Greetings Citizens,

MMORPG paid a visit to our Santa Monica studio just before the holidays and posted a short video tour of the office. Our own Travis Day played host. Check out the video above or click here to get an insiders look at CIG’s west coast studio.

Leading trade publication Games Industry International has put out its annual list of the top 10 persons of the year and Chris Roberts was slotted at number five! Here’s what they say:

“Talk about making an entrance. After an eight-year period in which he largely focused on movies, Chris Roberts signaled his return to the games industry in late 2012 with the announcement of Star Citizen, an ambitious space sim in the spirit of his classic Wing Commander series. “At the last count, just a few days ago, Cloud Imperium had secured $33 million from its community, putting Roberts firmly back in AAA territory without the need to answer to a AAA publisher. Forget Double Fine Adventure, forget Torment and forget Project Eternity. If you want to see the true potential of crowdfunding, look no further than Star Citizen.”

The entire article can be read here.

Gaming Bolt had a nice feature on Star Citizen just after the first of the year. The article is entitled, Star Citizen: Forever Changing the Way Video Games will be Played. The author, Jake Demo, focuses in on Star Citizen’s success in the crowd funding space and how it’s changing the publishing business:

“In a market that some times seems like it is suffocating under it’s own reboots, sequels and “re-imaginings,” to many gamers it’s worth the risk in contributing money, or time to this project simply because it’s offering something new and different in a package that is almost too beautiful to be true.”

Meantime Star Citizen continued it’s record-setting pace of raising funds from the crowd. On December 22 the $35 million goal was reached. On January 5 it was $36 million. Here are some of the headlines: