Star Citizen Reaches $23 Million Goal
One of the games I’ve been following for awhile is a little space-sim called Star Citizen. It’s been in development for over a year, but unlike most games this one in particular is trying to get away without using any sort of loans or using a major publisher. For awhile that wasn’t a certainty, but as of last week I can report that Star Citizen has done the imposible: they are completely funded purely by the fans.
Late Thursday evening they managed to hit their ultimate goal of $23 million, meaning that Cloud Imperium Games, the group Chris Roberts of Wing Commander and Privateer fame has created, can now build exactly the game they want to build. To say that this is a success is an understatement, as the Cloud Imperium is still pulling in 10’s of thousands of dollars a day, and if there is a major “sale” on a new ship in the Store they can see daily gains as high as half a million. It’s really amazing to see both the community’s support of this game, and also the company’s support of the community as Chris and his team have been showing off every bit of progress they make week in and week out.
Since they raised $23 million, the newest feature to be unlocked is a brand new ship that will be available to fly and to fight when the game is released called the Xi’an Scout. Though there is no art to look at yet (as it hasn’t been fully designed on paper) the basic idea is really cool: instead of having 1 big engine on the back to push the ship forward, the Scout is based on an alien design that used a bunch of maneuvering thrusters that are placed on an articulated rig, making it extremely agile. From here on out though, it appears that new funding goals are being designed more to get the game out to more people and to improve the overall experience, and not necessarily add a bunch of new features and ships: indeed, the goal for $25 million is that they will use some of the money they’ve raised to help increase the amount of alpha and beta users they can handle, opening up the game to more folks as it’s being designed. If you want to hear more about Star Citizen, you can check out the game’s website here!
