Greetings Citizens,

At the start of this year there was some heated debate on the community forums about whether the team at Cloud Imperium was doing enough to keep the community informed. As with most of the debates on our forums there were some widely differing views; there wasn’t enough information on the game’s progress, there was too much, there was just enough. With a community as large as Star Citizen’s, you can’t please everyone all the time. :)

I’m proud of our track record of keeping the community informed. We have eight to ten posts a week on the RSI website, we are currently delivering 3 videos a week (Ten for the Chairman, Wingman’s Hangar and the Next Great Starship). We have a whole forum subsection where the community can ask and get answers directly from the ever expanding development team. I don’t believe there is any other game, even one that is out of development and “live” that involves and informs the community to the extent we do.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t improve!

As I hope people have noticed, we’ve shifted the focus of our video content to have more behind the scenes material, and to answer harder questions than perhaps we did last year. Even though we’re proud of the amount of updates we share that doesn’t mean that we don’t listen to what is said and if it resonates, respond. One of the valid criticisms about our information flow is that its sheer quantity can be overwhelming and there isn’t any kind of high level summary for the people that don’t have the time to watch every video, read every post and monitor the forums for any data point they have missed.

So in response to that I am introducing the very first CIG Star Citizen monthly report. The concept is simple – a high level monthly production progress report from the various teams from around the world working on Star Citizen.

You may find it interesting to know that as of this moment there are 212 people working on Star Citizen between the internal and external studios and contractors! More people are working on this project than most AAA console titles, and it’s definitely the largest team to work on a Space Sim. These are jobs you have created! It’s an amazing accomplishment and it’s all down to your passion for space sims, PCs and doing something different!

Not only that but these are 212 developers that want what you want – to make the best game possible – they don’t have to worry about a publisher pushing them to release early to plug a hole in a quarterly revenue plan or to incorporate a feature just because it’s the flavor of the month.

It is because of this, and the new backers that continually join the community every month – you may be interested to know that 71% if the $6M or so we raised since December came from new backers – that I feel confident that we are making something that will be special. It won’t always be perfect, or on time, but given the talent of the team and the enthusiasm, feedback and support of the community I know we will reach the promised land of a living breathing universe that we can all adventure in together for many years to come.

As I write this, the Star Citizen team is all around me hard at work on the Dogfighting Module. We plan to premiere dogfighting at a special Citizens-only event just prior to PAX East. If all goes as planned, the Dogfighting Module itself will launch shortly after PAX and you will finally get your hands on your flight sticks! The team is scurrying to take care of thousands upon thousands of necessary details: variable damage states, HUD detailing, weapons cameras, engine sounds and countless other things that go into creating an immersive space combat experience. At this point, we can now regularly dogfight here in the office.

The biggest danger, or “blocker” in game development parlance, continues to be the server backend. You may recall that we pushed the release because we did not want to use the standard CryEngine server and net-code. Instead, we decided it would be more efficient to use the system which will form the nucleus of Star Citizen’s persistent servers in the future. We have high hopes that the solution will be ready in time for launch… and that that solution will stand up to the hundreds of thousands of Citizens waiting to battle it out. The very success that Star Citizen has had in building such a large community so early in its development is also one of its most challenging – launching the DFM will be akin to launching a major online game. Except we aren’t even close to being finished. It’s a high wire act of the most difficult proportions!

— Chris Roberts