Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games released new videos about upcoming features to the growing space simulator.
The first video focuses on missions, and specifically on the ongoing effort to overhaul the game's mission system to become modular. The system will let developers implement many variations of missions that can be combined together to provide players with plenty to do while also being scalable as the game grows.
Incidentally, the video starts with an apology for the rough start with update 3.18, which introduced new technology aplenty and was definitely hard on the servers, albeit the issues appear to be subsiding now and the game has become playable again.
You can watch it below.
The second video stars lead systems designer Thorsten Leimann as he provides more details about the Engineering gameplay that was presented last week. The second part of the video stars English actress Anna Demetriou, who plays a number of characters in Star Citizen (including the funny AI concierge in New Babbage) and the single-player campaign Squadron 42.
You may know her as Sophia in A Plague Tale: Requiem and Princess Helle of Volsung in the film Viking Destiny.
In the meanwhile, Star Citizen's growing crowdfunding campaign continues to make progress and the game has recently hit $557 million ($557,168,231 at the moment of this writing) pledged from backers.
The number of registered users has also recently passed 4.4 million and it's now at 4,444,232 albeit not all of them are paying since many register accounts to access the popular free fly events that provide a chance to test the game without pledging any money. According to the latest information that creative director Chris Roberts himself shared in October 2022, 1.7 million players are actually paying customers. Of course, that number is a few months old, so it could be higher now.
Star Citizen recently ended its best year ever in terms of crowdfunding, with a whopping $113 million pledged in 2022, marking a 31% increase over 2021. The tally has been consistently increasing year-on-year since 2018.
The game just received a substantial update numbered 3.18, adding new tech and plenty of new features and content, including salvaging and persistence for items placed in the game, including starships, independently from their owner.
Full disclosure: the author of this post has backed Star Citizen all the way back when its crowdfunding was first launched in September 2012.
