{"id":6517,"date":"2015-06-01T18:50:27","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T01:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6517"},"modified":"2015-06-06T18:59:15","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T01:59:15","slug":"the-ultimate-science-fiction-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/06\/01\/the-ultimate-science-fiction-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Science Fiction Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2015\/03\/fans-dropped-77m-guys-buggy-half-built-game\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>from WIRED<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h1>Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy\u2019s Buggy, Half-Built Game<\/h1>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ff_crowdcommander_f.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"big-marg-b-med med-marg-b-med sm-marg-b-med mob-marg-b-med size-660-single-full wp-image-1751159\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/ff_crowdcommander_f-660x842.jpg\" alt=\"ff_crowdcommander_f\" width=\"480\" height=\"auto\" data-pin-description=\"Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy\u2019s Buggy, Half-Built Game\" \/><\/a><em>Star Citizen<\/em> creator Chris Roberts. <span class=\"credit\">photo by Zachary Scott<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The United Empire of Earth Navy caused quite a stir last November when it announced that it would be putting 200 decommissioned Javelin Destroyers up for sale. Each 1,132-foot-long spaceship has the sort of amenities that your average interstellar mercenary finds hard to resist: four primary thrusters, 12 maneuvering thrusters, a heavily armored bridge, private quarters for a captain and an executive officer, six cargo rooms, general quarters for a minimum of 23 crew members, and a hangar big enough to accommodate a gunship. There&#8217;s even a lifetime insurance policy.<\/p>\n<p>The document that announced the Javelins&#8217; impending sale took pains to stress that these warships were fixer-uppers. \u201cThey are battle-hardened and somewhat worse for wear,\u201d it read, \u201cand have been stripped of the weapons systems.\u201d Thus, any would-be buyer would eventually have to shell out extra to equip the 20 gun turrets and the two torpedo launchers. The asking price for each ship: $2,500. And that wasn&#8217;t some form of fictional futuristic space bucks; it was 2,500 <em>real<\/em> dollars. Actual, real, present-day American Earth dollars.<\/p>\n<p>Despite those caveats, all 200 Javelins sold out. In less than a minute.<\/p>\n<p>The sale brought in half a million dollars for Cloud Imperium Games, the company behind the space-exploration and combat videogame <em>Star Citizen<\/em>. Cloud Imperium has hit upon a truly futuristic business model. There&#8217;s nothing new about inviting players to spend real money for virtual goods\u2014a vehicle or weapon or article of clothing that can only be used inside a virtual gameworld. What&#8217;s new about <em>Star Citizen<\/em> is that most of its goods are doubly virtual\u2014they can only be used inside the gameworld, and the gameworld doesn&#8217;t actually exist yet. In fact, its massively multiplayer universe may not be up and running for several more months. Or several more years. Or \u2026 longer.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2015\/03\/fans-dropped-77m-guys-buggy-half-built-game\/\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at WIRED<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from WIRED Fans Have Dropped $77M on This Guy\u2019s Buggy, Half-Built Game Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts. photo by Zachary Scott The United Empire of Earth Navy caused quite a stir last November when it announced that it would be putting 200 decommissioned Javelin Destroyers up for sale. Each 1,132-foot-long spaceship has the sort of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}