Greetings fellow Citizens! Today we bring you a short interview our very own Erris did with Ben Lesnick the day after CitizenCon 2016.

We hope you enjoy the interview!

Thank you very much to Ben for taking the time to sit down with us so soon after the big CitizenCon event. It was a great experience.

In the interview Erris and Ben discuss the CitizenCon presentation, the future, should you buy Star Citizen, and the community.

“You know, the people who got in early, it’s not Lifetime Insurance that makes them special. It’s the fact that they got to see the old Business hangar, and Arena Commander when it was totally broken, and Arena Commander when it was less broken, and Arena Commander when it was really really broken again.

Reddit user Electr0freak was kind enough to provide a transcript, our thanks and appreciation go out to him

Erris: Hey everyone, it’s David here with INN and joining me today is…

Ben Lesnick: I’m Ben Lesnick with Cloud Imperium!

E: Which, I’m sure everyone knows who Ben is, but so, we’re here at the offices, CIGs offices in LA, let me first say, it’s beautiful in here!

B: …Thank you, I had nothing to do with it!

E: I know, but I have to say it’s absolutely amazing, < to camera > if you ever get a chance to go on one of the tours, do it because it’s excellent.

B: Chris had this vision of a creative environment that made you kind of feel, I mean it’s like the game itself, you want to bring it into the universe, our whole commissary is themed up in the Star Citizen world and it’s great.

E: The commissary was amazing. Now, we’re one day after CitizenCon, we just had CitizenCon last night, what did you think of the presentation and how everything went, and what was shown?

B: I thought it went really well i’m really, really excited to get that, uh, 3… I dunno, ah, Homestead demo out, you know, space worms for the win and all that! Obviously I wish we could have shown Squadron, we worked really hard and it just, it was a tough decision, I am very very proud of Chris for making that one. I mean, it looks good enough to show and have everybody go “Wow”. But it’s not up to his standard and you know I’ve seen a lot that in the community people saying, “I was kind of disappointed by CitizenCon”. And seen countless other people say how CitizenCon was amazing and I tend to agree with them more, but, I do understand folks would have liked to have seen Squadron, and you will soon.

E: I think, and I was mentioning this to you earlier, it seems like while this was a slightly less content filled CitizenCon, it had the most information especially with the slides showing the progress in the next year or so and all the ships.

B: We’re at a point where we are finally, our production is so good, our pipelines are so good that we can kind of accurately predict that now we know what makes a ship, we can say in a couple weeks when that ship can be ready. It feels really good to be at that point, to be able to pull up an Excel table and see okay here’s where the last ship is finished and luckily that just means more ships after that, but it feels good to know when, roughly when all the ships we’ve sold are going to be done.

E: It feels really good I think for the fans to not only see those ships but also the gameplay elements that are coming with those ships: mining, salvage, farming, all the things that will make it start feeling…

B: Yeah that’s very much on Tony. Tony is, his plan is essentially for a career within each patch in the 3.0 spectrum, it’s going to be good. We very much have the skeleton there, there’s a pretty fun game right now and now it’s time to build it into a world.

E: Yeah. Lots of the world we saw yesterday was really good: the planetary, procedural planetary tech stuff was beautiful and seemed like it was running really, really well as well. Yeah I mean, how has that process been to kind of watch that grow a bit?

B: It’s incredible. I’ll admit, myself that I kind of lost what video cards work like after the Voodoo 5, but it is pretty cool seeing it come in on ordinary graphics cards now, and the guys in Germany are wizards, I have no idea how they do what they do, but it’s incredible the advances they’ve made, just since they started. It’s hard to believe they started Frank-… Foundry… er, Frankfurt, a year ago and they’ve done so much.

E: And it seems like they are really growing as a studio, as is Austin and like, all the studios…

B: We’re hiring up everywhere. It’s, it’s one of those things, you know people used to worry about, oh how are we going to sustain this, not we didn’t worry about that, but kind of the world how are they going to keep crowdfunding, how are they going to keep, keep this up and now it’s more you know, how close to the stars are we going to get. It’s getting big!

E: It’s really great to watch I mean, watching Frankfurt come online and the things they’ve done, watching all the studios kind of segment off into the specialties, has been really exciting as a fan to be able to almost be a part of, really.

B: You know one thing, question the most common question on Reddit, on the forums, anywhere: Why should I buy Star Citizen? And when I’ve answered that in the past I’ve said: “You shouldn’t necessarily buy Star Citizen right now it’s not a finished game, there’s lots of work to do”. And after this CitizenCon I, I don’t, that’s not my recommendation anymore. I think people should buy Star Citizen which is a bold statement for me to make I know, but seeing the community come together and thinking about the last year of content we’ve put out you’re not backing for the game, you’re backing for the adventure of making the game. The people that got in early it’s not Lifetime Insurance that makes them special, it’s the fact they got to see the old Business Hangar and Arena Commander when it was totally broken and Arena Commander when it was less broken and Arena Commander when it was really really broken again! I wish I had foreseen that back then, I would have pitched that better to people it’s very much backing for the adventure and at this point I say everybody go and buy Star Citizen, be part of this great community and take part in the highs and lows with us.

E: Yeah I know, I mean yesterday at CitizenCon one of the large focuses was on community, there was the whole video at the beginning, the whole I Am A Star Citizen feature which was great, it was great to see people like FastCart and Baron and others on there. Which is one thing I absolutely love about how you guys work and how the company supports the community but you also came from a different community before, you were, you ran WCC News.

B: Yes!

E: Now, you weren’t able to watch the Wing Commanders being built like we’re able to watch Star Citizen but…

B: It was kind of my dream that I could though, when I came into all this that is what I wanted to get across you know, let people see how the game is made, I wanted to know what it was like behind the scenes at Wing Commander. I think specifically about that with Wing Commander Armada, you could unscramble one of the files and there was the quotes file just of all these jokes from the development team and they were inside jokes, none of them made sense to me, but I could tell that these people were having a better time than I had ever had in my life and so I wanted to share that with the community and I think, I think we’re doing okay.

E: I think you guys do well, an amazing job. Honestly thank you guys for everything you do and thank you for taking a few minutes to sit down and talk with us today.

B: Well thank you guys I, I was in line signing autographs which, again is a really weird experience and everyone is, “Oh thank you Ben thank you!” And you guys let us do this! We, we are just the luckiest people in the world so thank you guys, thank everybody out there for making Star Citizen a thing. It’s the passion, the kindness, the creativity of the community, it, it adds so much more than our poor hours ever could.

E: Well, thank you so much!

B: Sure thing!

E: Well it was a pleasure meeting you!

B: Very good to meet you!

E: …And I can’t wait to see you again!

B: Don’t be a stranger! Yeah, I love working with you guys too, anything we can do to help.

E: Awesome thank you. < To camera > And, that’s it, we’ll see you in the ‘verse!

B: < To camera > See you in the ‘verse!

You know, I wish I would have foreseen that back then. I would have pitched that better to people. It’s very much backing for the adventure.” – Excerpt of Ben Lesnick interview 10/10/2016