Star Citizen funding campaign ends with $6 million

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   November 20th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

The crowd-funding campaign for the highly-anticipated space simulation Star Citizen wrapped up yesterday, with thrice the amount of original $2 million target being raised in funds.

The latest project by industry veteran and creator of Wing Commander and Freelancer, Chris Roberts, had opted to fund the space simulation through crowd-funding instead of getting tied to a publisher, which would have subjected the project to a number of conditions.

The campaign to raise funds required for the development of the game began at the Roberts Space Industries page, which got an excellent response from people and enabled the Star Citizen team to raise as much as $4,104,189 through 55,270 supporters.

Roberts eventually brought the Star Citizen campaign to the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.

The support for the project continued to pour in, with 34,397 backers pledging a total of $2,134,374, thus bringing the total funds to $6,238,563 from a total of 89, 667 supports.

“The battle is over and we–PC gamers, space sim fans, WingNuts, Lancers, and the rest–have won. You’ve not only met every goal we set, you’ve exceeded them,” reads a line from a statement posted to the game’s website. “Star Citizen will be released because of your dedication and your willingness to put your money where our mouths are. Our gratitude is immeasurable; we owe you our livelihoods and will not soon forget it.”

In development since the past 12 months at Cloud Imperium Games, Star Citizen has already begun so show some progress.

Last week saw the first gameplay footage of the game hit internet, with the video revealing the pilot artificial intelligence (AI) of the game.

Roberts, however, asserted that the gameplay footage was not representative of the actual game and was more of a skeleton missing visual effects and plenty of other elements.

Roberts describes the AI being developed for his latest project as way more sophisticated than what he has worked on previously.

Renowned in the gaming industry as one of the best when it comes to video games for PC, Roberts is all set to make everyone forget his previous works with Star Citizen.

According to him, the technology available today has made it possible to do stuff that the developers may have wished to do over a decade ago, but could not because of the limitations.

He has also claimed that Star Citizen will be set a new standard for PC gaming and will test even the most powerful of computers.

The game creator had made it clear earlier this year that he had no plans of bringing Star Citizen to console and is in fact aiming to revive PC gaming and establishing it as the leading platform when it comes to gaming.