We chose to build a game of Star Citizen's complexity and ambition, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. We are building a game that I, and I dare say all of you, have dreamed about since we first started playing games, a game that I never imagined could be possible due to the economics and technical challenges.
Together, as a community of developers and gamers, we are creating a fully immersive first-person science-fiction universe where you can seamlessly do anything and go anywhere, without compromise. We are building it as a shared communal experience where friends can meet, or new ones can be made; developers and players interact and riff off each other; and geographic boundaries and language barriers fall as the Star Citizen Community plays and bonds, welcoming both old and new pilots alike. If you haven't yet, take the time to watch today's newly released
"One Community" Video, which conveys the powerful connections and friendships forming in the SC Community every day. It is these connections that bind us all together, not just as gamers, but as people. And in times like these, this is more important than ever.
And like Man in Kennedy's Moonshot speech, we have achieved a lot already in our quest for the stars; 64bit mathematical precision, allowing our game to have both millimeter detail and billions of kilometer scale, something no other commercial game engine has. Our planet tech allows us to render and simulate entire planets and moons down to the smallest rock or flower. If you can see it, you can travel there! The procedural tools we've developed allow our artists to "paint at scale" to create stunning and very specific environments. We can seamlessly transition between different physical simulations like local gravity in spaceship to the zero G of space, to the gravity of a planet rotating on its axis with our Physics Grid technology. The item port system allows us to break functionality into discrete components like power plants, shield generators, life support, doors, seats, thrusters, turrets, guns and many more, allowing systemic behavior in our spaceships, vehicles and environments. Our unified actor rig allows us to have the same animations and details in first and third person allowing for the richest possible multiplayer experience. We can arbitrarily stream in and out the universe around the player in the client or the server with Object Container Streaming, allowing us to only display and simulate the parts of the universe we need to. Our DNA facial tech allows you to blend different scanned human features together realistically to create believable human heads for your in-game character. Our Face-over-IP tech allows you to drive the facial motions of your in-game character as well as put your voice diegetically into the game.
No other game has all this functionality at once, done to the level of fidelity that we deliver.
Along the way we have built a company of over 640 people, split between five studios across four time zones, no small feat when we started with no office, zero employees and a few collaborators eight years ago!
