Star Citizen adds Kickstarter option
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Chris Roberts' new PC space sim launches campaign through popular crowd-funding service following original response that crashed website.
When Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts announced his new space combat simulator Star Citizen last week and called on users to help fund it, the game's website became overloaded and buckled. In response to this, Roberts and his development studio Cloud Imperium Games today launched a Kickstarter campaign with a $500,000 target in an effort to reach the project's overall $2 million funding goal. The effort closes November 19.
Issues with the original site--which included multi-day outages--did not put a damper on the effort entirely. The fund amassed over $1 million, half of its total target, in pledges during its first week. In a statement, Roberts said this is a testament to the enthusiasm of its 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," he said. "We appreciate all those efforts and now with Kickstarter, we believe we have an answer for everyone."
Star Citizen has been in development at Cloud Imperium Games for 12 months. The game itself includes a "sophisticated storyline" that is set in a persistent online universe. According to Roberts, it will fuse elements of his previous games, Wing Commander and Freelancer, and support for the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift is planned.
“In recent years, game designers have stopped innovating and pushing the boundaries of what you can do in this genre,” Roberts said in a statement. “I plan on bringing that kind of development mentality back into PC gaming and space sims in particular."
Much like Guild Wars 2, Star Citizen will be available through a one-time purchase, but will not require a subscription. Players can also purchase virtual items with real-world money to customize their ships.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
66 comments
Also the ingame shop? For feck sake! This idea is getting implemented in almost all recent multiplayer games in one way or another ffs... it eventually becomes so that people paying are better than those not, always.
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Wow, wow, so many hate I got. I have a question. Have anyone of you got a game from developers who used Kickstarter? I mean, a real finished game that you "preordered"?
I stopped believing in Kickstarter when I read that ridiculous article about developers saying something like that: "You support us with some amount - you get a game. You pay us more - you might get another game. And if we raise more - you might get another game!". Pity that I can't remember exactly.
And I can't forget that Ouya with a ridiculous deadline. March 2013, what the hell? It takes much longer to developer hardware.
Totally stoked on this, however, the pay to win scenarios that keeps getting adopted by devs is disheartening. Is it just pay to customize or pay to kill? Just put it all in the game. The community is going to more than support your efforts.
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@Volgin @naomha1 In other words, the micro-transactions are there to allow users with a life to skip all the wasteful grinding that shouldn't have been in the thing in the first place. Grinding that only exists because if you don't have 'X hours of gameplay' on the box / review the gaming (don't have a life) populous throws virtual tomatoes at it.
Very excited about this. Chris Robert's games were nearly all well ahead of their time.
1 Like kickstarters are where you pledge $$$ to make a project happen, rather than pay money after the project is complete. You are an investor rather than a customer. It allows things to be made that would not have, due to the 'real publishers' reluctance to invest. For your kickstart funds, as an investor, you get rewarded at completion. You financially back a game that you want to play. There are strict rules, ie 100% funding must be collectively made, otherwise NO payments are enacted, ie start again.
this game should be made by the players for the players (well financially I mean)
OR we can just let EA handle this.....
good thing this game's only only coming out in 2 years or more because firstly, the hardware specs needed to run this thing right now are off the charts and crazy expensive (i presume cause it's cryengine) and secondly, if people have been dumping bundles of money into this game (not a bad thing), then they need the time to make enough money to buy a gaming rig that will actually play the game.
@aniforprez The site says the game utilizes the latest hardware but doesn't state it requires the latest hardware to run in the first place.
I don't think they would be so stupid as to alienate 95% of the pc community that don't run a GTX 580 / 670 similar.
Since they are developing for the pc hardcore I bet they will have some decent optimization. And the game would still look groundbreaking on the lower settings.
@PetJel @aniforprez Totally likely mate, as Chris Roberts already talked about polygon scaling in the tech demo, its very likely that lower detail settings will render the game with a lower polygon count; since the game is a space sim, there are no environments except the occasional asteroid or planet, so fewer textures to process.
Not to mention that if you have a PC that can run the crappy console ports that we PC gamers tend to get (most of them don't process more than 3 threads at a time, even though our processors may be able to handle 8), then running a game specifically optimized for the PC should not be a problem.
@aniforprez The graphics card for the live demo was a Geforce 670 - so current high end pcs should be able to handle it.
@gufberg @aniforprez Nah, the tech demo was maxed on a GTX 670, which ofc is a $600 card (I have one), but in a year its gonna be $300 or less... and mind u this card is a beast, its just crazily overpowered for current games lol..
@LesserAngel @gufberg @aniforprez Yeh lol forgot Im in India n everything high end is more expensive here, except TV's and Cellphones lol, we mass produce those like thers no tomorrow xD
@shruteshkumar @aniforprez True i've got it. In retrospect i could've purchased a Radeon 7950 or something like that. But i had money burning in my wallet lol ..
@doraemonllh1989 @gufberg @aniforprez Also the beta doesn't even start till like 22-24 months into production, when ever that starts, JESUS. And that can change at anytime, could be longer than that.
@doraemonllh1989 @gufberg @aniforprez Hopefully Moore's law holds true and that means you can get a rig that will handle this game and not have it be $1000 or more dollars
@doraemonllh1989 @gufberg @aniforprez by the time it comes out 2-4 years(?) I doubt that the Geforce 670 will be all that high end. So it's possible that the tech to run this game won't be too expensive. You maybe able to run close to max without it killing your bank account
Just out of curiosity, if someone can name me a game, that came from kickstarter, that actually got released and played decent. Let me know. I haven't seen a single one. Game looks good by the way.
@cdragon_88 kickstarter isn't 100% of the funding though.
Roberts has deals for private investment, though a condition for it apparently, is he needs to prove this kind of game will be popular, which is basically what he is doing with kickstarter/his pledging website.
If he secures some of the funding through the public, he will get a lot of his funding from the investors.
@shingui5 @cdragon_88 War of the Roses had Kickstarted funding as well. Not sure if it was 100% funded by it, but at least some of it.
1 Like @cdragon_88 The just released Chivalry: Medieval Warfare received Kickstarter funding. It looks to be a high quality game.
@cdragon_88 Ravaged got some of its funds from kickstarter. they needed money to help fund making of trailers and marketing etc.
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2 Like @Volgin @cdragon_88 FTL was a kickstarter game? didn't know that, I still gotta try it out myself, it does look like fun.
3 Like @PeterDuck $60 here. Can't say no to the extra soundtrack, the map and other stuffs. If the soundtrack is at least as good as the one in Freelancer, I made profit.
@Trickymaster @PeterDuck I may change my pledge to 125 but I can't choose which ship I WANT!!
@Ghost345 @Trickymaster @PeterDuck I chose the fighter, probably gonna regret that though.
8 Like @PeterDuck I did $125 myself, would do $6m if I had the money, time to play the lottery!
7 Like VICTORY! This game is getting publicity! ONWARDS TO 2 MILLIONS AND BEYOND MY SPACE-OPERA DROOLING FRIENDS!
*whistles* one mill in pledges in a week, that's a lot of money, in a very short time.
I wonder if anyone bought the 'a day with Chris' thing :P
@shingui5 P.S. You really should check out the Kickstarter page, it's full of very, very bold claims about what this game will do.
its a year into production if you watch the video on his actual site everything he shows is ingame footage im pretty sure he can deliver a lot of what he says
2 Like This just goes to show how much gamers yearn for new ideas and original games. Roberts has always been in the game industry for the love of it, not the money. It's nice to see that he has so much support and is willing to take a chance with a once loved, but forgotten, genre. People are tired of the recycled crap being pumped into the game industry, and Robert's knows that.
@mhaed Agreed, his passion is infectious, when a dev builds something just for the joy of building it, you know its gonna be great.
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