our goal is to build a core-community that is dedicated to building cool stuff and getting paid for it. We built a set of tools that we think are fantastic, and so now we’re giving them to the players hoping that they’ll build some cool stuff.” There’s no doubt the move has been a successful idea as some participants in SOE’s Player Studio are already earning enough to live on by selling their products to fellow players. “We’ve just been blown away,” Smedley said as he described some of the amazing things to come out of their new community of builders.
Though it grew to popularity in the video game industry as a method of encouraging backers to contribute, crowdsourcing has actually been around a long time. Our Android phones are actually the offshoot of several open source projects. Even in games, whole communities have grown up around creating modifications and hacks for released games, some of them even becoming more popular than the original game. DayZ, a zombie-survival mod for a game called Arma II ended up being far more popular than the original game, and even helped spur the current growth in the survival horror genre, including SOE’s game H1Z1.
John Smedley is very frank about how good crowdsourcing is for larger companies, as well. One of the largest complaints about MMO games has always been that there was a limited amount of content, and that new content development was too slow. “The strategy where we were making everything was just untenable. There’s just too many examples of players blitzing through content way faster than we could possibly make it. This is the only logical outcome of that,” Smedley explains.
Richard Garriott, another big name in the video game industry, has teamed up with Executive Producer Starr Long to produce the spiritual successor of their genre-defining game, Ultima Online. Their new game, Shroud of the Avatar, started as a crowdfunding campaign and moved right into a very crowdsourced development. Fans have contributed everything from music and art for the game, to major assets like terrain and buildings.
Crowdsourcing is a major component of Shroud’s development. Where SOE has created a lot of success in their game PlanetSide 2 post-release by giving players to chance to build their own cosmetic assets, Shroud of the Avatar is giving fans the opportunity to build the actual game. In both cases players get some compensation. Players sell cosmetic items in PlanetSide 2 to other players and make real money from it. Richard and Starr are also paying cash to fans for contributions to their game, or offering them twice as much if they take their payment in the form of in-game items from the cash shop.
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Richard Garriott and team has sourced a lot of their game’s content from the crowd.Both systems have proven to be very successful for both players and developers. Eric Peterson, former Producer for Star Citizen, once pointed out that it’s in large part due to several years of gamers slowly having become accustomed to paying for access to earlier and rougher versions of games. The definition of beta access has changed over the last decade from being a test, to being free publicity, to the point where it’s now actually part of the economic model of most MMOs.
The changing landscape has impacted more than just video games, as New York Times best-selling author Tracy Hickman has demonstrated recently in a crowdfunding project of his own. While most know him from his famed Dragonlance series of novels, Mr. Hickman now has his hand in a newly crowdfunded table-top game called Sojourner’s Tales.
While Tracy Hickman comes off as a humble and unassuming gentleman, don’t allow his congeniality fool you. He just happens to have some amazingly intelligent insight on the growth of crowdfunding and what it may mean for the future of the industry. He notes that, “crowdfunding has revolutionized the approach to games... Many established game designers who have gone through traditional channels in the past, at least from my perspective, have almost universally moved to crowdfunding in terms of getting their projects done.”
He goes on to say that the advantages of crowdfunding are that you’re no longer restricted by the game companies and their concepts of what fit within their bottom line or market niche. That means that with crowdfunding, you’re not beholden to anyone other than your fans. You’re also not trying to fit the company’s mold, “as much as you’re trying to find an audience and address their needs directly.”
Hickman also notes that the internet and popularity of social media has “opened up so many avenues for [game developers] to address the audience directly and interact with the audience. The more traditional ways to distribute a product are rapidly being challenged and made obsolete.” More importantly, Hickman indicates that his job is increasingly less about pleasing publishers and agents, than it is about pleasing his audience. That’s a really awesome thing, and Tracy Hickman is even starting up a series of classes to help authors learn to be more in touch with their audiences and responsive to them.
What was particularly insightful in my conversation with Tracy Hickman, was his remark about the similarities in what we’re seeing with video games today to the latter days of Big Hollywood and rise in indie films in the 1950s. In many ways, indie films helped saved cinema in a time where television was making that form of entertainment too accessible. A situation not too dissimilar from today’s surge in easily accessible games for the mobile platform. Hickman says, “we’re moving through the same lessons [with games and books], as we learned in the ‘50s about the film industry in terms of publishing.”
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Tracy Hickman is looking to create classes on understanding crowdfunding and how to interact with fans through it.At the end of the ‘50s and moving into the ‘60s, the film industry was on the verge of collapse because it was a vertical monopoly. Film companies controlled everything from having the actors, the writers, and the directors under contract, to even owning the point of distribution in the form of the theaters. “Publishing for books and games is the same way,” says Hickman, who then astutely points out, “what happened was that independent producers came in and major film studios figured out that they weren’t in the business of making movies. They were in the business of financing movies. Once they figured that out, you had these independent directors coming in and making movies like Easy Rider and counter-culture films that big studios would have never done before.”
If Tracy Hickman’s suggested analog holds as true for game industry as it did for the film industry, we could really be looking at a fantastic next decade in video games. Though, perhaps we’ll see fewer of the vast and sweeping epics in years to come as we have over the past decade. It’s hard to do Gone with the Wind or Ben-Hur on an indie budget, but the air of experimentation in films over the last several decades has matured to the point where some are back to trying.
Thanks to crowdfunding, what’s happening to video games may be even better in many ways. For the most part, film makers still have to pitch ideas to big studios. Game makers can pitch their idea directly to us, and then we’ll even help them make it. There’s some danger in that though, because not all of them are going to make the finish line.
Some projects may fail due to poor planning or inexperience. Great ideas still need to be balanced of the framework of feasibility, and without experienced hands there to guide money away from bad projects, we’ll likely see some major busts before long. Then, there’s the lack of any legal recourse in current crowdfunding options. That makes the perfect breeding ground for scams.
A major concern is that the first time a scam hits a crowdfunding campaign and impacts a larger group of people, the immediate reaction will be a call for legal reform. The problem is that knee-jerk legislative remedies are never a good thing. To prevent it from happening, we need to look at the situation now and apply prudent measures before the process gets damaged via excess drama.
Raising money to kick off new projects is not a new concept, though. That means there are already laws in most countries for how to control it, and how to protect contributors from scams. Legislators need to be encouraged now to compare existing laws and regulations to the new process and adapt as necessary. The most important thing is to do everything possible not to stifle the opportunity for new entrepreneurs and artists that this new medium creates.
If we can work through the problems inherent in any new system while protecting the possibilities offered by it, and the big game developers can be as successful at adapting to the new environment as companies such as Cloud Imperium Games, Portalarium, and Sony Online Entertainment have been, then it’s easy to see a bright future ahead for the video game industry. It may be a future full of great new titles that are targeted at specific audiences, rather than being merely acceptable to most of them. The best of all will be that these games will come from new talent, rather than established industry professionals. That means we can expect a creativity in the field that we probably haven’t seen since the ‘90s, if even then. Today is a great day to game, and tomorrow may be even better.

Red Thomas / A veteran of the US Army, raging geek, and avid gamer, Red Thomas is that cool uncle all the kids in the family like to spend their summers with. Red lives in San Antonio with his wife where he runs his company and works with the city government to promote geek culture. Follow him on Twitter as: @RedThomas_
Author: Red Thomas
Created: December 18, 2014
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