Star Citizen: Not a Fanboy

It is hard for a lot of people to understand why others are so fascinated with what  Cloud Imperium Games is creating with Star Citizen. They see people complaining about setbacks, missed deadlines, and the changing of the goal posts too often. They complain that development has taken far to long and that they have had enough money and time to accomplish what they have set out to accomplish.

I find myself having this discussion with people on a fairly regular basis, in defense of Star Citizen of course. I suppose that would put me in the camp of a "fanboy" but I am not sure that I really qualify. I see and understand the faults and the shortcomings of the early development. I understand that the direction has changed since the initial Kickstarter. That is why I never invested initially. "Space games" were not something I cared about, so why back a game that only lets you fly around space. It's why Elite Dangerous never interested me and why my half-hearted attempt at enjoying Eve was short lived. So why would I want to dump money into Star Citizen? 

You see Star Citizen was a birthday gift for me in 2014 from a friend of mine. He knew I had little interest in a "space game" but he also knew it was a lot more. I was the hard sell. I had never shown much interest in Science Fiction at all. Sure I loved movies like Aliens, Starship Troopers, Star Wars, and Star Trek.  I just never got "into" them. I never read any books, fan fiction, I played a few video games set in their universes and that was about the extent of that. I never got into Sci-Fi video games, TV shows, it just was not my cup of tea. So as such I never played the earlier Alphas. I never did any research. I never followed the development, and I never cared.

From the summer of 2015 until the fall of 2017 I fell on hard times. Had to move several times (cross country), we were homeless a few times. It was rough so I had no real desire to follow a game I did not care about. So for years, a copy of this game sat dormant. 

Until I got an email from Roberts Space Industries, telling me that 3.0 had been released to the PU. That I, even with a gift package, would be able to see what all the hub-bub was about. Stable, happy, content with a new life in a wonderful town...with the internet, running water AND electricity, I had to download Star Citizen. 

I had seen part of the video showing off what they had done, and I was floored. The last time I saw gameplay it showed off some dogfighting in arena commander, something that I turned my nose up to seeing as how "space games" were simply not on my radar. This video, however, was showing me planets. Worlds that I could visit and fly to in my own little spaceship. Not only could I visit them, but I could walk on them, drive on them, and own...land on them? After a little research, I found myself face-to-face with the game I had always wanted. However, I saw a lot of talk. A lot of promises, a lot of concepts, and a lot of videos that did not show what they were selling. The friend who purchased the game for me encouraged me to check out 3.0. So I gave it a go. 

After a few password recoveries on an account I had only logged into ONCE before, I got squared away and downloaded the launcher, and then the game. It was Christmas day and thought I had to give this a go while the lady took a nap on the couch. I plugged in my headphones, logged into the game, and after what seemed an eternity I woke up in game. 

I sort of had an idea of what I needed to do based on the videos I had been glued to while the game was downloading. I set a course for whatever the hell Daymar is, and pressed "B" to start up the Quantum drive. After traveling through a tunnel that should have had Tom Baker's face show up at any moment the computer tells me that the Quantum travel is complete. Before me now is what I can only describe as "Mars". I immediately Alt-Tab out of the game and fire up Spotify and put on David Bowie's Life On Mars the only true course of action.

Not knowing if the atmosphere was going to be an issue, having only flown flight sims that involved being within said atmosphere I had no clue what to do. I saw a location marked on my hud that looked like a Steer point, I aimed my velocity vector at the target and gave her some throttle. I figured I was going to learn one way or another how to make a lunar landing and just as I started to say "I wonder if they will have a burn-in effect" my screen turns red and orange and I hear the sound of my ship on fire as it burns through the atmosphere. Nosing up thinking for some reason it will protect the ship from the burn in based on my experience watching Space Camp as a kid, I fell like bat out of hell to the hard deck below. 

I back off the throttle and start to make a slower, more graceful approach. Realizing now that I was through the atmosphere and noticing now that my hud had changed to a more traditional one I was used to. One that I was familiar with flying within the atmosphere in flight sims. Old habits die hard, I saw a canyon and had to put the spurs to her to see what this baby could do.

I learned a valuable lesson about Newtonian physics and how they affect a spacecraft in an atmosphere that still thinks it's in space. There are parts of my ship that have not landed yet after the explosion resulting from my impact on the canyon wall.

Here I am less than 3 months later and I my gift that was an Aurora is now a Freelancer DUR. I have turned what was once a Military Simulation group into an Exploration Organization for Star Citizen called Shackleton Enterprises. I guilt tripped, harassed, begged, bribed, and threatened friends I have known, in some cases, for over 20 years to back Star Citizen. 

I have begun writing a novella based on our in-game exploits set in a dramatic and adventure-filled story. I have asked some more artistic friends to help me design some Squadron patches for the book as well as our own fun. So it seemed fitting that I start a blog as well. 

So when I say that I do not qualify as a fanboy, what I mean by that is that I have only been part of this circus for a few months. I have not earned the right to be considered a fanboy just yet. No, right now I am just in love with the fact that Cloud Imperium Games allows me to go into space with my friends. So gone are the days back in my childhood sitting in a cardboard box in the living room pretending I was in Friendship 7 as John Glenn, or chasing the demon as Chuck Yeager in the Bell X1. Now I am sitting in a virtual ship with my best friends as we fly through the galaxy on adventures. I get to take a fighter and scream it through canyons on a Martian-like moonscape, just like Beggars Canyon back home.