What is Star Citizen?

Unless you're a gamer, you may not find the ad for the Star Citizen space simulator video game answers the question it asks, and even the accompanying blurb could leave you mystified: "Discover a new universe of unprecedented scale. Play your way — fly, trade, mine, salvage, fight, race, and explore your way through an immersive multiplayer sci-fi experience like none other. Welcome to the 'Verse". Multiplayer video games are ones where more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, usually via the internet, offering an element of social communication and community lacking in single player games. What's particularly interesting about Star Citizen is that it's player-funded. As The Guardian explains (https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/jan/16/billion-dollar-video-game-is-this-the-most-expensive-piece-of-entertainment-ever-made), video game development costs are ratcheting up to the Hollywood big-budget stratosphere. Since British-American developer Chris Roberts launched Star Citizen in 2012, it's grown steadily, proving the appeal of "a plan so ambitious in scope that no profit and deadline-focused publisher would consider the risk of making it", as The Guardian says. What do you think of the ad? Does it capture your imagination?

Keywords: Star Citizen, video games, player-funded gaming, multiplayer video games