How do you reconcile the introduction of Scramble Racing missions with Death of a Spaceman, a mechanic that by its very nature leverages disposable characters and equipment? Is it a goal in direct opposition to other goals you've established in Star Citizen, or are we actually in the process of killing off Death of a Spaceman?

No, certainly not. We're on our way towards Death of a Spaceman, obviously. You look at the game now, it doesn't reflect where we want to be. Look at how many times you respawn if you play for an hour. This is a tier zero of a mission, but we'll have a non-lethal version, a leisure activity, like paintballing or something like that, so people can blow off some steam. It was only ever the start of... this is our stake in the ground for racing. We got so much UI improvement out of it, so you'll see UI creeping into all the other missions as well, all based on what we had to have for a race mission. We just couldn't do the tracks right now. We can't sink that much time into tracks when the planets are changing as much as they are. And for instance, what you were talking about: obviously, it isn't a death race. It's a race where you can kill people. You can shoot people.

It seems like a death race right now because that's where the game is, not where Scramble Races are. Every silly little thing ends up killing you.

Yeah, exactly. Will the deaths that we currently have from being shot actually be a death in the final game? I'd imagine not. I'd imagine you go into an injured state. Medics have a chance to come and revive you, kind of thing. And I see the Scramble Races as that perfect ecosystem for many other careers: being a TV reporter covering this thing, being a medic that's hovering around, being a scavenger that's coming to pick up the remains, or a repairman that flies in, like a pit stop kind of thing. So I see them as that kind of ecosystem. They're aimed towards the future. It's a tier zero. We don't force you to play these. You can right now, and it really doesn't cost you anything. In future, the reward will be much greater given the risk. When we're able to do the EMP-type firing weapons, stuff that we can kind of do right now, but not in the way we'd really like to: I fire a gun at someone and he stops his engine for maybe 10 seconds. That kind of feel of a race. You can see how that non-lethal version will be a lot more entertaining, and a lot more people will join in.

I think you touch on a struggle that we have with almost every aspect of Star Citizen, and that's looking at how any game system functions in the game as it is today, but then also extrapolating forward how it's intended to interact with other game systems in the future. That's a tough thing for anybody playing the game to do, because we're used to playing complete, fully developed games.

Exactly. And obviously we're used to designing for that as well. So we plan well off into the future where this is going to be, and then we go, "OK, what can we do right now? What's entertaining right now?" Kind of buy into the fact that you're going to die quite a lot in the current game, and it doesn't matter. Death of a Spaceman really punishes you for that, but we don't right now.

Well, we punish people with insurance costs.

And when it comes to that, we'll be able to rent vehicles specific to this race at the location in future. So you'll be able to rent a cheap vehicle and then you don't have to worry about losing your own. You can take your own and have a much better vehicle, but you risk losing it as well.