Star Citizen struts its stuff with a new ‘car commercial’ as the game races toward $10.5 million in crowdfunding.
Cloud Imperium Games, the Chris Roberts led studio behind upcoming space simulator Star Citizen, is aiming directly for your wallets. The studio has already topped $10 million in crowdfunding, reeling in
yet another million dollars since I last spoke with Roberts (you can watch the interview here.) This time, however, Star Citizen is bringing gamers a new
line of sleek, speedy new space ships which you can purchase for real
money as part of the ongoing crowd funding drive.
The below trailer is very clever, and it’s “the very first
promotional ship commercial —rendered entirely in-engine —aimed at
showing you just what you’re putting in your hangar!” according to the
Star Citizen webpage.
The commercial is for the base 300i model, but more models will be
debuted in similar fashion over the course of the following week,
“similar to how present day car manufacturers treat the launch of a new
model.” Which, of course, is exactly what this spot is like. Only way
cooler, because it’s for a space ship.
Welcome to the future people.
“The Next
Generation is Here” is the slogan in the commercial. That’s not quite
true, of course. However pretty the game is—and my goodness, it’s
pretty—a full release isn’t slated until 2015 with incremental demos
(such as the dogfighting module) released to backers along the way.
That’s another of Chris Roberts’ clever ploys to get more backers.
Virtually all of the backer rewards both in their Kickstarter project
and on the Star Citizen website are in-game items like new space ships
and early access. This is not only a huge draw for players, it’s much
less expensive and more efficient than shipping out physical goods.
In a couple years, we’ll all be sitting around wearing our virtual reality Oculus Rift headsets (thanks to yet more successful funding for the device) flying through space in one of these gorgeous ships, or leaping about in fierce mech vs. mech battle in Hawken.
Who knows—maybe the Hawken team and the Star Citizen team could join
forces some day and bring mechs to the Star Citizen universe. That would
be sweet.
Learn more about the 300 series of space craft at the official website.
Posted From ; http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/06/22/star-citizen-unveils-new-ships-as-crowdfunding-approaches-10-5-million/
