The annual GDC was last week and Chris Roberts attended with several members of the team. While there he had a chance to speak to several sites about what’s coming up for Star Citizen. Massively Chris talked with Massively for their Some Assembly Required column, discussing Star Citizen’s planned economy. You’ll be seeing more details on the system being developed soon, but the article provides a great teaser: In the Star Citizen’s economy, there’s a role for everyone. Players can choose to own the factories, produce the goods, obtain the raw materials, transport the goods, run the storefronts, or even pirate the goods. Players can also contribute by overclocking ship components, which involves taking a basic item and improving it. Roberts says that players can make names for themselves in any of these areas, whether by creating a large economic empire or filling a smaller niche. And to help facilitate those who really want to delve into the economic aspect of the game, the game’s planned companion app will allow players to manage all facets of their businesses even when they can’t log in.
Skewed and Reviewed Skewed and Reviewed, an electronic magazine for the Nook, interviewed Chris for a cover story. You can pick up a copy at Barnes and Noble’s website. Here’s a sample from the interview: Gareth: For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of Wing Commander is when you went outside the cockpit; the branching storylines and interacting with the other characters, choosing which dialogue path in the response. In Star Citizen, who will we be mixing with when we’re docked at a carrier and a space station or something like that? Will it be a mix of other players as well as NPCs? Chris: Yeah, down on the planets will be NPC’s and then if there are player characters on the planet than they’ll also be like in the space bar and stuff. The same would be on a spaceship and space station up in space, and also when you are flying around in space. So what happens is the universe is fully built like a sandbox. There are trading routes and NPCs going about their business and all kinds of pirates, merchants. As players are playing and connecting to the game, you know if there are a couple of people who are pirates in one system well then the game would probably not spawn two AI pirates because it already has two players that are playing as pirates. The idea is that you are flying around in this universe like it’s a complete living breathing universe and some of the characters you meet could be AI or some of them could be player characters.
Space Game Junkie Chris also recently spent 90 minutes talking with Space Game Junkie about Star Citizen and his history with Wing Commander and other projects. You can find this great interview here.
Just Push Start The team at Just Push Start is running a multi-part interview with Chris and the first is online now. There is a concept for a space suit and some armour but what else can we wear? Anything really. You could look like Han Solo for instance; get different jackets, trousers, hats and helmets. We want to embrace user content, similar to the Steam Workshop. On your own server you can have whatever you want but we’d vet user content before it was allowed on the persistent universe. There will be online guidelines with examples to let players create not just clothes, even weapons and ships.
stArs Oratoria But Chris isn’t the only one being interviewed! Eric “Wingman” Peterson recently stopped by the stArs Oratoria fan podcast to talk turkey. You can find his episode here.