Last week famed Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts and his newly-formed company Cloud Imperium revealed a new PC gaming project called Star Citizen, an ambitious PC space sim MMOG. He said it was a game that he wanted to make back when he was developing Wing Commander, but couldn't due to the hardware limitations of the early 1990s.
Once news of Star Citizen hit the internet last week, a sudden surge of interest bogged down the website and completely crashed the servers playing host to his independently maintained crowd-funding program. He sent out an apology and said the crowd-funding aspect was running on a backup server, still taking pledges.
"With this site we have to update the data manually as there is no way to easily collect the crowd funding statistics on a live basis, which is why you haven’t seen a counter on the backup site," he said. "We are working very hard to get the main crowd funding plug in to play nice with the rest of the site, so we can deliver the seamless experience we envisioned when opting to have the crowd funding integrated into the main community site."
Now a week later, Roberts has launched a Kickstarter page so that fans can continue to make pledges towards the game's development. This Kickstarter page will provide a stable and scalable crowd funding platform in addition to the custom one hosted on the Star Citizen site. Both sites will strive to collect the minimum $2 million USD to get Star Citizen on desktops and notebooks.
Despite the problems, which included multiple days without any pledge service on the Roberts Space Industries site, the company still managed to raise one million dollars in one week, Cloud Imperium said on Thursday.
"It’s a testament to the will power of our amazing fans,” Roberts added. “At a time when most would have given up, some dedicated fans kept trying to log on and eventually were able to get through and make a pledge. We appreciate all those efforts and now with Kickstarter, we believe we have an answer for everyone."
As of this writing, the Kickstarter page has reeled in over 1,700 backers pledging more than $70,000 USD. The goal is to reach $500,000 USD within the next 31 days.
"Those who pledged via Roberts Space Industries through our very rough first week of operation and those who make a pledge going forward on Kickstarter or on our site will all have their pledges tied directly to their Roberts Space Industries account," said Roberts. "Nothing has changed there. We just hope that people will understand the situation we were in and support us and support what we plan on bringing to the table for PC gamers everywhere."
To make a pledge, hit the Kickstarter page here, or try your luck at Roberts Space Industries here.
