Star Citizen takes to Kickstarter for additional support

Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts has just put up a Kickstarter for his upcoming high-end PC space combat game Star Citizen.

Initially Roberts wanted to keep all crowdsourcing to the game's official Roberts Space Industries site, because he felt Kickstarter was "an extra step between the developer and the community." Unfortunately, the site couldn't handle its immense traffic and went down for a few days. Roberts asked if fans would be interested in a Star Citizen Kickstarter and the overwhelming response was yes.

The Roberts Space Industries site is back up now and as of writing this the total pledges come to $1,030,490 out of a goal of $2 million, but according to Roberts the drive lost a lot of momentum due to the technical difficulties on the site.

"We were tracking to do well over $1 million on the first day until things blew up," Roberts said in an interview with Polygon. "I'm pretty confident we would have been over $2 million by now."

He added that "fundraising is still pretty impressive, considering being down for 50 per cent of the days we could have been raising money."

The Kickstarter is only looking to raise $500,000 i.e. about half of the needed $1 million left. Any money raised via Kickstarter will be noted on the Roberts Space Industries site as well, and all donation will be tied to one's account there.

Currently, the Kickstarter has raised $51,058.

As far as rewards go, they're nearly identical to those on Roberts Space Industries, but there is a new $5 donation option that grants players the Electro Skin Hull Enhancement that changes the appearance of your ship on the fly. Those who donate twice get a special a special skin, too.

Roberts noted that he'd like to use his campaign's success to prove to publishers that "space sims are a completely viable genre."