LOAF Massively Interviewed
Joystiq recently sat down to interview space sim extraordinaire Ben Lesnick and CIG writer David Haddock during a recent stop on their international PR tour. They met up at DragonCon in Atlanta to talk about the video game industry, development of Star Citizen and what the future holds. You can find the full article here. LOAF hosted the Star Citizen panel while at DC, but he also made time for Wing Commander. Two actors who portrayed Admiral Tolwyns were on hand, and he was able to get both their autographs on a copy of Action Stations. After Malcolm McDowell and David Warner, only Marten Davies remains to get signatures from the complete Tolwyn triumvirate!
Massively: A rabid community like SC's practically cries out for a dedicated convention of some sort. Any plans to make that official or officially support one at some point?Lesnick: Yes, we had actually hoped to do a CitizenCon in October of this year for the anniversary of the game announcement, but it didn't quite work out. We had our livestream and we saw how rabid our fans were and how many of them there were, so we needed a little more time to plan. But certainly next year there will be an official CitizenCon.
Massively: It sounds like this whole thing has been overwhelming for the team.
Lesnick: It's amazing. I was in Germany last week; 30 percent of our audience is German, and they treated us like rock stars. We walked down the street in Cologne and random people would come up and go, "Oh my God, you're Ben Lesnick! You're the community manager for Star Citizen!" So yeah, this is something. And the rest of the team is back home crunching, so I wish I could bottle that and bring it to them. But they definitely understand how amazing our fans are.
Massively: Any advice for fans looking to break into the game industry as you've done?
Lesnick: Well, just spend 15 years not trying to do it, and then eventually Chris Roberts will ask you. My experience was to get to know the devs and learn the inside of the industry rather than just being a fanboy. I got here by learning behind-the-scenes stuff and being fascinated by that. I had no intention of ever making games, but I ended up learning how and now here I am.
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