- TBD
- Available now in Alpha
Star Citizen is a crowdfunded massively multiplayer online first person space simulator game for Microsoft Windows, developed by Chris Roberts' company Cloud Imperium, planned to be published by Roberts Space Industries.
It was announced in September 2012, is currently playable in alpha and there is no official release date as of 2024.[1]
The development includes a standalone single-player campaign titled Squadron 42.[2]
Plot
Star Citizen is a science fiction game, with players taking the role of humans in the milky way 930 years into the future, with the United Empire of Earth ruling over dozens of systems, worlds and moons in the 30th century, and aliens controling their own systems and worlds. While billions of Humans live within the Empire, only a small percentage have earned the right to call themselves Citizen.[3]
Gameplay
The game will be a sandbox featuring 100 planetary systems to explore in their entirety, and a large variety of careers. Besides space itself, players can also play aboard space stations and on the surface of planets. A large number of diverse space and ground vehicles are or will be available to pilot, ranging from personal ships to large industrial ships or carriers, via tanks or an exosuit. Many vehicles require to be multicrewed by players acting as a team to be operated optimally, with the planned possibility to hire NPCs. Players can freely move around their vehicles and enter or exit them at will including in space, and spaceships can be boarded. Specific components can be destroyed and affect the functioning of the vehicle. Similarly, localized damage applies to players themselves, and prosthetics are planned to replace destroyed body parts.
Immersion is an important element, affecting aspects of the game such as avoiding displaying health points or damage percentages in the UI. It favors a first person universe approach, where players pilot and interact with spaceships rather than playing as the spaceships.
Development
Star Citizen is created by Chris Roberts, who is known for creating the Wing Commander games as well as for games such as Starlancer and Freelancer, and who described Star Citizen as Wing Commander and Privateer blended together.[4]
Pre-production started towards the end of 2011, with development starting in late 2012.[5][6][7]
Initially intended to release in 2014, following the massive success of the crowdfunding, several stretch goals were added, and in September 2013 a poll was held including whether the fundraising should be stopped when reaching 23 millions, mission achieved, or if it should be kept up through development and continue to offer stretch goal rewards in addition to extra features and development milestones. The vote ended with 87% for the later.[8][9] In December 2014, the fundraising reached 65 millions, reaching the last stretch goal.[10][11] Over the development, several modules and patches got delayed, and Chris Roberts eventually stopped announcing any release dates.
The team constantly share updates, behind the scenes videos and developer commentary, and makes early builds of the game available, so that the backers can test and provide feedback while the game is in open development.[1][12]
Star Citizen development is currently taking place across five studio, CIG Austin and CIG Los Angeles in the USA, CIG Manchester in the UK, CIG Frankfurt in Germany, and Turbulent in Canada.[13]
Funding
The development of Star Citizen is funded by a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign. It is the largest crowd funded project and game in the world, earning a Guinness World Records in 2015, with more than $657 million raised by the end of 2023.[10]
The game costs 45.00 USD to buy and comes as a starter package with a ship.[14] Despite being an MMO there is no subscription model to keep playing the game over time.[15] Anything bought beyond the starter package which includes the digital download itself is unnecessary and considered as a donation to support the game development, with a ship gifted as a thank you. This originates from the early game crowdfunding with crowdfunding tiers.[16][17]
Non-development related content such as behind-the-scenes shows or digital publications are funded by optional subscriptions revenue from subscribers, who receive complimentary rewards such as access to Jump Point magazine and flair items every month.[18]
Alpha modules
In 2013, Cloud Imperium Games began releasing parts of the game, known as modules, for players to try gameplay features before release.
Persistent Universe
The Persistent Universe is the core MMO component of Star Citizen in which players can create their avatars, freely navigate around the released parts of the universe, and play the sandbox as they wish including for example trading, mining, fighting, criminal activities or missions.[3]
It is the spiritual successor to Freelancer and Privateer.[19]
Arena Commander
Arena Commander is a competitive in-fiction arena-based space combat simulator currently available, in which players can fly ships in several game modes, be it against other players or AI opponents.[20]
Star Marine
Star Marine is a competitive in-fiction arena-based ground combat simulator, in which players can fight each other with personal weapons on several maps in several game modes, such as elimination, last stand or capture and hold.
It has been available since January 2017 Alpha 2.6.0.[21]
Hangar Module
The Hangar Module enables players to explore or modify their released vehicles and to interact with the ship's systems. The hangar also features decorations and flair that can be placed and arranged within the hangar.[22]
Private Server
Star Citizen will let the players run their own private servers, including modding and playing offline, which will be implemented after the game has been released and running for some time.[23][24][25]
Squadron 42
Squadron 42 is a separate, standalone cinematic singleplayer campaign featuring space combat, FPS, and a branching plotline, taking place in the Star Citizen universe, and in which the player incarnates a member of the armed forces.[2][26]
It is notable among others for its cast which includes among others Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Jack Huston, Eleanor Tomlinson, Harry Treadaway, Sophie Wu, Damson Idris, Eric Wareheim, Rhona Mitra, Henry Cavill, and Ben Mendelsohn.[27]
It is the spiritual successor to Wing Commander.[4]
Squadron 42 was announced as feature complete at CitizenCon on October 22, 2023 and has entered the polishing phase.[28]
Soundtrack
The Star Citizen Soundtrack by Pedro Camacho is also available separately on the RSI Website[29] and was available as a kickstarter reward for some tiers.[30] It has yet to be released. However numerous tracks are already available in game or have been released for various videos such as ships commercials.[31]
It's separate from the Squadron 42 Soundtrack by Geoff Zanelli.[32]
Hardware requirements
Star Citizen is being developed for PC with planned Linux support.[33][34] The developers have stated that bringing Star Citizen to the consoles is not planned.[35] Telemetry is available to get a rough estimate of the performance of most system configurations so they can get an idea of what to expect.[36]
| Operating System | 64-bit Windows 10 (Latest Service Pack) |
| Processor | Quad core |
| Intel: i7 or later | |
| AMD: Bulldozer or later | |
| Graphics Card | DirectX 11 with 4 GB VRAM |
| RAM | 16 GB |
| Storage Space | 100+ GB SSD |
| Operating System | 64-bit Windows 10/11 (latest service pack) |
| Processor | Quad/Eight Core |
| Intel: i7 or later | |
| AMD: Bulldozer or later | |
| Graphics Card | DirectX 12 with 8+ GB VRAM |
| RAM | 32+ GB DDR4 |
| Storage Space | 100+ GB SSD |
Trailer
Trivia
- Star Citizen was originally called Space Trader.[38][39][40] The final name was chosen the night before the kickstarter, other names not working out for various reasons such as being existing company names or because of porn or the way it sounded etc. Star Citizen wasn't originally a favorite but it grew over time and felt right after the fact.[39]
- Star Citizen was the original idea, the idea for Squadron 42 came afterwards.[38]
- Chris Roberts said that if he still owned the rights to Wing Commander this would definitely be Wing Commander: Star Citizen or something like that. Star Citizen really is the spiritual successor to all of his work with Wing Commander, Freelancer and Privateer. It is essentially Wing Commander and Privateer blended together.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1
- ↑ 2.0 2.1
- ↑ 3.0 3.1
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Exclusive Interview: Star Citizen's Chris Roberts, themittani.com, 2012-10-19, archived
- ↑ How indie film financing could shape the future of games, Ortwin Freyermuth, gamesindustry.biz, June 23, 2014
- ↑ "When I was first prototyping Star Citizen back in 2011 I did a lot of research on various LOD processes", Cloud Imperium games chooses Simplygon, simplygon.com, 28th April 2014, archived
- ↑ "Basically I’ve been working with a small team over the course of the past year to get the early prototyping and production done. The team has varied in scale from just me, essentially, to about 10 people. That’s just the actual work though.", Exclusive Interview: Star Citizen's Chris Roberts, themittani.com, 2012-10-19, archived
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑ 10.0 10.1
- ↑ Star Citizen sets crowdfunding record as players spend $65m on spaceships, The Guardian, 3 December 2014, archived
- ↑ Star Citizen, YouTube
- ↑ Join Us, cloudimperiumgames.com
- ↑
- ↑ "No Subscriptions", Star Citizen Kickstarter
- ↑ Sandi Roberts Interview Part One...How Star Citizen Came To Be, Inforunners, YouTube, 25 Apr 2022
- ↑ Star Citizen: An Interview With Chris Roberts , Forbes, 18 May 2013
- ↑
- ↑ Happy Hour Museum: Wing Commander Privateer, Star Citizen, YouTube, 31 march 2017
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑ StarCast 108 - Disco Lando, Cap Richard, Bzerker, Cliffy & Domo, geekdomo, YouTube, 10 janv. 2016
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑ Wingman's Hangar ep011 March 8, 201 3, Star Citizen, YouTube
- ↑ Squadron 42 Full Cast & Crew, imdb
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑ Star Citizen, Kickstarter
- ↑ Pedro Macedo Camacho, soundcloud
- ↑ Star Citizen, geoffzanelli.com
- ↑ PAX East 2014 Panel - "The (Incredible) Future of PC Gaming", Chris Roberts at Pax East 2014, PC Gamer on YouTube, 12 Apr 2014
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑
- ↑ 38.0 38.1 Sandi Roberts Interview Part One...How Star Citizen Came To Be, Inforunners, YouTube, 25 Apr 2022
- ↑ 39.0 39.1 Star Citizen Addicts Anonymous - Interview with Sandi Gardiner pt 1, Nichole D'Angelo, YouTube, 2 Mar 2015
- ↑ SCAA Interviews 001 Ben Lesnick, Nichole D'Angelo, Nichole D'Angelo