Chris Roberts is taking his new game to Kickstarter.
Cloud Imperium Games is crowdfunding its ambitious new game Star Citizen but unlike most such projects, it eschewed Kickstarter in favor of a completely stand-alone financing campaign. “By building a crowd funding component directly into our site we can insure everyone who wants to back the game can – we provide multiple payment options to make sure that wherever in the world you are there is an option that can work for you,” the Star Citizen FAQ says. “Kickstarter, as great as it is, can’t deliver this experience.”
The enthusiasm of long-suffering joystick jockeys quickly overwhelmed the RSI servers but even so, it’s still managed to raise more than $1 million in a fairly short period of time. Yet even as that total continues to tick upwards, Roberts revealed yesterday that the team was giving Kickstarter another look – and it didn’t take long for the decision to be made.
The Star Citizen Kickstarter launched earlier today with a relatively modest goal of $500,000. The pledge tiers appear to be largely the same as what’s on offer at the Roberts Space Industries website, as is the Kickstarter pitch video, but that’s not terribly surprising given the breadth of ground the Star Citizen site already covers. It’s not “new” so much as it just another path to the same place, a path that will presumably expose the game to a much wider potential audience.
You certainly can’t blame a guy for wanting to open up new revenue streams but given the success Star Citizen is having as a solo act, I can’t really imagine what would prompt Roberts to make the move to Kickstarter now. Well, I can imagine one reason, but suggesting that RSI was simply trying to stay out of the way of the Project Eternity behemoth would be a little cynical, wouldn’t it?
In any event, if you’ve been anxious to throw some money at this thing but nervous about doing it outside the warm, friendly confines of Kickstarter, your problems are now solved. It gives you a bit of a deadline extension, too: The Roberts Space Industries internal fundraising effort comes to an end in 22 days, but the Star Citizen Kickstarter runs for 31 days.
