Well, this was actually the first one I've been to in a while. The original one, I don't know if you went to the original one, but it was created by myself and Alexis and Ben, and that was in 2013, I believe, in Santa Monica. That was good fun, and that took off. We did Food Citizen; you came to that one. That was a failure. But I haven't been to a Bar Citizen... well, actually, I went to the one in Los Angeles. It was in the summer. So that was the first one I'd been to since the pandemic, and I saw a lot of LA folks I didn't recognize too, but a lot I did recognize.
They look weird, but they're not weird. I sat in one, and they're like soundproofed, very comfortable little meeting rooms. And you can sit with somebody and take a meeting. I went into the meditation room and took a nap. They have these sort of banana boat cushions, but you can also do other things; it's a relaxation room, play music, do all kinds of things.
TL;DRSandi Gardiner recalls the lead-up as high-alert and uncertain, with encouraging early reactions from journalists, but the website crashed during the launch speech and she thought it was over before it snowballed.
Yeah. I mean, I was talking to John Erskine in Frankfurt at the Frankfurt Christmas party, and we were saying when you're really doing it, when you're really in it, you're just on high alert. In the lead-up to October 10th, there were so many balls to catch and plates spinning in the air. We just didn't know. We thought it was going to go well, but we weren't sure. Did I tell you Chris was singing? Chris is not a great singer, but he called me from Germany. You know that song, Big in Japan? He was singing "Big in Germany" badly, because all the journalists had brought old Wing Commander boxes and they were raving about the prototype. And he thought, well, maybe we have something. Maybe it's going to be good. Because Sean Tracy, Hannes, they all thought it was good. And I'd seen the prototype. I thought, this is something. But you never know. And we'd set up the website. And I was doing everything at the time. I mean, everything. I was his personal assistant, the meeting organizer, dealing with publicity, everything. I booked Chris into a broom closet in London; we were on a budget. And of course, when he got up to give the speech at GDC and the presentation, and then we launched the site, it crashes. I just was like, oh my gosh. It was in that moment I thought, oh my gosh, it's over. It's so done. It was horrifying. It was all that work, and then you're thinking people are going to go away and not come back, because the world's so fast and fickle. Then it just snowballed from there. It kept going.
If I say something. Well, there is something happening in my hometown. Not hometown, I mean, where do I live, really? But Los Angeles. We are going to go back to a physical CitizenCon.
Dates. Oh, you see, I'm not Chris, but soon™. No. In October. But I don't know when in October. But we will do a physical CitizenCon in Los Angeles in 2023 in October, all willing, and as long as the world doesn't explode or Los Angeles decides to do something really weird.
We can say it's flight ready. I don't want to say when we're thinking because it'll go with a patch. Well, that's called a tease. Stand by. I can say, I think we can safely say that one of the things we'll be doing at Gamescom, one of our evenings, will be revealing a new ship that's in concept. So stay tuned for that.
I can ask about shipping some of them today. I mean, we can talk about shipping some of them very soon. It's just some of the overseas warehousing ones.
Yeah, we're kind of waiting to work that out before we started shipping those. I know originally we said that they were going to start shipping in May or June.
I mean, they are ready to ship. It's just a question of if we try and overseas warehouse them, because we would like them to be in good shape when they arrive.
We are in the prototype stage, and I've just emailed to see if we can try and get some kind of image for it, because I know everybody's hankering to see it. So as soon as I know, I will let everybody else know that it is happening.
BL
Ben LesnickDirector of Community Engagement, Online Strategy, and Spaceships
They do have the prototype now that they're evaluating.
The question somebody asked about the Star Citizen HOTAS: we are going back and forth on the quality right now. So we're still working on it, and we don't want to say anything right now while things are still up in the air.
TL;DRThe 890 Jump isn't being built now because limited staff are assigned to other priorities like mining, cargo, salvage and Squadron 42 ships, though it remains scheduled to happen before they're done.
Just because it's a matter of assigning resources where they're needed. We have 20 ships to work on and we have the staff to work on three, four at a time. It's just not a win right now to do the 890 Jump. It's still on the schedule. It'll happen before we're done, but it's an assembly line, you build one at a time, not all the cars at once.
And there are other ships that are linked to various game mechanics that I think are probably being prioritized more, like mining and cargo and salvaging and stuff.
But the good news is that once the artists and the designers who are working on the Squadron 42 ships are done, because that project will be released before the whole of Star Citizen, we'll have all sorts of super experienced, talented people working on the ships you're waiting for.
Yeah, they should come, we're hoping, next week online. So the HOTAS and the keyboard will come first, and then later on will be the headset and mouse, if you want those. The more expensive, or the more... well, yeah, it is more expensive, but more complicated, a grander HOTAS, I think we're making an announcement for that come E3.
To clarify Sandi's statements, we're expecting the pre-order for the standard edition HOTAS to go online next week. They're not going to ship next week.
Well, I need to ship all of the promised ones first, and then we can kind of go from there. But the silver Constellation collector's boxes are going to ship first, probably June or July, hopefully. And then after that, I'll ship the Freelancer boxes and the Hornet boxes.
TL;DRYes, no HUDs are finished, and the UK team is working on bespoke manufacturer HUDs, with a Freelancer mock-up that looks good but isn't available to show yet.
Absolutely. None of the HUDs are finished. There's kind of a generic HUD spread amongst all the ships right now, but I know Zane and the entire team in the UK are working on bespoke HUDs for all the different manufacturers.
It's the side effect of putting the game out while it's still being built. You're going to see a lot of things in temporary transient states, and HUDs are definitely one of those. They've got some cool stuff. I've seen the mock-up of the Freelancer HUD. It looks very cool.
I will ask Zane. He's not always the easiest person to get a hold of. And that particular image isn't checked into Shotgun. I've tried to show it before.
I'm waiting to hear from our head of PR when that's going to air, and as soon as I find out, I will post that online. We'll post it on our Comm-Link and everywhere.
Yeah, it's Click, and then there's also another part of the BBC that are doing a bigger piece. So there's more than one piece, basically. But I'll definitely give all the links when I have them.
Right. So it's basically only sold on our site. And then later on, Saitek will be selling HOTAS in their stores and their third-party outlets. However, they won't have Chris's signature or the numbering on the bottom. So it'll be one of 2,000, two of 2,000, et cetera.