Los Angeles, January 31, 2014 – The Next Great Starship™, the modding competition that gives fans a chance to create a space ship to be used in Chris Roberts’ upcoming epic space sim game, Star Citizen™, is just about to get real for 24 teams. The series kicks off on YouTube, January 31, and a handful of teams will be eliminated by judges at the end the first episode. Sponsors for the competition include Alienware, AMD, Autodesk, Crytek, Cologne Game Lab, Maingear, Wacom and YouTube.
The Next Great Starship airs Fridays at 6 pm Eastern/3 pm Pacific. Fans are encouraged to join the Roberts Space Industries YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/RobertsSpaceInd to watch. Star Citizen is the creation of Roberts’ Cloud Imperium™ Games studio, headquartered in Los Angeles.
A total of 270 teams representing 65 countries entered the competition. The judging panel includes members from Star Citizen’s art, design and animation teams, in addition to Chris Roberts himself. Celebrity judges will appear in later episodes. The judges already have narrowed the initial list of entries to the top 24 teams. Over the next three weeks that number will shrink even more with judges picking 15 finalists and the community having an opportunity to vote for one team that will make it into the final 16.
Every week after that, each team will provide work-in-progress videos to the panel and face the possibility of elimination (judges can save teams and the community also has a vote on who stays and who leaves). It all culminates in The Next Great Starship finale airing on June 7 from Los Angeles where the champion team will be crowned and awarded $30,000 in cash in addition to many other great prizes (see below).
“The quality of the entries has been amazing,” said Chris Roberts, co-founder and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games. “And we had quite a variety of entrants including a husband and wife team, a father and son team, several high school level teams, automotive designers, bartenders, DJs, filmmakers and of course several professionals from the gaming industry. It just shows the breadth of our fan base and the numbers themselves show the excitement that our community is bringing to this competition. I can’t wait to see the final result and fly the winner’s ship in Star Citizen myself.”
Prizes: GRAND PRIZE : $30,000 in cash for the team members. Your Great Starship is included in Star Citizen and each member of your team receives the first production models off the press! As well as Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite, Maya Premium and one high-end AMD based system with Radeon R9 290X (for each team member)
SECOND PLACE : $10,000 in cash for the team members. Alienware laptop, Autodesk Maya 2014, AMD Radeon R9 290X (for each team member)
THIRD PLACE : $5,000 in cash for the team members. Autodesk Maya LT, AMD Radeon R9 290X (for each team member)
SPECIALTY PRIZE : (to the most valuable player out of the remaining contestants among the final three teams voted on by the judging panel): One Cintiq Companion, the new Windows 8 “Make the World your Studio” tablet from Wacom
FINALIST TEAMS 4 THROUGH 16 : $250 in RSI Credits (non-transferable/non-refundable) Star Citizen is a crowd funded game that officially launched on October 10 of 2012. Since that time Roberts’ company has raised more than $37.5 million from backers all over the world making Star Citizen the top ranking crowd funded project ever.
About Cloud Imperium Games Cloud Imperium Games Corporation and its subsidiary Roberts Space Industries was founded in April 2012 by renowned game developer Chris Roberts (Wing Commander, Freelancer, Privateer) and his business partner and long-time international media attorney Ortwin Freyermuth. Under Roberts’ leadership using his long-standing relationships in the game space, Cloud Imperium quickly assembled a top tier development team for the creation of art assets, story elements, and an extensive prototype for its first game Star Citizen. Star Citizen is being marketed and launched via www.robertsspaceindustries.com. Cloud Imperium’s strategy is about customer acquisition through established game designer fan bases. More information about the company, including jobs and contact information can be found at www.cloudimperiumgames.com.
Contact: David Swofford david.swofford@cloudimperiumgames.com 512 750-9098
Star Citizen, The Next Great Starship, Cloud Imperium and Roberts Space Industries are trademarks of Cloud Imperium Games Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.