Inside Cloud Imperium Games . Behind the Community

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] I have been with the campaign since the very start. It was end of June 2012 when I first started. I wanted to have an underground movement of evangelists or people who had played Chris's games beforehand. And so we started a golden ticket movement. Um we came up with 42 is the answer to the universe and life universe and everything. And we were testing it and actually seven people I think they either broke through the

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   wall in the split seconds that we we were testing it out. Um but then it it just kind of spread like wildfire. Chris Roberts is doing something. something's happening. And in the first week of having the underground teaser sign up, we had 20,000 fans sign up, which was awesome. It was a lot more than I thought we would have. And obviously, we couldn't say anything, so it was like, okay, well, what is he doing? Well, you just have to find out. So, we had this big countdown to October 10, 2012, and we crashed that famously. And Ben Lesnik was also really instrumental in helping out at that time um because he had way more experience than me in gaming and had been running the Wing Commander site for a long long time. So I got a

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   lot of help from him and learned pretty fast as I had to. And then when we started the campaign, we um kept crushing for about a week. And so we we we got on to Kickstarter. Then I was on the Kickstarter threads doing customer service. And then we closed the campaign. I guess it was like 6.2 million, which was way more than we thought we were going to. So when Chris Fch approached me about doing a marketing campaign, he told me about the product and of course it's slightly backwards because it's a crowd fund and so it's basically pre-elling something that is going to exist in the future. Because of that, I wanted to have a very strong community um and for

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   everybody to have a really good time and make friends and um create social communities all around the world. So, I thought it was really important to for myself to do customer service and be involved in the community, get to know the community, foster the community. We had a little secret concierge right at the beginning where I would be emailing all sorts of fans back and forth. Made some good friends and uh lots of lots of them are in big guilds right now. Big guilds, small guilds, medium guilds, and that's really cool. Well, of course, I I really loved that when I saw the demo, when I heard about Chris's idea in the beginning, I I completely was was sold on it and I I knew of Chris's history. I hadn't played Wing Commander, didn't get

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   fired on that basis. I guess cerebrally that was all I understood it. However, going to an actual live event and seeing fans bring Chris's old Wing Commander uh collector's boxes and the film cases and everything. It just was mindblowing. Um, people were so excited, happy, grateful. I It was just, it was super cool. The Gamescom event was super cool. How do I stay in touch with Star Citizens backers today? I still a lot of them actually email me personally. I made the mistake of at the end of the campaign saying, "Hey, everybody can email Sandy personally for customer support." And on Thanksgiving Day, I remember having two and a half thousand

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   tickets, which was awesome. Thank you. So, um, I still do that. I I keep in touch through Chelsea. Chelsea's awesome on on Concierge also. She does some customer support. uh Alexis, we have a couple of staff in Manchester, so I keep in contact that way. And when we organize things, I usually reach out to people in guilds to get their thoughts and involve them that way. Customer service for Star Citizen, I guess, because I started it with Ben way back in the beginning, it was very different from what I later discovered to be video gaming customer service. I I basically knew nothing about video gaming, customer service. So, I didn't know any different coming from a hospitality and

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   fashion background. So, I like that personal touch um to customer service. I'm hoping that we can sustain that uh if we should we be lucky enough to have millions of fans. Um so, I trained Chelsea in that same way. Alexis had some background so she was pretty good at to start. Alley in Manchester. I also trained Deermud. I trained um in the way that just being more friendly and available and we're part of the community. I do do a lot of the event planning for Star Citizen. It's amazing what I do in marketing. I really wanted Gamescom, for example, to be an experience, which I think we pulled off well. I'm going back there next month to find a another location, a bigger

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   location. I I really I do enjoy people getting together. Um and I'm just it mind boggles me every time that people meet on the forums. They make friends on the forums from all different parts of the world. So the event part of our community I think is is really important. So I'm handholding that for now. Um and so Gamescom's our next one. Next great starship. That's a that's a fun idea from Chris. Chris is always like, "Let's just make this idea happen." And it's always a very grand and big idea. So, um, I remember sitting in the meeting with Krytek because they actually were the

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   originally the ones who proposed it to us wanting a modding competition and Chris is like, "Well, let's make it like kind of like American Idol meets X Factor, but not the cheesy reality part, but just like super cool to involve everybody." And I'm like, "Yeah, of course. I I'll have that ready for you yesterday." It is really cool. It's actually getting pretty exciting. I'm on Shotgun a lot to see what the 12 teams are up to. We're down to the 12 teams now. Um, and these spaceships are looking I can't draw to save myself. So, I find that even I I'm hoping that other people who are in the same position as me find it interesting, even if you're not a huge hardcore gamer. I've just made some great friends. There's there's a lot of fans who live

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    in just and I've been to a lot of countries in the world, but there's a lot of fans who live in places I've never been to and they send me um just photographs of their daily life, which is just one part of the world might be snowing. the other part there there's a fan who's in the Maldes on a on a on an atal who just manages a hotel and people just go there for scuba diving nice right the making friends part is the best part about our for me message going forward I was really actually impressed and wowed by how engaging the fans were to new people at the PAX East booth that we had I'd love to engage all of you um

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    going forward somehow if I could if I can make that work. It was really cool for fans to be describing to other fans how cool our community is and what Star Citizen was is about. So, I hope that we can um continue that and like grow a really awesome community. My name is James Pew and I am the assistant community manager at Cloud Imperium Games. My first day, we were in the middle of crunching for the dog fight module and I didn't know what I was getting into. So, when I came in, Ben got me set up with a computer, but then I just kind of looked around at all the craziness and I just tried to find stuff in the community that I could uh highlight. So, that's what I kind of started doing my first day. There was very little direction on my first day, so I just thought, well,

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    I'll just try and find stuff I find interesting. What's impressed me so far about this community is just how generally how adult they all are. I I come from a community that was nowhere near this understanding and welcoming and non-hostile. Um and just the creativity within our community is astounding to me. Um the first thing I did uh was I looked for uh fanfiction because I'm a huge literary buff. So, I looked for tried to find fiction the fans had written and tried to highlight that. And that was actually the first post I put up was the fanfiction spotlight cuz there's some really good writers out there uh in the verse and they deserve to be shown. I've seen some really good fan art uh in the verse so far. Um like one I really liked, it was pretty comical. It shows a picture of a

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    a Banu a banu and it's a when he's smiling and then it has a note saying from his father like a smiling traders are good traders so keep your head up. And then there's a really really good picture I saw of a van duel that I was pretty interested in and then I will try and get those out there for everyone to see. There's also a lot of really cool podcasts I found because I'm kind of a podcast buff uh regardless uh besides here, but I'm just astounded by how many different fan podcasts there are. I mean, I'll name a few, but I feel bad not naming everybody, but there's The Whole Truth, Starcast, uh Star Citizens, Addicts Anonymous, or AA. And I'm just amazed at how much information they can and how much information how much work they do to try and impart their love of

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    the game to the rest of the community. Like that's that stuff has been really amazing. I want people to know who I am in the community and can come to me. Like I have no issues if you any private messages you want to send or anything you need help with. Uh I try and get into every thread and every post and com and transmission we put up to just answer questions or to just say hi or laugh at a funny comment. Uh the the thing I really liked about this uh company, the reason I wanted to work here is that what we're doing has never really been done before. Like this is a new paradigm in the video game industry. And being a part of a project funded by the people who want to play the game and being a member of that and trying to help that come to fruition is like a dream come true for me. So, I want the community to feel as much a part of the

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    development process of this game as, you know, the developers are because realistically they are, cuz none of this could have really happened without them. Uh, my name is William Lewis and I'm the lead moderator here at Cloud Imperium Games. Being a lead moderator, I handle any issues within the forums between members and I also interact with the community to make sure everybody's happy. The team moderators, I really like them. Uh I am privileged to get to interact with them every single day. Uh each one likes to hang out in a certain area and moderate that. And so when I speak to each one uh I get to discuss different aspects of the forums and I feel like I with their help I get to fully encompass everything that happens on our boards. Basically I'm the big brother of all of them. uh they can act

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    on things, but whenever there's a big decision that has to be made, I'm the one who they come to to make sure that they're doing everything correctly. I also do moderation myself. If I see something that they haven't quite seen, I'll take care of it immediately. Um but pretty much anything that's big goes through me first and I just make sure everything's all right. Yeah. Uh I am the one that's behind a lot of the organizations. I make sure that everybody follows rules, keeps everything clean. Um, but I feel like I am on the brink of falling off because multiorgs is about to hit and that's going to be its own beast. On top of being a lead moderator, um, I also get the privilege of doing the fan visits here. And I think that that's really one of my favorite things. Uh, when people actually come by and see exactly the inner workings of the building. Um, I think that that's also when I get to see

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    the best of people because they're here purely as a fan, so they're excited to see every single little thing that's here. Also on the forums, people will PM me all the time just thanking me for my hard work and, you know, doing my best to keep everybody happy and I really enjoy that. Uh, the Star Citizen community is really just the best in the world. Um, despite a few small problems, it really is extremely positive and they're always giving out great feedback and continuously the forums change and evolve and we're happy to help out and keep it going. If I could say one thing to the community, it's follow the forum rules. Um, I'm Ben Lesnik. I'm a community manager here at Cloud Imperium. I became involved in the project very early on along with Sandy Dave Hadock. Uh, Chris brought us in so early because he knew

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    that we needed to build a great community, a crowdfunded game versus published game. We we needed the support of people who would understand what we're doing and get the message out there. Um, and Chris was lucky in that he had these these Wing Commander fans who were just so passionate about what he had done before. Uh, and he knew that I had been organizing them for all these years, just kind of keeping the faith alive. Um, so he came to me and he said, "Can we can we kind of recruit these people to to promote Star Citizen to to help with the crowdfunding campaign and also just to get the message out?" So, we started with this great core of of older gamers who understood what a Chris Roberts game was, how cool Wing Commander was, and who just knew what he would be able to do with Star Citizen

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    before we had anything cool to show. And that's I think that's kind of the genesis of our community is we've been building on that base. We've been learning uh you know, they've gone out and they've told their friends, their family, their their kids uh how great this is going to be. and that there are group of people who you who you trust, who you who you know have a passion for this and it it's just been great building the community on this core and developing something that's very different from what you might find on on Battlefield or Call of Duty. It's it's a mature group of people. Um I talk to people on the forums all the time. They're like, "Oh, the forums are such a mess, but they're 9,000 times better than anywhere else on the internet." And it's it's just been this amazing recipe for people who are just absolutely passionate about Chris's games, about

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    what we're doing here, about space games, and who who understand the development process. And to the point that the developers are happy to interact with them, to share kind of the truth about how game development works. Uh it's been quite an experience. It is is very strange being treated like a a celebrity by the fans. I remember going to Germany, having people just on the street come up. Eric Peterson and I would be at a cafe and suddenly fans would come and join us. Then we would have to sign things. It it it's like nothing I ever expected in my life. But uh I also kind of get it. I remember uh when I was a teenager, I would get the uh like the the hint book for Wing Commander and they would have this little section in the back and they be like Chris Roberts likes, dislikes, turnons and so on. And they would have the whole team like all these people who I actually work with now, David Lady and Rob Irving. Uh and I mean

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    that would be like baseball cards to me. I would learn about the team and it seemed like they were having so much fun at Origin. And as we put the community together here, that's one of the things I wanted to get across was what a good time game development is and how how passionate we all are about the project. That's absolutely important with a crowdfunding game. You don't want a bunch of work for higher stiffs. You want people who know what they're doing and who who really are building the game they want to play. And so that's one of the reasons we show you so much, why we let you see the personalities behind the game, and why we uh doing things like this uh video here. Okay, the the community genuinely surprised me just from the very first day. I thought we would have a bunch of Wing Commander fans, people I had known for years. We we were getting about 2,000 hits every day at Wing Commander News, Wink Commander News, which was my my old

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    site, and it was passionate people, but there were there weren't many of them. And you know, it was like a small community. you knew everybody and how they were going to react to things. Uh so the first day our forums and our live chat went online, I went on there and it was just hundreds and hundreds of people I had never heard of before and they evolved something so quickly. They they we launched organizations recently, but I mean first day they they were forming their own squadrons and making their nose art and they had these personalities they'd already created. I mean, shout out to Zayn the feather dinosaur. He's my my example. I He's someone on the forums who is is a dinosaur and that it doesn't make sense and that's all there is to it. But he just these symbols they've created already this

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    this like bond family style bond that appeared the first day we we announced the project. Just the speed with which they got it is astounding. My favorite aspect of this community is basically the fact that we they're with us for the whole ride with any other game. And and this is all thanks to Chris. He he he understood that we needed to do this differently. We we needed to change game development in this way. With any other game, they would have hired a community manager two months before release. they would have kind of stirred up the crowd, uh, you know, gotten some headlines, uh, created a group of people on a forum to go out and talk about the game, and then that would have been it. Uh, with this, Chris knew that we're building more than just a game release. We're building a universe, and we we need people to be as

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    passionate about it as we are. And he he he knew that we needed to start from the very beginning letting people share the process. And that that has been the the most special thing about the community is just having them all right here with us as we as we develop the game. My favorite fan interaction was at uh at Gamescom in Germany in our our big uh hanger release party. This this older fan came to me. He he he must have been in his 60s and he said to me uh in heavily accented German. He said, "Uh, I've never played a video game before. I uh but I really believe in what you're doing. So I backed you and uh it was just this moment like we're getting people beyond just your typical video gamers. We we we're being building something more inclusive. And that's uh

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    that's one of the great things. I mean it's not just going to be, you know, hardcore video game nerds like me. It's going to be people like Sandy and, you know, our wives and our children. And we're building a universe for everybody. There there's something for everyone in Star Citizen. And I think we're doing a great job of getting that across. I'd really like to thank everybody for their support so far. I mean, I know it's going to be scary going forward. The community is going to get a lot bigger and it's going to be a lot more work for for Will and James and I and any future community people. Uh CS2, for Chelsea, Alexis, the folks in Manchester. Uh it's just going to get bigger and it it'll go through some interesting changes in the future, but we are going to do our best to keep the the heart and the spirit of Star Citizen alive and uh create something that everybody's going to be proud of and uh always have a place for you to call home online. Uh it's going

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    to be very cool and I look forward to sharing that with you all.