quote:

“One important note: the footage you see in the trailer is in-engine, not pre-rendered! Chris put together a live Star Citizen demo for the announcement at GDC Next. Chris created the Squadron 42 demo by himself over the course of a year or so, with support from his old friends where needed (especially for the art, as the demo needed three ship exterior models, internals for the Bengal and one cockpit.)

This was not a game, or even something that would become a game – it was a proof of concept to show investors (and then the public) that the CryEngine could be adopted for the game we wanted to make. There was no privately funded game development period with different investors. We had investors lined up to support the project IF we could hit the crowd funding goals… but not before. There were no development studios or producers or schedules or network engineers or 3D artists or anything of that nature working on Star Citizen before the end of the campaign in November, 2012.

As for the overall speed of development today – we’ll always do our best to show you how it’s going. To be honest, I came in thinking exactly the same thing: how are we going to do these ten thousand things and finish what we’ve promised? Martin Galway explained it to me best: making a game is a lot like a roller coaster… it feels like you’re going up and up and up forever, seeming to have a minimal return. But that’s because the first half of the experience is building the systems that let the ride down happen. There’s a point in the development cycle where we hit the top and suddenly you see how the production team has plotted all the pieces to start coming together. I think we’re near the top of the coaster now – for the first time, I can look at the pieces and absolutely understand how Star Citizen happens.”