Given that Star Citizen releases in 2015 – with the entire full game out by that time – there are procedurally generated space sims like X: Rebirth and No Man's Sky doing the rounds (the latter releasing in 2014). What are your thoughts on these and how would they prepare people when Star Citizen actually does come around?asked by Ravi Sinha
TL;DRChris Roberts welcomes other space games, saying friendly competition is good, and notes Star Citizen also uses procedural generation alongside hand-crafted content, with procedural research under way.
I'm quite excited since there was a long time where no one seemed to care about space games and now all of sudden there's a whole bunch of them so…I don't know whether I had anything to do with it or just that I sort of had the same feeling that a bunch of other people had. But it's cool, I like it. I backed Elite Dangerous a while ago. I actually bought X: Rebirth when it came out and No Man's Sky looks really interesting.
I don't think that it's going to be like…there's always sort of these fan boy arguments like "This is better than that" like the classic PS vs. Xbox argument. For me, it's more the merrier. I mean I had my biggest successes in the 90's where Lucas Arts was going head to head with me with Tie Fighter and X Wing and my sales didn't decrease. I thought it was good because honestly seeing other people do stuff spurs you on and makes you want to make your own game better.
So I think friendly competition is good. I'm pretty interested in trying some of the games which use procedurally generated content like No Man's Sky. People don't think of Star Citizen as being a procedural game but we are using that hand-crafted approach and the procedural approach. It's the only way we can fill the universe. We've got R&D going on for procedural stuff and it's pretty exciting and interesting.