the standard PR barrier and going directly to fans to
disseminate important information was valuable. Origin
invited me to come attend the Austin premiere of the
movie, and that was the first time I met Chris in real life. I
worked up the courage to ask a question during the Q&A
session (“what happened to the traitor plot?”) and then at
the after party he invited me to come tour his studio the
next day.
I can’t say what gets average people into the games
industry—I think it’s a lot of sheer luck and willingness
to work for almost nothing—but I can say that the
truly extraordinary developers I’ve met have frequently
been people who brought more than purely technical
knowledge to the table… English majors and physicists and
painters and the like who bring something of themselves
into game development rather than following a script.
PULSE: When you did start working for Cloud Imperium,
you also had another full time job. Were you expecting
Star Citizen to grow as much as it has? At what point did
you decide to jump in and work on it full time?
BEN: I don’t think anyone expected Star Citizen to get to
where it is now. I signed up with no expectations, to help
Chris Roberts. I knew that the world would be a better
place with Chris back developing games again and I was
happy to do that with no paycheck attached. I had plenty
of big fears going in, especially that crowd funding wasn’t
going to pay for such a massive game and that gamers
would have forgotten who Chris was and why he mattered.
Luckily, neither of those were borne out!
PULSE: I’m sure most of the fans know your work on
Wingman’s Hangar, the forums, and Jump Point for the
subscribers amongst us. What other things do you do at
Cloud Imperium? Could you talk a little bit about the initial
game design you did for Star Citizen, for example?
BEN: A little bit of everything! I am in no way a technical
designer, but I continue to do a lot of work with the
concept stuff… with the exception of the ships from the
prototype, I’ve had some involvement in coming up with
everything in your Hangar! I work quite a bit with our
marketing and event planning, I help out with our fiction
when I can. But the most important thing is managing
a 300,000+ person worldwide community and trying to
make sure we live up to our commitment to keep everyone
informed about Star Citizen’s development (while not
spoiling everything… it’s a tight balance!)
PULSE: Speaking of Wingman’s Hangar, there are regular
cries on the forums to bring you back to it – can the fans
expect to see you on the show again any time soon?
BEN: Absolutely! We will be shooting MVP and other
segments as often as we possibly can at the Santa Monica
office, going forward.
PULSE: What’s a day at the Cloud Imperium offices like –
either Santa Monica or Austin?
BEN: On the surface, it’s a lot like any other office job. Lots
of staring at monitors and typing intently, hours and hours
of conference room meetings to discuss design and sales
and web growth and the like. But it’s also a really incredible
environment, full of like-minded and creative people who
are just plain fun to be around. It doesn’t feel like you’re
going to work in the morning, and you are always a little
sad to leave at the end of the day.
PULSE: We did a little research for this interview, and
there are a couple of questions I just have to ask. Will we
finally be able to visit the Lesnick System in the Persistent
Universe? And did you ever end up making the funbox
with Trelane and TC^?
BEN: I think the Lesnick System belongs to Electronic
Arts, but I have snuck a few names around the ‘verse. The
planet Xis, for instance, is named after my wife AleXIS!
And the greycat buggy is from my parents’ cat, Grey Cat.
I don’t think I actually got very far on the funbox. But
Trelane is still one of my closest friends (and I hope to
see him in April during PAX East!) (Actually, Trelane and I
were recently shocked to see a video from ComicCon of
the writers from The Big Bang Theory on a panel talking
about having come across another one of our jokes from
those days… an ugly web page full of pretend facts about
spiders. Look it up, Citizens!)
PULSE: Can you tell us a little bit about your gaming
history? First game? First gaming device?
BEN: The earliest game I remember playing was an Apple
][ title called Space Vikings, which was actually pretty
similar to Star Citizen. You’d have to travel from planet t [