Initially announced on Kickstarter on 18th October 2012, touted as the spiritual successor to the Wing Commander, Starlancer and Freelancer titles developed by Chris Roberts, Star Citizen was his attempt to realise his dream of a furutistic virtual universe.
In a period where the space flight simulator genre had been seriously ignored by developers, Kickstarter backers broke funding goals faster than Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games could create them.
For better or worse, this led to an explosion in features and scope for the embryonic title.