For those of you who don't know, there is a game being developed by a team lead by Chris Roberts, the seasoned veteran game developer who created the Wing Commander franchise and a number of other groundbreaking titles such as Freelancer. The game aims to achieve Roberts' dream since the 1980s to build a fully-detailed, immersive, massively-multiplayer persistent universe where the player can do virtually anything and explore countless worlds without traditional arbitrary limitations like skyboxes, invisible walls, etc.
The game development is being crowdfunded, and is already in the top 10 highest funded crowdfunding projects in human history, having already raised over $164 million.
There has been a lot of skepticism about the project from critics, most of whom consist of younger people unfamiliar with Roberts' legacy as one of the greatest game developers that has ever lived, with many saying that the project will never be finished or that the goals are too ambitious to be realistic.
I personally disagree wholeheartedly with their criticisms and have a lot of faith in Roberts and his team. I grew up playing the Wing Commander games as a youth and know that Roberts is not a rookie. I also believe that we finally have the technology required to make this game a reality.
In addition to this, unlike other game developers (i.e. Valve) the Star Citizen team have been extremely transparent with their development process, regularly posting videos showcasing their incredibly impressive technology and even segments of their actual codebase on their official Youtube channel.
Although the game is still in development and likely not going to be released any time soon, there is already a playable alpha out with loads of features, and they have released numerous videos demonstrating what the game is capable of. There is a large assortment of ships that are already playable in the alpha, and many more still being developed, including fully detailed capital ships that can support crews of several dozen players.
Their most recent demonstration showcases a planet whose entire surface is a living city, which the player can freely fly around, land in and explore. They also show off some of the development tools they've created to generate such massive worlds.
I am very excited about this game. I have waited my entire life to see a game like this made, and I was disappointed by the previous titles which attempted to create this experience but fell drastically short. This is the real deal and I think we're finally going to see a fully-featured space game with all the features we've always wanted in a game, with the fullest graphical fidelity and multiplayer action that modern technology can deliver.
What do you guys think? Are you as excited about this game as I am? I'm curious to know people's thoughts, and also figured I'd just post about it here in case anyone hasn't already heard about it. This is truly groundbreaking stuff and I think it deserves much more attention & praise than it has already received.
