Wingman's Hangar ep011 March 8, 2013

So actually this is the one thing that we haven't fully decided or fleshed out yet on how we're going to set this up. We kind of acknowledge that even if you said you can't have multiple characters, everyone's going to have multiple accounts anyway. So I'm a big fan of making it as easy and frictionless for people, because why put artificial barriers up that people are going to try and circumvent? The one question I can't answer is really just how things get handled properly on the big server backend side, because those are the sort of details that we're working through. When we were doing the year of prototyping, we were working through a lot of the more kind of how does space combat work and how will that work on the backend server stuff, but not necessarily all the, I don't want to really call it boring parts, but accounts and all that kind of stuff. For me making a game, that's less fun than having laser bolts and explosions. But those are all things we're working at right now. So that's actually kind of high up on the list of Jason, who's had a lot of experience in building big, more multiplayer MMO type games. And so we're working that out. So we don't 100% have an answer for that yet, but I think we'll probably try and make it as easy as possible for people to have fun. I don't know whether you can actually share assets between your characters, but certainly we're not gonna put these artificial roadblocks in the way.

And something as large as that, which kind of answers a lot of questions, might be something we'd write up and put on, like you did Death of a Spaceman, which was really well received, right? So something big like that, once we flesh it all out, we might be able to...

Oh, yeah, no, definitely. I mean, that's part of the process. One of the things that's nice about expanding the team here is that it just actually takes a lot of time to communicate everything, besides doing the actual work and design, just the organizing and communicating it. But because we have more people, it's gonna be easier to do that. And I'm big on making the process really open for everyone in the community. It's going to end up making a better game, because not that we necessarily will listen to everything, but we definitely, we do listen to everything. We're just not going to action on everything, because you have to stay consistent to one kind of vision. But there's a lot of times where people bring up really good points that we may not have thought of. And so it's actually making our job a little easier, because I think we're going down less dead ends than we would have done in the traditional way. Thank you all guys for that.

So yes, I mean, look, even back in 1990 with Wing Commander 1, if your ship was getting shot up, you would be in your cockpit and you would have broken panels and sparks and wires exposed. So we're definitely doing that. I mean, essentially, what I'm pretty keen on is having a sense of fidelity in the level of destruction, so the different parts can get damaged, they can get destroyed, broken off. And I also want a sense of wear and tear on the ship. I'm still going to work all that through, but I kind of want to see a ship that's been out there, it's been flying for a year, and you can sort of see it's more worn than someone that just bought a new ship off the assembly line. So even if they keep it in good shape, maybe it gets a little more chipped or rusted and you can take it in to get a new paint job or something. But basically try and do a lot of things that you see in real life where you can see if something's battle-hardened and been around. The same thing that I talked about in the characters is having that sense of history, and you can see someone's been through many battles and stuff like that. So there's going to be a huge amount. Hull breaches is definitely something that's on our list. We really want to make that work and have decompression and everything. Talked about this before, can't 100% promise it's gonna be in the initial when we go live. It's on my list, I wanna get it in, so we're gonna try, but if not, it certainly will be one of the features that will be coming online pretty shortly after we go live, because I just think it's cool. I mean, you see it in every sci-fi movie. You need to get it in Star Citizen. So that's kind of on our list of things to do. It's actually fairly easy inside CryEngine, other than the effects of the atmosphere and the stuff getting sucked out. But the gravity and physics side of it is already kind of supported. So that's on our priority list.

Well, no, I think you'll definitely be able to. And we're definitely going to have a communication system that's in sort of short range in space, similar to Wing Commander and Privateer, where you can talk to people. So we would like to get it working via IP. So we'll see. There are some moderation issues in that in a multiplayer environment. But sometimes you can get around it by just saying, as long as I use this, I acknowledge that Cloud Imperium has no control over the language that people use, and you can turn people off. So we'd definitely like to get that working, because we recognize that people would do it outside the system anyway. So it would really just be a matter of time and whether that would sort of...

How soon it comes into play?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely in our game no matter what at some point. Is it day one? I don't know. Certainly you'll be able to send messages and chat and do everything else. And I would like to have it in there. And we're looking at some open source or some middleware solutions so it's pretty easy for us to integrate. So that's definitely on our list. And it will be there day one, can't 100% promise, but we'll see. I think it's kind of important. I think it adds to the immersion. It's kind of cool.

Well, so basically RSI was originally conceived to be this fictional future manufacturer of spaceships. And the whole idea was sort of to take you into the world of Star Citizen, 800, 900 years in the future, and you're visiting the site of a future Boeing or whatever. And so we set it up, and what happened was one of the web guys put Roberts Space Industries up there as a default because we hadn't come up with a name. And then like all these things, well, okay, I guess that kind of makes sense. I've made space games before, so I guess that kind of ties in the brand. And so it's really the company in the game in the future. But obviously it's been front facing for the game, us raising the money. So at some point we decided, well, we better incorporate it and make it kind of like a subsidiary, because we've essentially built brand value in RSI over Cloud Imperium. But the best way to think about it is RSI is the future fictional company. Cloud Imperium is actually the real world company that's building the stuff. And we've basically set up RSI now and trademarked it or whatever, because it's basically become a brand for what we're doing. And I would say if we were doing any other space game, probably it would be through RSI. But right now Star Citizen is pretty much all we're doing. And since it's going to be Wing Commander and Privateer and Freelancer and a bunch of other things all rolled into it, I'm not sure we're going to be actually doing anything other than that, because Star Citizen is just one big, long, huge ongoing project.

Okay, so on the Persistent Universe side, in terms of storyline, in the initial launch of the game, Squadron 42 is going to be the bigger, more involved one with the branching storyline. And then when you get into the Persistent Universe, there are going to be story threads, but no big overarching story à la, say, Privateer. We'll basically have a five-mission thread in this side of the galaxy, a three-mission thread in this side of the galaxy, two over here, six over here. And it will be more a general sandbox environment where events are happening. And then part of our plan is that we'll be changing and adjusting that as the game's live, adding more stuff in. So it'll feel like it's an ongoing experience and it won't feel like it has a final end. But we will probably, as we go along and once we're live, release some bigger, more involved story-driven missions, and they will not all necessarily be military the same way Squadron 42 is. So there very possibly could be a more involved Privateer style or Freelancer style story, where you're not in the military, you're more of a kind of space entrepreneur, so to speak, getting involved. So think, for instance, if you read any of the fiction that we're doing on the site, something like the Tanya Oriel story that we're doing right now is a pretty good example, or the Kid Crimson we did before, would be examples of more involved narrative stuff that potentially will be down the road later. But in the initial Persistent Universe release, all our single story care and attention is going to the Squadron 42 side, and then there'll just be flavor missions or scripted story stuff in addition to all the user-generated style missions and the dynamic universe-generated missions.

Kind of call those small side quests out there?

Yeah, I mean story-driven side quests. So they'll have small arcs, but they obviously won't be as big and involved as something like Squadron 42.

Well, a couple of things. I'm doing a panel on Friday with the Oculus Rift guys. So I think it's gonna be Palmer, who created the Rift, myself, Cliffy B, ex of Gears of War and Epic, and I think one other person, although I'm not quite sure. So we're discussing the future of VR, and I'll be geeking out about how we can use it for Star Citizen. And then on Sunday, I'm doing a talk about generally how great the process has been and what's happened with Star Citizen, the new way I think games can get made and developed, and what's really great and positive about them. I think yesterday they launched Torment: Tides of Numenera from inXile, and they raised like a million five in the first 24 hours, which is pretty impressive. But I really think, a couple of things. First of all, the sense of empowerment, where people get to decide what games they want to have happen. And also the fact that they can have their voice and input heard early in the process is good for someone as a game player that really cares about games. But also from my side as someone that makes games, it's fantastic because, like we were saying earlier in the show, you have a lot less dead ends in terms of working on stuff that maybe is not so important for people. And it's just great. You're crowdsourcing ideas, concept, feedback. People are poking holes in things that you're giving them. So you pretty much see early on if something flies or not, because it's not like you're doing it with a very contained development group, and usually in development groups you always love your own ideas. It's always great that you push it out there, and you see if it registers or not, or if people can poke holes. So I just think that it helps focus the development side, and I think it's very exciting, and I think if you went around and interviewed the people around the office here, they really enjoy it. I've got team members who are like, hey, can I show my thing next week? Because it's great. It's energizing. People love to get the feedback. And so my personal feeling is we'll see when the game comes out, but I'm pretty sure it's going to make a better game for us, for you guys. And I think it's a great way to do it. And it really uses today's technology in a way that you can connect directly to people in a way that you couldn't do 10 years ago. So I think it's exciting. I think it's a completely new time for making games. I love the fact that a lot of people are being taken out of the value chain, so to speak. You've got the publishers, or even in the case of investors, where people have different agendas. We care about making a great game. A publisher cares about making profits for its shareholders on Wall Street. And sometimes those things are in conflict. So I think the way we are doing it right now is much purer, because we're connecting directly with the people that want the games and love the games and will pay for it. And we're making a great game and we're doing it for you guys. And we get the middlemen out of the way, which means that less money goes to them, which means we actually don't need to collect as much money to make exactly the same game, because there's not people in the middle taking it. And we're making a game that's truer to what you guys want, because we listen to you guys and we're building the game we want to play, and I think it's the game you guys want to play too. I think it's a great way to do things, so I'm really happy to see things like the Torment stuff do really well. So that's kind of what my speech will be about.

It is still a lot of work. Basically every card is a custom card. So even the plastic ones, not just the metal ones. But every metal card goes through a four-step process to get where it is going to be. So it's actually going to be engraved out on the edges, where you see the circuit board on the edges. That's all engraved out. The name, it's baked right in at the end. It's fully baked. It's baked in. This thing is solid. It's going to last forever.

And that takes some time. And then also, we've got to ship them out. We've got to get everybody's information, put it on there, ship them out. It just takes a little bit of time.

Each card's custom. And then you're going to be able to use your cards for some fun events.

Oh, don't give that away yet. That's a secret.