Star Citizen has raised another million in a matter of days and Chris Roberts sounds very pleased.
In the past six days the cash has been flowing into the Star Citizen funding pool at an incredible rate thanks to the addition of the colossal looking Reclaimer salvage ship.
People really, really wanted the Reclaimer.
With another $1 million added to the funds, Chris Roberts took a little more time than usual in his funding update to explain where all the cash is going.
“I have a lot of industry friends pat me on the back and say, “Wow, it must be so great to be operating in profit even before you ship!” Their look usually turns to incredulity when I explain that my intention is for all the money we bring in before launch to be spent on development. It is the community, from the existing backers who continue to support the game, to new members who join every day who are setting the level of ambition and budget for Star Citizen. Every effort is about enriching the game’s vision. Funding to date has allowed us to go so far beyond what I thought was possible in 2012. You’re still getting that game, no question, but it will be all the richer and so much more immersive because of the additional funding.”
“We keep a healthy cash reserve so that if funding stopped tomorrow we would still be able to deliver Star Citizen (not quite to the current level of ambition, but well above what was planned in Oct 2012).”
A concern of mine has been feature creep, a few funding goals back it looked as if the feature list would just continue to grow and the game’s release would eventually keep slipping. Roberts added:
“I know some people are afraid of “feature creep” and the game never being finished as we keep adding functionality and content to the mix with increased funding. I would say that this would be fair criticism if we were delivering this game at retail and on disc. However, we are online and already pushing out builds, well before Star Citizen reaches what anyone would consider a “finished” stage. Just because we haven’t implemented a planned feature or built a certain asset yet doesn’t prevent us from sharing the game with everyone right now. It’s this evolved process which gives us the Hangar and Arena Commander and so many modules yet to come. We’re sharing the game as it’s being built and it’s an amazing opportunity for everyone who has backed, to have input on the direction the game is going. You just don’t get this in the traditional game business.”
This latest $55 million milestone added the following user-voted ship upgrade which is being added to all accounts that backed before $54 million.
- Ballistic Gatling – Preacher Armament Inquisition XXII: Preacher’s Inquisition XXII is the weapon to turn to when you want complete target saturation. Its dual-ammo feed allows you to hotswap feeds without exiting your ship, giving every owner the ultimate flexibility to pick the ammo based on the situation. This Arena Commander upgrade will be given to all players who pledged before we reached the 55M goal.
The next goal at $56 million will bring more user voted ship upgrades and for the $57 million goal Could Imperium are asking the community to vote for ‘wave four’ of Star Citizen’s ships. There are ten ship concepts up for consideration and voting has started with a Science/Hospital ship currently in the lead.
Although Chris Roberts has said that feature creep would be a concern if this was a typical release, it’s still a concern no matter what business model is being used. Right now there’s a very vague release window of next year and little has been shown of the persistent universe. It will only be a matter of time before the backers become restless.
Cloud Imperium has been very transparent about the development process, but with Arena Commander v1.0 release now well overdue, the thought of more ships and features being continually added is a concern. These new ship additions help raise the money but at the moment it’s raising money for a game we’ve seen very little of.
