With Frontier Development's Elite: Dangerous now off the launchpad and hypercruising through deep space, Star Citizen director Chris Roberts is taking his hat off and praising the newly launched game.
Roberts' own game, Star Citizen, has raised more than $65 million through crowdfunding and has assembled an ambitious collection of modules, though the game is far from complete. An early version of the dogfighting modules has been released and the planetside component has been demoed, but those are just fragments of Star Citizen's far-off end game.
Fans who've chosen to stand firmly behind one game or the other have helped fueled a rivalry between Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, one that Roberts says doesn't exist between the games' developers.
"I know that many Star Citizen backers imagine there to be an intense competition between our game and Elite, but nothing could be further from the truth," says Roberts.
"[Frontier Developments CEO] David [Braben] and I promoted each other's projects during our respective crowdfunding periods because we both believe that the world is better off with more PC games and even better off with more space games."
Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous are taking different routes to get their games to the same place: a persistent universe in which players can fight, trade and build vast space empires.
Elite: Dangerous, which went into development first, has taken a more linear approach, focusing on trading and dogfighting before eventually releasing planetside DLC post launch. Star Citizen has been handcrafting each of its game's components, obsessing over details like living quarters on ships and local damage to components of its ships.
For Roberts, leaving the film industry to return to gaming, specifically the space genre, was all about building a universe that allows people to lose themselves among the star. Instead of worrying over Elite: Dangerous and darkhorse No Man's Sky, Roberts welcomes them, he says.
"It's been a long time coming, but 'Space Sims' are finally getting the love they deserve," says Roberts. "And what's been more amazing is that it's been a grass-roots movement. It hasn't been driven by a big publisher seeking to pad their profits but by gamers and developers that love the genre and wanted to return to the kind of games that captured their imagination when they were younger."
Right now, Star Citizen has completed the Hanger module and elements of Arena Commander: Drone Sim, Spectrum Games and Murray Cup racing. The Planetside, First Person Shooter, Persistent Universe and Squadron 42 modules -- the single player component -- are all in production by several studios.
