‘Star Citizen’ Crowdfunds Another Million Dollars In Less Than A Week

The highly anticipated, gorgeous looking spearhead of the return of space sims known as Star Citizen was estimated to cost $20 million to develop. Via crowdfunding, the game has raised $25 million and has no need for a publisher or third-party investors and the game still has over a year before release. It’s a win for the genre as much as it is for the players.

So, where is the extra money going? To stretch goals that help the team at Cloud Imperium Games develop and expand features they couldn’t otherwise implement, and to set the groundwork for additional features and expansion that can come once the game launches next November.

At this point it’s a little unclear what the “release” of Star Citizen means when November 2014 comes around or if that date will hold up since it’s still early – sames goes for what exactly will be ready, if it will be labeled a “beta,” etc. It’s still over a year away, the team has the money, and all of the videos (check out the latest on the Hornet below) so far look great. There’s even a playable modulethat backers can download that lets players walk around and inside their pre-purchased ships. They’re very expensive, but they’re also pretty cool and other games of the genre haven’t offered that sort of immersiveness when it comes to boarding and exploring a space vessel.

There’s also another module on the way before the year’s out, one that actually lets players play a part of the game. The Dogfighting/Arena module will allow players to actually fly their ships and enter PvP combat against other players. How that’ll work with vastly different sizes and ship armaments we’re not quite sure, but the excitement for it combined with other upcoming developments is helping Star Citizen sell itself. Long-time PC gamers who remember the good ‘ol days of space sim domination in the ’90s couldn’t be happier and the game looks so good, that new players are jumping aboard daily.

In a Letter From The Chairman post on the game’s official site, creator Chris Roberts (the man behind the Wing Commander franchise) spoke about the game hitting the impressive, record-setting $25 million goal in less than a week, outlining the new features they’ll be able to work on and announcing the next stretch goal that’ll likely be hit in a few weeks or less.

What was unlocked at $25 million:
Enhanced Alpha – We will use additional funding to build a wider alpha test than we had originally intended for the first phase of Star Citizen’s launch. The initial plan was to first launch servers in North America and then expand to areas such as Europe and Australia to decrease latency in these areas, perfecting the game as we improve the experience around the world. This funding will allow us to invest in a wider infrastructure for our early testing, spinning up remote servers earlier. Hitting this goal will also allow us to increase the number of remaining alpha slots. Extra alpha slots not only means more Star Citizens will travel the ‘verse at launch, but that we will receive more feedback and more stress testing. This in turn will allow us to better balance and enhance the Star Citizen experience!

What’s next to be unlocked at $26 million:
Enhanced Capital Ship Systems – In addition to the command and control systems we’ve already outlined, we’re going to expand capital ship functions! Lead a damage control team to fight fires and repair key systems during battle, control internal bulkheads to slow boarders and man a number of consoles, like navigation and engineering, that will make commanding a capital ship feel even more immersive.

The just-announced $27 million goal:
Banu Merchantman Unlocked – Banu traders are renowned for their merchant prowess, traveling the spacelanes and trading with everyone from humans to the Vanduul! Their sturdy, dedicated trading ships are prized beyond all other transports, sometimes passing from generation to generation of Banu. At $23 million we dedicated additional resources to making Xi’An spacecraft a unique experience. At $27 million, we will expand that same thinking to the Banu! Starting with the merchant ship, the design team will expand Banu technology to offer players a completely different way of experiencing their universe.

The next goal, expanding capital ships, builds upon one of the most exciting elements Star Citizen is aiming to include – the ability to not only fly/command ships of various sizes, but the ability to join other players in actually boarding them in first-person combat scenarios. As for the newly announced Banu goal, the idea is to expand the lore and variety of ship types and alien races in the game. More the merrier

As to the growing concern for “feature creep,” a topic we addressed when discussing whether or not the stretch goals were adding “enough” to the game with the additional millions of dollars, Roberts again addressed the issue in his letter.

Even though we’ve fully funded the base game, every extra dollar helps to make the experience better. The content we talk about in these stretch goals isn’t “feature creep”; it’s elements we’ve been building and planning that will be all that more impressive with additional resources. In essence, you’re putting things we’ve already discussed for the future into development now. The extra funding means we’re secure in assigning resources to go ahead and begin developing that richer content we had initially planned to fund through the game’s success upon release.

In the coming months, Star Citizen will raise millions and millions more and expectations will continually rise with the surplus cash. Cloud Imperium will have to deliver fully on their announced intentions with a quality product – which we and backers have faith they can. The worst thing that can happen is if the game’s already profitable and brings in $30-40 million (or more) before release (i.e. twice it’s initial budget) and it doesn’t deliver on its promises when some players are paying as much as several hundred dollars to back it. With the crowdfunding campaign trending very high, it’s actually possible there’s more money than planned feature costs and that dreaded concept of “feature creep” may be looming on the horizon. We hope not with the pre-purchase/backer price of in-game ships costing more than full retail games.

For a taste of the first iteration of the Hangar Module with the most basic of purchasable ships, check out our gameplay video. See the latest stretch goals here. Screenshot galleries up top are of the Hornet vessel.

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‘Star Citizen’ Crowdfunding Hits $21 Million Mark – Are Stretch Goals Adding Enough?

About a month ago we reported that the development costs of the space sim StarCitizen would be fully covered by the game’s crowdfunding campaign a year before the game’s scheduled release date. It was an easy prediction and we were correct, but that was only the beginning – a new beginning of sorts as we approach tomorrow’s one-year anniversary of the game’s announcement.

Cloud Imperium Games Corporation, spearheaded by Wing Commander developer Chris Roberts, hit the $20 million crowdfunding milestone two weeks ago (the expected budget of the game) and in the two weeks since it’s raised another $1 million, unlocking another stretch goal feature and revealing the next goal on the list.

With the game’s costs now more than covered, the Cloud Imperium enters the territory of they-must-deliver. Unlike most Kickstarter games, there’s reason to more faith into Roberts and his team since he’s a proven developer and they came out the gate with exciting gameplay footage. Since then, they even released the first of several playable modules, proving that there’s significant work being done.

Below is the newly received concept art of the MobiGlas, the portable computer interface characters utilize to manage inventory, ships and to interact with pretty much anything.

By crossing the $21 million line, the following feature will be included in the main game:
Salvage Mechanic: Salvage isn’t an aside: it’s a career, with its own mechanic, story tie-ins and universe-shaping endgames. Search the galaxy for a host of valuable and interesting secrets using both the flight and FPS components. Discover the secrets of the ancient Hadesians, locate valuable components and cargo… or go down in history the first to make contact an entirely new alien race!

And here are the next two goals:
$22 million
Facial Capture System. We’ve researched a technology that uses a series of cameras to capture real heads and import them into the game. This will let the team more easily create a variety of realistic characters. In addition, the technology is mobile enough to allow us to take it on the road and capture select fans during special events! You can learn more about this technology at Infinite-Realities.
$23 million
Xi’an Scout Unlocked! The Khartu is the light attack craft of the Xi’An military. Contrary to Human ship design, the Khartu doesn’t have a traditional main thruster, instead featuring an array of maneuvering thrusters on articulated rigs. This design allows for incredible agility, making them the bane of UEE pilots, who bestowed the nickname ‘Quark’ because when all of the thrusters are firing, the ship looks like a spark flying through space. The Xi’an Aopoa corporation also manufactures an export model, the Khartu-al, for sale to human civilians as a dedicated scout/explorer. The export model features the same Xi’an maneuvering rig, but control surfaces modified for human use and a more limited armament. (Designer: Aopoa)

Breaking that down to its simplest form, if players invest $3 million dollars into Star Citizen, the game gets a single alien ship, facial capture tech and a character class. Obviously, it’s not as simple as that and we can expect a lot of the funds to go to expanding the development team and polishing other features, but it does raise a few concerns in a day and age when crowdsourced games are still an unproven commodity.

The first being the cost to players (read: supporters) of buying ships and other in-game items, most of which have price tags that are more expensive than the average price of an entire video game (see them here). For all we know the release of additional playable modules could boost the hype and funding momentum so much that by the time Star Citizen is ready for full release next November, the developers will have raked in an extra $10 million in exchange added ‘Stretch Goal’ features that may not cost that much to implement. This raises the questions of the immensely high prices being charged for players to purchase space ships – are they justified? If players are buying and happy to support does it even matter? If the money is being saved to continue development and content expansion post-launch, isn’t that good?

Here’s a great snippet from an interview with Dealspwn on the matter:


“So we got to a point where we went ‘Okay, well it doesn’t look like we need investors now. We are fully community funded and that’s the best because everyone who’s backed the game just wants a cool game, [and] I want to make a cool game – we’re not worried about ‘Okay, you’ll get your 10 X return on your investment.’ So as long as the game, even after it goes live, makes enough money to pay for the servers and add new content, then it’s great, you know, and anything over that would be gravy.”

The other major growing concern is the obvious nature of feature creep, something Chris Roberts – to his credit – openly addressed when they hit the $20 million goal. They even asked fans how they should proceed and the votes wanted more money going to more stretch goals. Roberts wrote in an open letter:


There has been some concern about “feature creep” with the additional stretch goals. You should all know that we carefully consider the goals we announce. Typically the stretch goals fall into two categories;

The first are goals that involve features we already have planned or have implemented, but we couldn’t create content because of budgetary constraints. The first person combat on select planets is a great example of this type of goal. We already have FPS combat as part of the game in ship boarding, and we already have most of this already functional thanks to CryEngine, as we essentially have Crysis3 functionality out of the box. But creating all the environments and assets to fill them is a huge task, so we were planning on not doing any planetside combat initially, simply because of its cost, with the idea that we would slowly roll it out once the game is live. But with the additional funds we can now afford to create some of this content earlier rather than later.

The facial capture system is an example of the second type, where we identify technology and equipment that will make the game better and allow us to be more nimble and economically efficient in continually creating content for the ongoing universe that we are aiming to support. The motion capture system and sound studio were goals that feel into this category.

But both types of goals are carefully considered — we don’t commit to adding features that would hold up the game’s ability to go “live” in a fully functional state. Also remember that this is not like a typical retail boxed product — there is no rule that all features and content have to come online at the same time! As you can see from the Hangar Module we plan to make functionality and content come on line as it’s ready, so you should look at the stretch goals as a window into the future of functionality and content additions we plan for the live game.

It would be amazing if all players could use a webcam or mobile device to capture their own face but that would result in a bunch of faces that don’t look like faces, sadly.

The worst thing that could happen is that millions of dollars (literally) go to features that the community are not impressed with or there becomes backlash to the exorbitant prices of in-game digital assets. Fortunately, Roberts has been extremely open and honest with the community and the official Roberts Space Industries website is loaded with awesome community-driven content, from artwork and news updates, to letters from Roberts himself and videos with members of the team.

And let’s not forget, Star Citizen is spearheading the return of a long-lost genre that deserves to be back at the top. That’s a win for everyone.

For a taste of the first iteration of the Hangar Module with the most basic of purchasable ships, check out our gameplay video. See the latest stretch goals here.

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‘Star Citizen’ Will Be Fully Funded A Year Before Release

Chris Roberts – the mind behind Wing Commander, Starlancer, Freelancer, etc. -unveiled the project that marked his return to video games just under a year ago in October 2012. Dubbed Star Citizen, the unveiling trailer featured in-game footage from their first year of development and it looked as impressive as it did exciting. For a genre long seen dead to the big publishers, the ideas behind Star Citizen and what it would offer players were almost monumental.

It was that amount of work before announcing the game, highlighted by beautiful visuals and a promise of a triple-A next-gen experience for PC players that made Chris Roberts’ words bankable, so much so that Star Citizen immediately earned the support of longtime space fans. It made a load of money before even hitting the popular Kickstarter crowdfunding service and that move helped it earn even more media attention.

From a full-on single player story campaign that allows for co-op to being able to bypass it entirely and engage in whatever quests, piracy, etc. you want and explore the stars. From the ability to step out of the captain’s chair and walk around your own (or another player’s) vessel and hop into a gun turret to fight off pirates, or to launch out in a smaller fighter and participate in an assault. From being able to play in first and third-person and participate in boarding assaults, to the built-in support of Oculus Rift. From being able to play in an official persistent universe without a subscription fee and being able to host your own private servers that will fully support community mods. It was everything space sims tried to be over a decade ago and it was being seemingly built by the fans for the fans. But can such a project deliver on these lofty expectations?

In the months since its Kickstarter, Star Citizen has hit milestone after milestone, becoming the most successful crowdfunded project ever (a while ago) thanks to users pledging on their own official site and now setting the record so high, it’s going to be near impossible to surpass. It took one week for Star Citizen and developer Cloud Imperium Games to move from $16 million to $17 million, and only one more week to gain another million. Four days ago Star Citizen hit the $18 million mark out of its $20 million expected original budget, and in the four days since, it’s raised another $500,000 and – at the current rate – will be at $19 million within the next week.

A message from Chris Roberts:

When we first proposed Squadron 42 and Star Citizen, the goal was to bring back space sims and prove that PC games never died. We thought that was an important goal worthy of our effort and your support. We never dreamed that you would take that even farther and become our partners in changing how games are developed. As always, thank you.

For hitting $18 million, you unlock the “exclusive star system for backers.” There’s been some confusion about what exactly this means. To clarify, what it means is that backers that got us to the $18 million goal will have the ability to start their journey in a system that is unavailable to others as a starting point. The only home base hangars there will belong to those that supported us early in the process! It would be immersion-breaking if backers couldn’t eventually share the jump coordinates of the system with other users… but no one else will have the option of starting a character there.

Reaching this point also means that it’s time to reveal our penultimate planned stretch goal, the $20 million level. While goals will continue after $21 million, they will take a new form representative of what additional funding can add to the game!

What that means is, if Star Citizen can maintain the buzz (and hence, the funding momentum) by adding more features to its Hangar Module, and teasing what’s coming in the Dogfighting/Arena module this fall – a downloadable that will allow backers to actually fly their purchased ships against other players – then it will not only meet its $20 million goal by next month, but by the end of the year will destroy their original targets and have plenty of extra cash to complete the game as it was originally intended, and flesh it out with additional flyable vessels, star citizens, mission types, weapons and other features.

At $18.5 million raised at the time of this writing, the current $19 million stretch goals will unlock the following rewards for players:
Know your foe with a Jane’s Fighting Ships style manual free in PDF form to all pledgers.
Manage Space Stations – Players will compete to own and operate a limited number of space stations across the galaxy.
RSI Museum will air monthly, with a new game featured each time!

And when that’ s unlocked (and it will be shortly), the biggest and most important milestone of the game’s financing ($20 million!) will unlock:
First person combat on select lawless planets. Don’t just battle on space stations and platforms… take the fight to the ground!

After that, who knows. It’s all bonus money from there. Here’s the kicker. Star Citizen isn’t scheduled for release until November 2014 meaning it will have recouped its entire budget (and more) over a year before release. The return of triple-A space sims? Hells yes.

For a taste of the first iteration of the Hangar Module with the most basic of purchasable ships, check out our gameplay video. See the stretch goals here.

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Game Devs Explore The Future Of Mods In An Increasingly Online World

The PC saw an epic revival of sorts over the last few years, quashing ideas that the console and handheld markets would consume all of gaming. Aging home game consoles and the rise of digital sales, Steam and the indie market have been a shot in the arm for PCs and now it is one of the most exciting platforms out there. With a growing audience, many new or returning gamers have been taking advantage of one of the benefits of exclusive to PC gaming – modding.

Whether for extra content, graphical enhancements or the ability to explore a physically twisted world, mods have always been a way for the community to enhance the experience of a game and keep playing long after release. It is mods that allowed the expansion of Minecraft, endless new content for Skyrim, and the origins of an entire game in DayZ.

For some big devs and publishers, modding is becoming a dirty word. Part stopping the community getting their hands into a software’s innards, part a byproduct of making games dependent on an internet connection, the world of modding for many major games has ceased to exist such. Franchises like Battlefield have put an end to community created content, although there are certain game developers who disagree with this new tract. On a PC Gamer panel at PAX, Dean Hall who created the incredibly popular Arma II mod DayZ, thinks that major publishers are missing out on the potential that the community brings by holding the games so close to their chests:

“I think that if DICE wanted to kill Arma, all they’d need to do is release some modding tools tomorrow. Psh, gone. It always really hurt me when Battlefield 2 was the end in terms of modding, so I’m pretty obviously supportive of the whole modding idea.”

Although the panel went on to talk about the difficulty of supporting a modding community when you are creating online and shared spaces. Hall explained that he is currently locked in a struggle to come up with a solution that allows modding in a shared world, to which he said, “I don’t have the answer for that.”

Star Citizen‘s Chris Roberts chimed in saying he will support modding and offered a solution which deals with the two concepts separately, going the old school route of allowing players to mod in their own servers but take it out of the core online space, the shared persistent universe.

“You definitely can mod and you can run your own servers, but if you want to be on the big persistent universe everyone else is on, obviously you can’t mod in that situation, because it wouldn’t work if someone built a battleship that could blow everyone up.”

It is an interesting question going forward into the online future though. Modding is one of the big things many console players feel they miss out on, and it clearly has a great deal of worth to the PC community. But in a future where more and more games are required to be shared and constantly online, it will be interesting to see if game designers can figure out a way of supporting mods and if it is possible to incorporate them into a wider, online world.

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Check Out Our ‘Star Citizen’ Ship In The Hangar Module!

In a move that illustrates commitment to fans and a genius understanding of viral marketing, the developers of Star Citizen decided to let players who backed the crowd-funded space sim game get an early look into the future by allowing them to view and board their purchased starships. The ambitious space sim in development at Cloud Imperium Games Corporation aims to not only usher in the return of mainstream space sims, but promises to do so with a triple-A, PC-only offering that’ll blow people’s minds.

And so far, gamers are in full support of the idea. The mastermind behind the game, Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, took to crowd-funding on his own site to prove to investors that there’s still interest in PC space sims and the demand led to a successful Kickstarter. Since then, it’s been nothing but money rolling in and record-breaking financing.

From the outset, Roberts and co. explained that the game would cost approximately $20 million or more, and at each milestone of additional crowdfunding more and more reward tiers have been unlocked, fundamentally growing the game and the content it’ll offer. At $10 million, half of the game’s expected budget was covered by eager players with investors already lined up to cover the rest. That number allowed the devs to build their own motion-capture studio. But the support didn’t stop there.

Star Citizen quickly earned the label of becoming the most successful crowd-funded project ever. Then it hit $14 million and got a new website. Then it hit $16 million as the team prepared to launch the hangar module this week which would allow backers to view and board their ship(s) to see what they look like from the inside. It’s the start of something amazing and unprecedented, and all of it happening well over a year before the game’s targeted release date of November 2014.

The Hangar Module as it stands is just the beginning. It’s the bare bones of a feature that’ll be fleshed out as much more content is added. Eventually, players will be able to showcase their collections of clothing, weapons, items, different variants of ships, etc. and do so with other players. Thanks to the $16 million stretch goal being hit the other week, later this year the Arena/Dogfighting Module will release, letting players actually try out space combat gameplay, pitting their own starships against other players in online PvP – again, a full year before the main game’s release next November.


Arena Mode: The next generation of Wing Commander’s TrainSim allows pilots to test out their combat skills against friends or strangers in a simulation. Gain valuable combat experience without the downside of losing your ship in the game universe! Place bets on competitions across the galaxy.

The buzz surrounding the Hangar Module’s release on Thursday resulted in a significant boost in crowd-funding and today, September 1, 2013, Star Citizenbroke the $17 million barrier (less than a week after hitting $16 million), unlocking the following reward:


The $17 million mark unlocks a special ship upgrade pack for every pledger who has donated prior to this point. An engine modifier will be added to your account shortly and in the near future you should be able to see it in your hangar! You also unlocked an additional flyable ship class in the finished game: the massive battlecruiser!

One of the seven ships currently available to purchase is a larger crew-based vessel called the RSI Constellation and it features a gun turret and a little hangar that hosts a small snub fighter for defense. What that means is that multiplayer players can share it and walk around on it at the same time. With larger playable ships being added to the game - the Cruiser class at $4.5 million, a carrier at $5.5 million, Frigates at $13 million, escort carriers at $15 million, and now Battlecruisers unlocked at $17 million – we wonder just how many players can share and operate a vessel and how ownership will work (clan-based or shared?).

Either way, the more ships and features we hear about, the close and close Star Citizen becomes closer the the in-depth space sim we’ve always wanted.

See the stretch goals here.

Star Citizen will launch in full November 2014.

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Walk Around & Board Your ‘Star Citizen’ Ship Later This Week!

Well over a year before its announced release date of November 2014, Star Citizen, the grand-scale space sim from the mind behind Wing Commander, has almost succeeded in recouping its entire budget via crowd-funding.

Earlier this summer, Cloud Imperium Games Corporation was able to proudly announced that Star Citizen had earned the label of becoming the most successful crowd-funded project ever, just weeks later crossing the $14 million mark of an expected $20 million budget. As months go by and more stretch goals are achievied, additional features – including playables ones – are in the works with the first about to release for eager star pilots.

At the time of this writing, Star Citizen sits with over $16 million raised from crowd-funding and with that mark hit, players who’ve supported the game so far get a little bonus, with the game itself growing by an additional mode too:
Arena mode: The next generation of Wing Commander’s TrainSim allows pilots to test out their combat skills against friends or strangers in a simulation. Gain valuable combat experience without the downside of losing your ship in the game universe! Place bets on competitions across the galaxy.
Every pledger who backs before $16 million will receive a laser pistol. Keep your ship safe from boarders with a pistol by your side.

The $17 million stretch mark – which inevitably will be hit in the coming months – adds another (large) playable ship class, meaning even more players potentially walking around on and sharing the same vessel.
Every pledger who backs before $17 million will receive a ship upgrade package containing an engine modifier.
Star Citizen will feature an additional flyable ship class, the battlecruiser.

For now, backers can look forward to reaping the benefits from their support as early as this week. At Gamescom the Hangar Module where players can walk around and view their ship was first shown and on August 29th (this Thursday) it’ll be available for backers to download.

…The Hangar Module you will load next week is by no means a finished product. It is the earliest build of anything I have ever shared with the public. In fact, it’s at an even earlier stage than I would feel comfortable giving to any publisher I’ve worked with in the past and long before I would be sharing builds with QA in a traditional game development schedule! But Star Citizen is all about trying new approaches in game development.

Since this is an early build, the Hangar Module represents simple method to bring the community in and let prospective players give feedback. Users will initially be able to walk around the hangar and into the ships they’ve purchased thus far. And since it’s not meant to be any form of beta or marketing tool, there will be a place on the forums for bug reporting and feedback. Future updates will add customization elements, an in-game store, and social features that involve friends being able to check out your hangar as well.

In addition to the Hangar Module, there will be a Dogfighting Module planned for release by the end of the year where players will be able to test our their ships in space and enter combat with other players a full year before the core game even releases. Both will feature Oculus Rift support and other modules are in the works as well.

Keep in mind, the Hangar Module is only available to players who’ve pledge for a package that includes game access. At launch, only the basic variants of the Aurora, 300i, Hornet, Freelancer, and Constellation will be available although updates will include all ships and collected items.

Star Citizen will launch in full November 2014.

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Star Citizen Becomes Most Successful Crowd-Funded Project Ever

In the beginning of May we played catch-up with a game that’s topping our list of most anticipated 2014 releases, Star Citizen. At the time it reached an impressive new milestone in crowdfunding, crossing the $9 million mark. Famed developer Chris Roberts (Wing Commander) and co. promised a new website design and the construction of their own motion capture studio if they could hit the $10 million mark.

And hit the $10 million mark they did. Star Citizen, a game that serves as a tribute to the popularity (and awesomeness) of PC-only space sims of the ’90s, is now the most successful crowd-funded project ever. How are they continuing to earn money?

With super cool space ships and a brilliant community strategy. There are videos and information updates every week on the Roberts Space Industries website, from brochures of space ships and different variants (think car dealership brochures) and the pre-sales of new vehicles with various options. For example, in May, there was a sale for the Aurora ship. It earned the developers over $700,000 in additional crowdfunding in the span of a week.

This sort of funding helped Star Citizen hit the big $10 million mark (the game will cost over $20 million in total) during E3, and not long after, we got this gorgeous teaser video for the newly unveiled 300i starship, which – like the brochures – serves more as a high-end car commercial than your typical game trailer.

And here are the teaser images and official bruchure art of the 300i, a luxury one-person spacecraft by Origin Jumpworks:

Interested players new to the world of Star Citizen and fans who’ve already pledged but are still interested in the 300i, can click here to see the large amount of package options that include various versions of the ship from the brochure. Each new milestone usually comes with a few bonuses for backers – like so:
If we can make it to $9 million in total pledges before the new site launches, we’ll go ahead and put a cool Roberts Space Industries Class II space suit in your closet, colored to match the new site! What’s more, every current pledger will get Lifetime Insurance! This will be your last opportunity to get LTI before the game launches.

And with $10 million in the pool:
Our big goal before the website is $10 million. That’s a crazy amount of money, but we have a plan for it: $10 million would allow Cloud Imperium to build our own mocap studio rather than hiring out time from someone else. Renting mocap equipment and studio time is expensive: upwards of $35,000 a day, with four hours work for each 30-second segment. Having our own studio would cost more right now but will allow us to produce a lot more content for Star Citizen in the long run! We’ll provide more details very soon, but here’s one thought right now: it would even allow us to mocap a few lucky fans into the finished game!

 

Players finding the long wait until the late 2014 release date difficult to handle will be able to get sort of hands-on with the game this August when the Hangar Module releases. It will allow backers to access their ships and play with customization. In December, the Dogfighting Module will be available for download where players can fly their ship against other players or AI. Chris Roberts compared it to a MOBA game with matchmaking. The universe won’t be there, but the ships and flight mechanics will be as a test, letting players get in early and help provide feedback for testing.

Here’s a gallery of Star Citizen concept art released for the game since our last update:

Fans and backers should stay tuned as later this week, on June 28th, Roberts Space Industries will host a livestream which will reveal new details on starships featured in the game and more behind-the-scenes look at Star Citizen‘s development.

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