Star Citizen - earning my citizenship - an alternative view

Planetary Landing wasn’t the be-all and end-all of Star Citizen, it was just something alongside zero-load-times data-streaming and third-person-camera view that was added in only recently. It was never part of the stretch goals of the game in its pre-$60,000,000.00 KickStarter iteration circa 2012-13.

Planetary Landing is a new thing, and as such hasn’t had the time to mature in Chris Roberts’ head as his tried and tested game-ideas Freelancer and Wing Commander have had. I seem to be one of the only people who think planets should be (narratively) embargoed as part of the Star Citizen launch experience, only opened in spectacular fashion as a PL game upgrade a couple years after launch due to some clever storyline’d political agreement between various corporate factions has taken place. All the combat/trading action should have taken place either in space or in space stations overlooking these planets…

Planetary Landing changes all that. In fact, it changes THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE OF CITIZENSHIP that we discussed in the last post. Players should be able to Start Game in any of the multiple Star Systems offered with minimal viable product at Star Citizen launch. Crowd AI, farming of flora/fauna and City gameplay involving fitting in and surveillance and corporate identity theft etc. should be the way you earn your Starter Ship. A local loan shark can finance your Starter Ship. You can receive a Starter Ship as a company run-around perk. Then you’ll actually know a little bit more about the physical and political aspect of a number of star systems before you start exploring and then (maybe) settling down.

Planetary Landing gives us the opportunity for Avatar Manager with lifetime LTI or Life Time Insurance that covers ALL YOUR POTENTIAL CITIZENSHIPS on ALL YOUR PLAYED-IN SYSTEMS. You only open up the right to use the Inter-stellar Jump Gates once you’ve settled into your chosen system, made local alliances that you can use in the gaming environment to help you progress and are willing to enlist/subscribe/initiate into that system i.e. apply for (whatever local version of) Citizenship. Citizen. Ship. Nice, right?