A record-breaking project, Chris Roberts' Star Citizen is sitting on a veritable fortune.
It's 2012, participatory financing is still very new, and it's the dream of many video game developers who see it as a way of freeing themselves from the cumbersome tutelage of publishers. Through the Kickstarter platform, Chris Roberts sensed the opportunity to set up the project of his dreams. Known for the Wing Commander saga imagined in the 90s, Chris Roberts has just returned to the world of video games and has the idea for a Wing Commander that is more ambitious on every level. The project is called Star Citizen, and the Kickstarter campaign launched in October 2012 quickly reaches record levels: it ends on November 19, 2012 with a total of over two million dollars, enabling Chris Roberts to get development off to a good start.
One billion dollars for Star Citizen © Robert Space Industries
In June 2013, the alpha phase of the project was launched, and since then, year after year, versions have followed one another for a game whose horizons are becoming completely delirious. Star Citizen is clearly presented by its creator as the most accomplished space simulation, with over a hundred fully visitable planetary systems and a huge variety of gameplay options, from exploring space aboard various ships, to walking on the surface of planets or traversing space stations on foot. Today, Chris Roberts is proud to announce that funding - which has never been interrupted - has exceeded one billion dollars.
To mark the occasion, he gave an interview to the Variety website. In this interview, he points out that " such a project would be impossible to realize with financing from a major traditional publisher or investment funds. They generally wouldn't have the time or the patience. But with what we're doing, people just want to see the biggest, most complete world possible, and they love the idea of that dream. He also points out that the community's enthusiasm never wanes, despite the length of the project: " the more they find out, the more their enthusiasm grows ". Alas, there is still no mention of a launch date for the final version of the game, given that the various alpha versions are available to players who participate in the financing. Officially, the single-player part of the game, Squadron 42, is still scheduled for 2026.
