A few key community members, besides Chris himself, have played especially important roles in developing and maintaining the relationship between CiG and the funding community. These include community manager Ben Lesnick[1], VP of marketing Sandi Gardiner[2], and developer and community manager Jared “Disco Lando” Huckaby[3], to name a few. Ben Lesnick is a long-time Wing Commander supporter, “I’ve run the big community site, the Wing Commander Combat Information Center, with a group of friends since 1995. We stayed active after EA lost interest in the franchise, updating every day, cataloging Origin’s history and organizing fan works.” His early involvement with Wing Commander brought him in close contact with Chris, and his experience in community building made him an ideal choice to lead CiG’s community. Ben, along with Sandi, host Star Citizen’s own weekly development video series called Around the ‘Verse[4].
This show provides detailed information about various parts of Star Citizen’s development to assure citizens that work is being completed while maintaining a level of transparency that is unprecedented for this scale of game.
Disco Lando is another great example of the kind of people and community[5] that Star Citizen has built in order to maintain good relationships with backers.
As an average community member Disco Lando created humorous animations and videos[6] that caught the eye of CiG producers, and they contracted him to do some video creation for their production media.
As the funding continued to pour in and the team expanded, he was officially hired as a community manager and continues to regulate content that Star Citizen creates. This careful selection of staff members is assuredly carried over to other sections, and it has clearly helped make Star Citizen a success, even if the game is still in alpha.
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[1] https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13064-Meet-Ben-Lesnick
[2] https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/citizen-spotlight/5553-Star-Citizen-Interview-Sandi-Gardiner-GamesCom-2016-EN
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdS0yp4UsyU
[4] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVct2QDhDrB3VxVMzpB2TzIKncPBG33aT
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